VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA
Though Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has
said no to joining active politics “as of now”, Congress sycophants and
worshippers of the dynasty have not lost hope. For them, her “no” is only
temporary and again after a few months, if not a few weeks, they will raise the
slogan of “bring Priyanka in active politics… Long live Congress”. They have
been raising this slogan for a decade and would continue to do so till she
joins politics.
A little over two decades ago,
when Narasimha Rao was the first non-dynast Congress Prime Minister of the
country, a similar slogan was raised for Sonia Gandhi. She was then in
mourning, having lost her husband Rajiv Gandhi to LTTE assassins but the
sycophants would not listen. They would repeatedly mock at the Rao government
and urge Sonia to join active politics by staging road-shows near 10 Janpath.
The rank and file of Congress then could not look beyond the Gandhi family for
its political fortunes even though Rao had provided relatively good governance,
was opening the economy with Manmohan Singh as his Finance Minister and there
were visible signs of revival all around.
Sonia catapulted to the wishes and soon became the Congress President, a post
she still occupies.
For Rahul Gandhi, the next
generation of the Gandhi family, entry in politics was a fait accompli even
though the young man was indifferent and hardly interested in the profession of
his mother, father, grandmother and great grandfather. Even now, he does not
seem to be interested in politics and does not want to make a career of it
despite his recent decision to jump into the Well of the Lok Sabha protesting
against so called communalization of politics in the Narendra Modi era. The
revelations in Natwar Singh’s book that Sonia Gandhi did not become prime
minister in May 2004 because her son Rahul Gandhi did not want her to take up
the responsibility as he was afraid that she would be killed like his father
Rajiv Gandhi, has only confirmed the belief that the Congress Vice President
does not want any responsibility either for himself or his mother.
What perhaps is preventing
Priyanka’s entry in politics is the tradition that in the Gandhi-Nehru family,
it has always been only two members at a time in politics and not three in the
last almost 100 years. Moti Lal Nehru and his son Jawaharlal were in Congress
politics together for a brief period and then the latter took over. When Nehru
was the Prime Minister, his daughter Indira Gandhi kept away from politics even
though she was groomed well for a leadership role and saw it at close quarters
every day. Even after Nehru’s death, it took a while for Indira Gandhi to
become the Prime Minister. Then she and her son Sanjay Gandhi were together in
politics before Sanjay’s untimely death in a Delhi
plane crash in 1980. It was only then that a reluctant Rajiv Gandhi entered
politics to keep alive the family tradition. Indira and Rajiv were together in
politics for only four years when the then Prime Minister was assassinated in
October 1984. It was Rajiv’s turn now to keep alive the family tradition till
his death in 1991. By then, Congress was so attuned to a member of the dynasty
heading it that it could not look beyond Sonia.
This is what is happening now.
When law of diminishing returns has caught up with Sonia and Rahul Gandhi and
they can no longer get votes for them, Congress sycophants have conveniently
turned to Priyanka, thinking that she now has the magic wand, could salvage the
situation and help them win polls again. Wishful thinking! But that is the way
Congress rank and file has been forced to believe over the years as it is a
party driven by a family and dynasty and not an ideology or a coherent thinking.
We have seen Priyanka Gandhi
campaigning in Amethi and Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh from where her brother
and mother have been winning successive elections. She makes frequent forays in
the constituencies even when elections are not around to keep the bonding
intact. However, in the last Lok Sabha elections, when she showed her
aggressive best and took on Narendra Modi, she invariably found her at the
receiving end due to Modi’s brilliant one liners. The trump card was found
faltering. In her electioneering in the two constituencies of UP, she hardly
spoke about the issues facing the country and what solutions her party offered.
Of course, she is a good communicator, was able to connect with the voters with
her approach and this helped her mother and brother win. But for a serious role in politics, more is
required not occasional visits to a constituency or two.
But given the way Rahul has fared
and reduced the party to the lowest ever tally when the Lok Sabha elections
were fought under his leadership, Priyanka perhaps is the only hope of the
party for which dynasty is the glue which keeps the machinery and conflicting
claims of leaders together. Priyanka reaches out to the people unlike Rahul and
Sonia Gandhi, is more articulate and approachable and the party believes that
she has the charisma which her brother and mother lack. Ask the average
Congress worker and even the leaders and they will tell you it is a matter of
time before she enters politics. Many see her as the star campaigner of the party
in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the way Modi was for BJP in 2014.
As the family does not speak out
on any issue, more so if they are related to the family, there are other
theories doing the round. One is that Priyanka would never join politics and
instead her son Rehan Vadra would be adopted by Rahul Gandhi to give him the magical Gandhi surname and groom him
as the next generation leader as is the tradition in the family for the last
100 years. A news report in weekly Sunday Guardian by senior and accomplished
Journalist Pankaj Vohra brought this out. He argued that a succession plan was
worked out to enable Rahul adopt Rehan given that he remains a bachelor at the
age of 44 and there was little possibility of him getting married in the
immediate future.
Those closely watching Congress
and family affairs insist that when senior leaders like Janardan Dwivedi and
Oscar Fernandes talk of Priyanka entering politics, it is part of a strategy—to
float a test balloon and see the reaction periodically. Invariably, this evokes
a strong reaction with articles in newspapers, stories on television channels,
Congress sycophants coming out in the open and finally Priyanka herself denying
it with a statement. So when Congress spokesperson Shobha Oza said that party
workers wanted all members of the Gandhi family to be active in politics, it
was part of a well thought out strategy which is to float the trial balloon
regularly to see the popularity of Priyanka in public domain.
The problem for the Congress
President is if Priyanka gets into politics and become more popular than her
brother, there would be an intense sibling rivalry. There is every possibility
of this as the graph of Rahul has been continuously going down in the last four
years till it reached its nadir in the 2014 polls with the party getting only
44 members in the Lok Sabha. Perhaps,
Congress can build on an idea which Rahul himself devised. This is
democratization of the party. It can hold primaries or an election in the party
through a secret ballot to determine who is more popular—Rahul, Priyanka or
someone else. But then, if Congress had behaved that way, it would not have
reached the figure of 44, begging to be declared the main opposition party in
Lok Sabha. (August 11, 2014)
http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/chandigarh/priyanka-as-the-panacea--for-all-ills-plaguing-cong.html
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