One Rahul, One Problem

Lack of direction characterises his career. But wait, hasn’t this essentially been the issue with the Congress as a whole? For its survival, the party must resolve it before Sonia Gandhi retires.

Rahul Gandhi has hit his funny streak again. In his address to supporters on 20 September, he made these ‘out-of-this-world’ observations:

https://twitter.com/ANI_news/status/645488813700050944

(Everybody has a mother; there is none who does not have one.)

https://twitter.com/OfficeOfRG/status/645503512265142272

(Those who die of diseases have so much of radioactive substance in their bodies that the corpses are difficult to burn at the time of cremation.)

Of course, the statements had contexts. The first referred to the land as a mother, which, Rahul alleged, the Modi government was conspiring to snatch away from farmers. The second had reference to the labourers employed in Alang’s ship-breaking yard in Gujarat, some of whom are exposed to radiation. Rahul wants them to be protected by law.

The problem is that the preceding sentences do not help the allegations add up either. “When we are scared, we remember our mothers; when we are happy, we remember our mothers,” Rahul had said. That analogy does not suit a plot of land, does it? And then, there were hundreds of cases of farmer unrest due to ‘poor’ compensation under the UPA-II.

As for exposure to radioactivity in the shipbreaking yard, no less than the Supreme Court had observed that:

“…AERB (Atomic Energy Regulatory Board) and GMB (Gujarat Maritime Board) have certified that the said vessel Blue Lady beached in Alang no more contains any radioactive material on board the ship.”

It’s time Rahul baba told his team of researchers that Google provides for customised search wherein outdated information can be screened out. In all likelihood, they fed the party’s heir apparent with data dated 2009 whereas the issue had been addressed the very next year.

A compilation of essays by activists, Has the Judiciary Abandoned the Environment? states the agencies above “concluded that the ship was free of radioactive devices only because they could not find any direct evidence of the same!” [p 18] What else were the scientists supposed to do? Assert that there was radioactive material in the said ship without evidence? Today the Government of Gujarat has rubbished Rahul’s story, too. “First and foremost it is clarified that so far no nuclear powered vessel or warship having radioactive potential has ever been recycled at the Alang Sosia Ship Recycling Yard…” the state government has said.

And what is Rahul trying to achieve by playing a neo-communist and making common cause with these activists? Can he absolve himself completely of the charge of “policy paralysis” that the last Congress government had to live with during its final years, given the way he damned his own dispensation’s effort to usher in an industrial era on the Niyamgiri Hills of Odisha? Or, is he taking his own advice of learning from the Aam Aadmi Party seriously, hence making these wild allegations?

The alleged problem in cremation of corpses exposed to radioactive radiation is plain hearsay. No scientific study could link the difficulty in combustion, if any, to bodies’ exposure to asbestos, gamma radiation, ionising radiation, etc. In all probability, Rahul’s researchers chanced upon some web links like this one that talked about removing radioactive implants from a dead patient’s body before consigning it to flames. So, giving the Nehru-Gandhi scion the benefit of the doubt against the allegation of flippancy, supporters of the Congress must demand a change in his support staff immediately.

But he ruled against it yesterday, saying that the Congress couldn’t behave like an army where an underperforming soldier is replaced (really?); he’d rather put the NPAs in jobs they could do better. Likening his party to Apple Inc under Steve Jobs — never mind how many in the audience could appreciate the analogy — he said all opinions were welcome in the party, unlike the case with RSS. Overlook the last part as a mandatory rant in a Congressman’s speech and try to ascertain what is new in this appeal. Nothing! The Congress, since Jawaharlal Nehru’s era, has insisted it is not an ideological organisation. Ergo, all opinions—howsoever mutually incongruous—will be welcome indeed.

And look where it has taken the party. Rajiv Gandhi couldn’t formulate a strategy to face the Mandal and Kamandal onslaughts during his tenure, oscillating between overturning the Supreme Court’s Shah Bano verdict through legislation and sanctioning shilanyas at the Ram Janmabhoomi. The radicals of neither religion were impressed; Rajiv lost the following general election. In recent times similarly, there have been murmurs since the Congress’s disastrous show in Lok Sabha election last year that the party had to pay dearly for the impression that it is anti-Hindu. To address that, Rahul babapaid obeisance at the Banke Bihari temple in Mathura yesterday. Forget the rivals, even his supporters did not go ecstatic over this sudden display of religiosity from a man who had told a foreign diplomat that the biggest threat India faced was “Hindu terrorism.”

This is besides the policy confusion that we liberals lament the most: the Congress’s allergy to celebrating the biggest reformer it has ever had, P.V. Narasimha Rao. Nobody had complained about the party’s lack of ideology when his Finance Minister Manmohan Singh had to end the licence-quota raj. But then, that lack hit the country again when Singh resumed as the Prime Minister, taking all measures between 2004 and 2014 that he used to advise against between 1991 and 1996.

The politically significant part is that this bid to play the right man in the wrong party will take neither Rahul nor the Congress anywhere. We need not say it; Sonia Gandhi’s trusted man in Punjab is saying it. In his interview with The Times of India, the former chief minister of the border state has betrayed serious discomfiture in Rahul’s political strategy, potential and leadership. And this must be the popular mood in the party. Earlier this month, the Congress passed a resolution to delay its internal election, clearly signalling to Rahul Gandhi that his cadre were not yet ready to see him as their president.

The attempt by the party to discount, if not dismiss, Captain Amarinder Singh’s complaints as a disgruntled worker’s diatribe against colleague and Punjab Congress chief Partap Singh Bajwa does not fix the problem of lack of direction in the Congress strategy. Maybe Amarinder Singh wants to float a new party, but how does that settle the issues he has raised — among them the apprehension that extremists are joining the AAP and increasingly gaining popularity in the state? Post-Sonia, the party won’t even have a tall leader who can resolve party’s internal strife in different states. All general secretaries who are delegated this duty of fire-fighting would turn skivers under Rahul.

Rahul and his party must also be rattled at the way HRD Minister Smriti Irani is carrying out a five-year long campaign to oust him from Amethi. Sending her a legal notice has only given her further political ammunition. Yet another bad idea! Imagine the Congress’s plight if the BJP deputes another ‘troublemaker’ to campaign in Rae Bareli continuously till 2019. With just two pocket boroughs left in the vast state of Uttar Pradesh, with everybody finding it irrelevant in Bihar, and with its receding presence in the few smaller states where it continues to rule, the Congress must come up with a comeback strategy. That strategy, it knows, cannot be Rahul Gandhi. But with an ageing and ailing Sonia Gandhi and with the ruling out of Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra’s entry into politics, this one choice the party has will soon be its singular biggest problem.