Rahul Gandhi ducks Modi challenge
It’s official. Rahul Gandhi has ducked the challenge posed by Narendra Modi, and will not be named as the Congress’s official candidate for the Prime Minister’s post in the 2014 general election. At the opening session of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) at Talkatora stadium this morning, the Congress president Sonia Gandhi confirmed the decision taken at the Working Committee yesterday that Rahul Gandhi would lead the party’s election campaign, but would not be named as its nominee for the top post.
This comes in the wake of Rahul Gandhi’s inexplicably cancelling his proposed rally and public engagements in Amethi on January 10, on the improbable excuse that the Ramlila Ground was waterlogged. This proved false when the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Kumar Vishwas conducted a fairly impressive rally at the same venue two days later.
Though a huge disappointment to the party rank and file which clamoured for Rahul Gandhi as the official Prime Ministerial candidate from the stadium floor today, the decision is not unexpected and conforms to the growing perception that the Amethi MP is not mentally prepared for a larger responsibility at national level. During the two terms of the UPA, he dodged the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s invitation to join the Government and learn the nitty-gritty of statecraft. His micro-management of the Assembly elections in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Delhi was simply disastrous. Now, he is going to lead the Congress in its most challenging election ever, while tacitly admitting that he does not expect to win.
The Congress’s explanation that the party does not traditionally name a Prime Ministerial candidate is at best puerile. At the time of independence, Jawaharlal Nehru was already the Prime Minister of the interim Government, and became the country’s first Prime Minister. He was never challenged within his lifetime; Lal Bahadur Shastri died early; and Indira Gandhi had problems within the party but no challenge to her position as a leader. The minor opposition to Rajiv Gandhi’s elevation left the party of its own volition, and it was only when Sonia Gandhi faced difficulty in being sworn-in as Prime Minister that the Congress faced the situation of a separate Prime Minister working in tandem with the supreme leader.
This dyarchy was expected to end with Rahul Gandhi’s elevation as the leader of the campaign and the Prime Ministerial nominee. Rahul Gandhi is India-born and his decision not to directly face Narendra Modi is astonishing, especially after Manmohan Singh took pains to pave the way for him by harshly condemning the Gujarat Chief Minister at his January 3 press conference, and extolling the “outstanding credentials” of the Amethi MP. In fact, the Congress vice-president himself gave mixed signals in the run up to the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting, telling Dainik Bhaskar that “it is necessary that Congress forms the Government at the Centre; and in this direction whatever responsibilities the organisation has given me, I will discharge them with utmost sincerity and honesty.” He has offered to explain his position to the disappointed party workers in the afternoon session today.
Political analysts feel that the decision, not to pitch Rahul Gandhi directly against Narendra Modi reflects the doubts nurtured by many senior party leaders about the former’s style of functioning, including taking decisions with a close coterie and being highly inaccessible to the national and State level leaders. There is also an apprehension that many alliance partners may not accept working under Rahul Gandhi, particularly in view of his whimsical style of publicly trashing cabinet decisions and calling for a review, as in the case of the Ordinance to save the convicted Ministers from losing their Parliamentary seats. Since this view has prevailed, and Rahul Gandhi has failed to demonstrate a vote-catching ability, the Congress may well be experiencing the emergence of a ‘Syndicate’ of heavyweights who can call the shots behind the scenes. This is a development that bears watching.
What is undeniable for now, however, is that despite Rahul Gandhi’s formal elevation as the election in-charge, the key campaigner will be the Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who has begun her charge against the “serious challenge” to the nation “from communal divisive forces” which have taken the social fabric to “breaking point”. Accusing the BJP of “spreading hatred, violence,” she said, “We have always fought against communal forces. Secularism is our identity and an election compulsion”. The 2014 election, according to Sonia Gandhi, will be a battle of beliefs and philosophies; it will be “a battle for India, a battle for preserving secular tradition”.
Besides fighting opposing ideologies, the Congress president said that the party was determined to root out corruption and fight the price rise which has placed unbearable burdens on the common man. No Government had done as much for development as the UPA, “despite an irresponsible opposition and hurdles”, she claimed, and lauded Manmohan Singh for leading the Government with prestige and pride for ten years.
The Congress, she said, brought the historic RTI Act to usher in transparency as a way of fighting corruption, and was committed to a strong Lokayukta and Lokpal Bill. She added that a fully operational Aadhaar (which is being implemented despite the absence of a Parliamentary mandate) will end corruption in the delivery of subsidies, pensions, wages and Government benefits, and claimed that rural wages have increased under MNREGA.
The 2014 general election alone will tell how the people perceive the absence of a challenge to the BJP’s Narendra Modi. With Rahul Gandhi dodging this responsibility on the part of the nation’s oldest political party, and the third and fourth fronts yet to take concrete shape let alone decide their primus inter pares amongst a host of regional contenders, the contest has begun to resemble Milkha Singh versus the rest.
http://www.niticentral.com/2014/01/17/rahul-gandhi-ducks-modi-challenge-180289.html
Rahul Gandhi thunders but Congress’s panic is evident
Sandhya Jain17 Jan 2014
Virtually admitting that he could not seek a mandate on the basis of the Congress-dominated United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition’s record in office, Rahul Gandhi valiantly brushed this aside as inconsequential and promised a corruption-free future based on six Bills currently pending in Parliament. Delivering an emotive speech to the delegates of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) at Talkatora Stadium on Friday afternoon, the Amethi MP sought to dampen the panic in the party over the governance record of the past 10 years by urging the people to exert pressure on the Opposition parties (read Bharatiya Janata Party) to pass the pending legislations of the lame duck Government in the Budget Session next month.
The session has been called mainly to pass the vote-on-account to take care of Government expenditure for the next six months, till the new regime has time to present a Budget. The UPA has, however, called a two week session (February 5–21) in the hope that it can persuade the a section of the BJP leadership to help pass its pet legislations and give it a fighting chance in the forthcoming general election. It remains to be seen how BJP president Rajnath Singh and Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi react to this audacity on the part of the Congress ‘shehzade’, who accused the BJP of viciously blocking several sessions of Parliament and subverting democratic institutions. He also charged the party of fostering communal hatred in the nation.
The Congress vice-president struggled to overcome the despondency in the rank and file over his not assuming the mantle of Prime Ministerial candidate officially. He sought to raise morale by subtly hinting that he was the obvious choice if the party won the 2014 general election. The Indian Constitution, he pointed out to loud cheers from his audience, provides that the Prime Minister would be chosen by the elected MPs, and Congress being a democratic party would select its Prime Minister by this method. So as to leave no one in any doubt regarding his meaning, he added, “I am a soldier, I will do what you want me to do.”
Rahul Gandhi avoided a direct attack on Narendra Modi and other BJP leaders, but took a dig at them saying that the previous leaders had the talent to sell combs to bald men, and now the new leaders had gone a step ahead and were offering haircuts to bald men. He did not elaborate. He lambasted the call for “Congress mukt Bharat” and said that Congress stood by the 3000-year-old values of brotherhood and love embodied in the Bhagvad Gita and the Mahabharata, which were upheld by emperor Ashok, Guru Nanak, emperor Akbar and Gandhi.
Openly hinting at a small populist measure to be made by the Government to mitigate the anger of the people, the Amethi MP urged the Prime Minister to understand that nine (LPG) cylinders were not enough and that the people wanted 12 cylinder (per household, on subsidised basis). He pointed out that Congress Chief Ministers were controlling the price line by delinking vegetables from the purview of the Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMCs), but could not explain why this had not been done earlier.
Specifically targetting women voters, Rahul Gandhi said he favoured reservations for women in Parliament and wanted 50 per cent Chief Ministers to be women (he did not say if this should be done through rotation, like reserved seats). The UPA, he claimed, that raised 14 crore people above the poverty line for the first time in history, and today there is a new class of persons, 70 crore-strong, who stood between the middleclass and above the Below Poverty Line category. But their position was precarious and could be undone by a serious illness in the family, but the Congress, if returned to power, would provide for their children’s education, health and employment needs, and make them a part of the middle class.
The Congress-UPA achievements, he claimed, included the RTI Act, the Lokpal Bill, the anti-corruption Bills pending in Parliament (which the Opposition must be forced to pass), the Food Bill, MNREGA and the loan waiver to farmers. The Aadhaar identity card, he said, was a massive step forward. He said Sam Pitroda had made technology the bedrock of the future.
Taking on Narendra Modi’s jibe that Rajiv Gandhi had constantly spoken of taking the nation into the 21st century without doing anything to empower the nation in this regard, the Gandhi scion said that Rajiv Gandhi had laid the foundation (for the nation) and the only task that now remained was to take the Congress party into the 21st century by giving workers a voice in its decision-making. Admitting that workers are justifiably agitated when the party gives tickets to party-hoppers at election time, he dodged making a commitment that this would not happen again. Instead, he said, the party will admit new people, youth and thinkers, but would give tickets only to those who had the Congress ideology (vichar dhara) in their mind and blood.
Giving hope to the disgruntled, he said that as an experiment, the party would give tickets in 15 constituencies on the basis of inputs from party workers and the people. Rahul Gandhi seemed unaware that the Aam Aadmi Party had adopted this method in the recent Delhi Assembly elections, but MLA Vinod Kumar Binny had exposed it as a fraud on the people, as the tickets had already been decided for each constituency long before the exercise was conducted! Be that as it may be, he said he had conducted elections to the Youth Congress and National Students Union of India (NSUI); involved workers and others in the preparation of the manifesto; and would now experiment with ticket distribution. Panchayat leaders, who truly represent the people, would be given a greater say in the system in future, he promised, if Congress returned to power. Similarly, MPs and MLAs would have a greater say in law-making.
Rahul Gandhi avoided all mention of the late Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru so as to avoid the charge of dynastic nepotism, and urged the workers to give their best in the coming election as the nation was at a turning point and people were unwilling to wait for the fulfillment of their aspirations. Congress, he said, had given the people higher incomes by raising the minimum wage, but real change needs reform and structural adjustment and sustained political effort. The Amethi MP sought a chance to govern the country, but despite his thundering declamations from the pulpit, he could not defend the scam-tainted record of the UPA and had to present the passage of certain laws, whose impact on the ground is mixed or dubious, as his ticket to the nation’s top job. Overall, it was an unsatisfying performance.
Laughter contest at Rahul Gandhi's speech in AICC meet
Rahul screamed his lungs out but as usual was poor on facts and high on rhetoric.
Rahul Gandhi: Too little, too late
Geopolitical notes from India
M D Nalapat
Friday, January 17, 2014 - In war as in politics, timing often makes the difference between success and failure. By the date when this column appears in print, Rahul Gandhi is likely to have been declared as Prime Minister Designate, should the Congress Party repeat its 2004 and 2009 successes in the May 2014 General Elections. It has taken a while, but it would appear that the Congress High Command, comprising of the vote AICC President Sonia Gandhi (referred to by senior colleagues as “CP” or Congress President), AICC Vice-President Rahul Gandhi and the half-vote of Sonia Gandhi’s daughter and Rahul’s sister, Priyanka.
Although the last is by far the most popular and charismatic of the three, she has been kept on the periphery of politics, even as Rahul has emerged on centrestage. Congress seniors say that the reason was that in 2004,with Rahul away abroad, it was daughter Priyanka to whom Sonia Gandhi turned to fight the traditional constituency of Amethi. At that point, for whatever reason, Priyanka is reported to have declined the request, thereby forcing Sonia to summon Rahul back from overseas and into the bustle of an election, which he won with ease. Since then, Priyanka has been dusted off the shelves only when elections beckon, and that too to campaign only in Amethi and in Sonia Gandhi’s constituency of Rae Bareilly rather than across the country. Rahul Gandhi loves traveling abroad.
Details of his flights to varied locations (with Ankara and Bangkok being favoured destinations) have been kept secret by a protective Manmohan Singh, ever willing to play the role of faithful retainer to the family that made him the Prime Minister of India despite only a single Member of Parliament (ie himself) backing him. Officials say privately that private aircraft are the favoured means of travel, and that Rahul is often accompanied by friends and family members on such outings. His tax records show only a modest income and a level of wealth that is under whelming, but Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram is there to ensure that inconvenient questions not get asked about the 7-star travel and stay of the Prince of Wales of what since 1969 has been the Congress (Indira). It was Rahul’s grandmother Indira Gandhi who converted the party into a 100% family-owned enterprise, such that the leader of the party after about thirty years (when Rahul and Priyanka retire), it will be Priyanka’s daughter Miraya who takes over as AICC President.
By all accounts, Priyanka, husband Robert Vadra and their two children are a close-knit and dutiful family. The children go to a normal school and have normal friends, and by most accounts, none of four have the conceit or arrogance which comes from controlling govt which runs country Rather than keep Priyanka in the shadows, it would have been best for the AICC President and Vice-President to have ensured that she too begins to participate in political events on a regular basis. There is something distant about Rahul Gandhi, who comes across as someone who is uncomfortable with India and its people. Each meeting seems choreographed, with an invisible partition between Rahul and those he is with.In contrast, Priyanka clearly loves being in India and among the vibrant people of this country. She enjoys crowds in a way that neither Rahul or Sonia appear to do.
Hence the presence of Priyanka at party functions would have been a plus for the family, a lesson that has even at this late stage not been learnt, for once again, Priyanka Vadra is being pushed to the periphery of politics, asked to confine herself to Amethi and Rae Bareilly rather than to the entire country, way Rahul and Sonia operate. Not utilising the potential of Priyanka Vadra is among mistakes committed by Rahul Gandhi. Another is the fact that he has thus far refused to accept any ministerial or other governmental responsibility. True, his father Rajiv Gandhi had a lack of similar experience before taking over as PM in 1984,but it needs to be remembered that Rajiv Gandhi lost in 1989 more than half of the parliamentary seats he had carried in 1984.
After Rajiv Gandhi’s disastrous stint in office, voters in India have paid much more attention to experience. Consequently, had Rahul Gandhi accepted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s offer of a portfolio of his choice, and conducted himself well, he would have been in a much better position to challenge the BJP’s Narendra Modi, whose trump card is success in running complex state of Gujarat since 2002.Modi’s one blemish is fact that riots took place that year in which several hundreds were killed, a third of them Hindu and the rest Muslim.
However, the Chief Minister seems to have learnt from that mishap, and since then, Gujarat has been free of violence, unlike much of the rest of the country. Today, people are looking at the Gujarat of 2014 rather than that of 2002,which is why the effort to freeze history to the latter date has failed in political terms With all his drawbacks, Rahul Gandhi is a much more attractive choice for Prime Minister than Manmohan Singh, which is why it would be better for the Congress Party to appoint him not simply as the PM nominee but as the PM, replacing Manmohan Singh. However, this seems unlikely.
The Congress Party is likely to go to the polls with Manmohan Singh as the Prime Minister, a factor that will cost it about thirty seats in coming polls. Even if Rahul is made the PM, it will be too late to prevent his party from repeating Rajiv Gandhi’s debacle of more than halving Congress tally of seats from election to election. The time for Rahul to have taken over as Prime Minister was early 2011.By that time, Manmohan Singh had become an object of derision because of his refusal to ensure honest distribution of the country’s natural resources, and his “Chalta Hai” (anything goes) attitude towards graft. Had Rahul taken charge and put in place the very corrective measures that he is championing now, his party may not now be as unpopular as it is. However, it is clearly “too little, too late” for Rahul Gandhi. It will be a miracle of his party remains in the driver’s seat after the May elections.
—The writer is Vice-Chair, Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair & Professor of Geopolitics, Manipal University, Haryana State, India.
http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=230541#.UtlizHG9Wh8.gmailAlthough the last is by far the most popular and charismatic of the three, she has been kept on the periphery of politics, even as Rahul has emerged on centrestage. Congress seniors say that the reason was that in 2004,with Rahul away abroad, it was daughter Priyanka to whom Sonia Gandhi turned to fight the traditional constituency of Amethi. At that point, for whatever reason, Priyanka is reported to have declined the request, thereby forcing Sonia to summon Rahul back from overseas and into the bustle of an election, which he won with ease. Since then, Priyanka has been dusted off the shelves only when elections beckon, and that too to campaign only in Amethi and in Sonia Gandhi’s constituency of Rae Bareilly rather than across the country. Rahul Gandhi loves traveling abroad.
Details of his flights to varied locations (with Ankara and Bangkok being favoured destinations) have been kept secret by a protective Manmohan Singh, ever willing to play the role of faithful retainer to the family that made him the Prime Minister of India despite only a single Member of Parliament (ie himself) backing him. Officials say privately that private aircraft are the favoured means of travel, and that Rahul is often accompanied by friends and family members on such outings. His tax records show only a modest income and a level of wealth that is under whelming, but Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram is there to ensure that inconvenient questions not get asked about the 7-star travel and stay of the Prince of Wales of what since 1969 has been the Congress (Indira). It was Rahul’s grandmother Indira Gandhi who converted the party into a 100% family-owned enterprise, such that the leader of the party after about thirty years (when Rahul and Priyanka retire), it will be Priyanka’s daughter Miraya who takes over as AICC President.
By all accounts, Priyanka, husband Robert Vadra and their two children are a close-knit and dutiful family. The children go to a normal school and have normal friends, and by most accounts, none of four have the conceit or arrogance which comes from controlling govt which runs country Rather than keep Priyanka in the shadows, it would have been best for the AICC President and Vice-President to have ensured that she too begins to participate in political events on a regular basis. There is something distant about Rahul Gandhi, who comes across as someone who is uncomfortable with India and its people. Each meeting seems choreographed, with an invisible partition between Rahul and those he is with.In contrast, Priyanka clearly loves being in India and among the vibrant people of this country. She enjoys crowds in a way that neither Rahul or Sonia appear to do.
Hence the presence of Priyanka at party functions would have been a plus for the family, a lesson that has even at this late stage not been learnt, for once again, Priyanka Vadra is being pushed to the periphery of politics, asked to confine herself to Amethi and Rae Bareilly rather than to the entire country, way Rahul and Sonia operate. Not utilising the potential of Priyanka Vadra is among mistakes committed by Rahul Gandhi. Another is the fact that he has thus far refused to accept any ministerial or other governmental responsibility. True, his father Rajiv Gandhi had a lack of similar experience before taking over as PM in 1984,but it needs to be remembered that Rajiv Gandhi lost in 1989 more than half of the parliamentary seats he had carried in 1984.
After Rajiv Gandhi’s disastrous stint in office, voters in India have paid much more attention to experience. Consequently, had Rahul Gandhi accepted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s offer of a portfolio of his choice, and conducted himself well, he would have been in a much better position to challenge the BJP’s Narendra Modi, whose trump card is success in running complex state of Gujarat since 2002.Modi’s one blemish is fact that riots took place that year in which several hundreds were killed, a third of them Hindu and the rest Muslim.
However, the Chief Minister seems to have learnt from that mishap, and since then, Gujarat has been free of violence, unlike much of the rest of the country. Today, people are looking at the Gujarat of 2014 rather than that of 2002,which is why the effort to freeze history to the latter date has failed in political terms With all his drawbacks, Rahul Gandhi is a much more attractive choice for Prime Minister than Manmohan Singh, which is why it would be better for the Congress Party to appoint him not simply as the PM nominee but as the PM, replacing Manmohan Singh. However, this seems unlikely.
The Congress Party is likely to go to the polls with Manmohan Singh as the Prime Minister, a factor that will cost it about thirty seats in coming polls. Even if Rahul is made the PM, it will be too late to prevent his party from repeating Rajiv Gandhi’s debacle of more than halving Congress tally of seats from election to election. The time for Rahul to have taken over as Prime Minister was early 2011.By that time, Manmohan Singh had become an object of derision because of his refusal to ensure honest distribution of the country’s natural resources, and his “Chalta Hai” (anything goes) attitude towards graft. Had Rahul taken charge and put in place the very corrective measures that he is championing now, his party may not now be as unpopular as it is. However, it is clearly “too little, too late” for Rahul Gandhi. It will be a miracle of his party remains in the driver’s seat after the May elections.
—The writer is Vice-Chair, Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair & Professor of Geopolitics, Manipal University, Haryana State, India.