VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA
Rahul Gandhi is already the Joint Number 1 in the party if not Number 2. Making him a Deputy Prime Minister or Working President of Congress would only confirm what he already enjoys without a fancy designation
So Rahul Gandhi is finally ready
to play a bigger role in either the government or the Congress party.
You can’t find even a single
Congress person across the length and breadth of the country who did not shower
accolades on the decision. In fact, all of them, the leaders in particular,
have already gone overboard to welcome it with words laced with sycophancy as
if their savior has finally “arrived”. When someone in the Gandhi family
sneezes, the entire Congress catches cold. Obviously, this was much more than a
sneeze.
Having watched Congress politics
for a while, it was surprising that there was indeed a need for such a
statement at all from the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family. Whatever his
designation in the party is, Gandhi was already joint Number 1 in the party
with his mother Sonia Gandhi, if not the Number two.
Moreover, everyone in the country
knows that the way Congress has functioned in the last decade and a half and
the way power is centered in the family, the Prime Minister is a mere
nominee from the family rather than having a parallel power base of his own.
Rahul Gandhi might have termed him as one of his two bosses but ask a veteran
Congress leader and he will tell you that the only two real bosses in the party
are the two Gandhis. Remember, Narasimha Rao was disowned by the Congress
and the Gandhi family as he showed that PM was himself a power centre and
he did not owe it to the family.
Manmohan Singh knows the fate of
Rao in Congress legion. He has never shown any pretensions of behaving like Rao
and showing any disrespect or indifference to the family unlike his former
boss. Simply put, you cannot work in an organization if you invite the wrath of
the owner and the CEO. For almost every Congress leader, the party and the
family is synonymous. Being a good economist and a student of history, Manmohan
Singh knows that well.
Now the question would be about
the role which Gandhi would play either in the party or the government. A
position in the government is practically ruled out as he would have to serve
as a Cabinet minister even if he is made the Deputy Prime Minister. He could
step in the shoes of Pranab Mukherjee as the Finance Minister but the way
prices are going up and an economic crisis building in the country, the post of
Finance Minister would not endear him to the people ahead of the big battle of
2014.
Home Ministry could be the other
option if P Chidambaram is given Finance. But again it requires the ambivalence
of Chidambaram to battle adversity in the face of naxal threat, Jihadi violence
and civil disturbances like that of Telengana.
As of now, Gandhi could fit the
bill only in ministries like Rural Development, Environment, Water Resources,
Information and Broadcasting etc, where there is hardly any public scrutiny or
risk of becoming unpopular and invite the wrath of the people in the run-up to
the Lok Sabha elections, less than two years from now.
So the obvious choice for
Gandhi’s “greater role” would be the party. The Constitution of the party says
that the party President is assisted by the General Secretaries and the
Congress Working Committee. Gandhi is one of the dozen General Secretaries of
the party and has been given charge of NSUI and the Youth Congress. Being a
General Secretary, he is also the member of the CWC. But ask any other general
secretary and they will frankly tell you that Rahul is the first among equals.
This makes him practically the Number 2 in the party hierarchy if not joint
Number one.
If Gandhi keeps insisting on a
bigger role to satiate the appetite of the political pundits and to boost up
the morale of party workers and is made the Working President of the party or
the Vice President it will only be a change of nomenclature—making the De facto
as De jure. It will not at all alter the functioning of the party or the power
structure within it in any way. All the General Secretaries – be it Janardan
Dwivedi or Digvijay Singh - look up to him reverentially and that will
continue.
Another “bigger role” could be in
elections of Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat later this
year. But the risks are manifold. In the recently held elections of Uttar
Pradesh, Gandhi indeed played a pro active role. He made sure that the
candidates were declared two to eight months before the polls to give them
sufficient time to prepare themselves and addressed over 150 rallies and public
meetings. It is a different matter that bereft of any sound footing, hype could
not take the Congress anywhere and it faced an electoral disaster. The message
of UP was loud and clear. There were hardly any takers for the USP of the
Congress – Rahul Gandhi.
A section of the Congress leaders
privately admit that the risks of replicating the experience of UP in the
entire country is huge. Though Rahul did not declare himself to be the chief
ministerial candidate of UP, elections were fought and votes for Congress
sought on his name.
After the declaration of Gandhi’s
intention of playing a bigger role, Congress leaders are speculating what the
move could be. A section believes that if he is made the Prime Minister anytime
now and then proves that he is indeed capable of steering the country’s economy
and polity in the run-up to the general elections, he could be projected as the
face of the party in the elections for the third consecutive term of the
Congress at the Centre.
Another theory is that he would
criss cross the country, organise a series of public meetings from Kashmir
to Kanyakumari and practically launch the election campaign of the Congress. If
a blitzkrieg is launched, hype built, the movement catches some steam and the
response is positive, the party could go for an early election sometime between
September and November next year to cash in on such a goodwill.
Yet another talking point which
is being speculated in the Congress is that nothing will change till the 2014
elections. The government would announce populist schemes one after the other
and hope for the TINA (There is no alternative) factor. If lady luck smiles and
the UPA is indeed voted to power, Gandhi would simply take over the reins of
the government and leave the party to his mother Sonia Gandhi.
The Congress leaders and cadres
would be looking at Rahul to announce his next move after his avowed intention
of playing a bigger role. But what is clear in this era is the fact that a
surname can take you ahead in a party but not in electoral politics. People do
not vote for a surname any longer and there are larger issues at play. Had that
been the case, there would have been a Congress government in UP and all the
universities in the country would have had NSUI Presidents. (July 23, 2012)
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