Rahul as Congress chief

TILL a year ago, Congress Party managers would have their hearts in their mouth whenever Rahul Gandhi took up a political cause. There was really no telling when he would do the disappearing act. The worm it seems has turned. Rahul Gandhi has been highly visible in Gujarat along with his social media team. His tactically clever alliance with the youth troika of Jignesh Mewani, Hardik Patel and Alpesh Thakur has brought the elections alive. It was time for him to step up to the plate.

His political ascension does smack of the ingrained culture of entitlement for the Gandhi family. But like Sonia Gandhi or his father Rajiv, his neck will be on the line as he leads the Congress charge. A Gandhi is expected to deliver for the Congress. Like him, his mother took up the reins when the party was at its nadir. She served unchallenged for 19 years because she delivered two Lok Sabha wins besides adding several states to the Congress kitty. PM Narendra Modi recognised an emerging challenge from a younger India by comparing the change in the Congress to the Mughal dynasty saga. The backdrop to the PM’s acerbic observations is not just to paint his every opponent as a Muslim appeaser. It has also to do with the competitiveness Rahul has injected in the Gujarat elections, a Hindutva pocket-borough, where the BJP had anticipated an easy walkover.

The Gujarat battlefield experience seems to have done wonders to the young Gandhi’s self-confidence; India of 2017 no longer appears as loaded against the Congress as was in India of 2014. Winning and losing are part of democratic way of life; it is the will to fight that matters, and the young Gandhi has impressed one and all with his guts and stamina. The prince is no longer reluctant to lead, even if the battle is uneven. The challenge before Rahul is to overhaul the party machinery in time for the 2019 elections. This requires fresh ideas, creative alliances and a recouping of the goodwill lost in the fading years of UPA rule. A tall order which no one is sure if Rahul will measure up to.