Pawar’s view on Rahul: Is it a precondition for forming UPA-III?

Sharad Pawar had not wanted Sonia Gandhi to be in Indian politics. That is why he founded the Nationalist Congress Party fearing that if the Congress were given a free run, she would become the prime minister. That was worse than her merely leading the Congress party.

Her Italian origin was the reason. Of course, Sharad Pawar was propped a decade earlier as a likely prime ministerial candidate by his once ardent follower Suresh Kalmadi. That helped make Pawar the perennial likely candidate. It added to his aura.

It is now obvious that Sharad Pawar does not want her son Rahul to be the prime minister. The man has cited his reservations about the man who sycophantic Congressmen see as a central figure to revive the party, shift it to the next generation, and help it return to power in Delhi in 2014. To them, Rahul does no wrong, ever.

Recall party spokesperson Ajay Makan’s quick – with no signs of even mild embarrassment – response to Rahul Gandhi overturning the decision of the party, the core group and the cabinet’s decision on giving leases of life to criminal MPs? Rahul’s view is Congress policy, Maken had asserted, minutes after batting for the law.

By his remarks on CNN-IBN, Pawar has done an interesting thing. By stressing Rahul Gandhi’s unsuitability for the top political post should it be available to the Congress in 2014, Pawar has thrown up the unspoken question: If not him, then who? Manmohan Singh wouldn’t want the seat. He may have not quit, but he wouldn’t want to be back.

Even when discussing his party’s alliance with Congress for the 2004 elections, without a whiff of it floating out from the backrooms to the media, Pawar had apparently made it clear that his support to Congress, even by seat adjustments, could be tried only if Sonia did not get to be the prime minister. He needed the Congress, but not Sonia.

Pawar’s reasoning about the advisability – or lack thereof – of Rahul Gandhi being tossed into the numero uno position in the government when it is formed in 2014, and if it were to be the UPA – III with perhaps some modification of the constituents, is flawless. Being raw but endowed with power of a dynasty can be a dangerous mix for the country to face. The Maharashtra politician had said, “One has to prove his mettle in the administration” which implied that Rahul Gandhi was a veritable greenhorn.

Juxtapose this to his willingness that in 2014, he would help bring the myriad smaller, regional parties together to back Congress. Would then, Rahul Gandhi not heading the newer alliance, the UPA-III, be the precondition? Going by Sonia favouring Manmohan Singh in 2004, interesting possibilities arise. He also thinks BJP is ahead for now.

Pawar has not indicated what his stand would be were Rahul Gandhi to be the next leader of opposition in Lok Sabha because it is hard to predict which of the two principal parties would emerge a key contender. If UPA III were to occupy the opposition space, would Rahul Gandhi being opposition leader be acceptable?

Rahul Gandhi’s here now, gone suddenly visibility since the widespread belief that the prince would be the king if BJP did not make it – a difficult possibility of BJP making it unless a wave sweeps in in favour of Narendra Modi, not BJP – does not give comfort. Analysts have dismissed him as mediocre. His politics has been of the hit-and-run kind.

Pawar’s relationship with the Family, a metaphor for the Congress where everyone claims it is internally democratic because the dynasty told them to parrot it, has been troubled. He left the party quite early on because Mrs Indira Gandhi did not allow internal democracy. Then came his famed rainbow progressive democratic front which also made him the youngest chief minister of a state.

It took long for him to find the unviability of being on his own, though going by popular belief, he may not have even thought of a national gambit for himself then, he returned to it. With or without the Congress, Pawar has not grown beyond a particular size. Rajiv Gandhi inducted him back into the party and he has been sworn in Maharashtra’s chief minister multiple times.

Even this relationship with Rajiv Gandhi was rather tenuous. During one of his tenures as chief minister, Rajiv Gandhi himself signalled, for no local cause in Maharashtra, that a rebellion be started, the principal actors being AR Antulay, Sushilkumar Shinde, Vilasrao Deshmukh, Prataprao Bhosle who later did well for themselves.

The idea was to curb and cram Pawar, easily the most ambitious and the most competent strategists whose main content is also subterfuge. The command performance went on for weeks and then, suddenly, everything went cold. Local divisions were strengthened and he no longer was the supreme Congressman in the state.

His comment now about the “generation gap” between him and Rahul Gandhi is telling. He has “not seen” if Rahul Gandhi has any administrative grasp at all. Rahul spurned Manmohan Singh’s invitation to join the cabinet. To reinforce the idea of Rahul’s leadership, Manmohan Singh even proclaimed several times that the prince was ready to be prime minister any time and he would work under the younger Gandhi.

Pawar, who had wanted Manmohan Singh instead of Sonia Gandhi in 2004, and who had mutual respect for each other, the latter having said in his first budget speech that he was inspired by Pawar’s notions about liberalisation, thinks differently. Rahul Gandhi has to prove his mettle, which he has not.

Would winning of an election, if he does manage that, mean he can automatically become the prime minister too? Politics, and that of the Congress, can be predictably vile and weird so who knows? One waits for the results and the formation of the new smorgasbord.