Rahul Gandhi's Mentorship Problem Should Serve As A Premonition For The Congress

The extremity of Rahul Gandhi's rhetoric during this election season has done much damage to the Congress. It will take some doing post the elections for the Congress to set its house in order.

Had the left-liberal ecosystem put their minds to work to refine their favourite isms — federalism, secularism, and liberalism — in a way that is practical and progressive, instead of continuously outraging against Prime Minister Modi, at least they would have given themselves a chance to compete in the realm of ideas. The last decade is a lost opportunity for them.

There are other aspects that require renewed scrutiny — the personality and leadership of Rahul Gandhi. Let us look beyond mental acuity. The dangerous ideas put forth by Rahul Gandhi point to a lack of strong mentors in his political journey. The unfortunate demise of his father, Rajiv Gandhi, has left a personal and mentorship vacuum. Perhaps Sonia Gandhi could do only so much to guide her son blessed only with feeble intellectual firepower. She also had to run the UPA from behind the scenes.

The vacuum in mentorship has been filled by the likes of Sam Pitroda. This personal connection, and Pitoda's affiliation to the "Indian Overseas Congress" threatened to become so devastatingly injurious to the Congress' prospects in 2024, that he had to resign (of his own volition, as the sycophants had reiterated) from his position. By the way, an intrepid journalist should audit what the "Indian Overseas Congress" has done over the last few years.

Even former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former President Pranab Mukherjee could not effectively become his mentors. The other self-serving senior leaders of the Congress pretended to play the role of mentors at various times.

Rahul Gandhi's kitchen cabinet would have apprised him about their true natures or the internecine politics of the Congress would have downsized them all. They became marginal players.

More dangerously, the sundry NGOs, foreign organisations and cult members of international liberalism, also stepped into this vacuum. Seeing them as "apolitical," Rahul Gandhi has absorbed a lot of their ideas. We got more than a glimpse of these personalities in the Bharat Jodo Yatra. The BJP has played it as if he is in the thrall of Soros and other global anarchists.

Seeing the current intellectual level of the Congress leadership, political consultant Sunil Kanagolu formulated a clever strategy in the state elections of Karnataka and Telangana.

With the focus on five (or six) guarantees, the Congress leadership was forced to speak only about those guarantees and not wade into philosophical gems hidden deep in their hearts. It paid them rich political dividends in terms of them winning both the Karnataka and the Telangana Legislative Assemblies. 

They did not seem to have learnt the big lesson from those campaigns. The mathematical axiom that can be derived is that the success of a Congress campaign is inversely proportional to the number of words spoken by its top leadership.

But practising politicians should be realists and hence it is ironic that only the external consultant was the only realist in the Congress set-up. (Maybe the Congress folks are realists in their own ways. Their positions depend on the whims of the Gandhi siblings.)

BJP's growth pangs

Let us think of a scenario that is favourable to Congress in the next five years to see if they would be in a position to take advantage of it.

Assuming BJP wins the 2024 election, as it looks now, Prime Minister Modi will complete 15 years at the helm by 2029. However efficiently he may govern, anti-incumbency will start becoming a factor (It is credit to PM Modi's image and performance that he has defied anti-incumbency in this election).

The BJP will have its own set of problems to contend with. Over the last six months the BJP has recruited members from rival parties into its fold, giving it a "Shivji ki baraat" look. The BJP has to worry about the trust factor that the people have bestowed upon it as being a clean "party with a difference."

The "Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas" mantra has ushered new hope into the lives of millions of Indians. Nevertheless, expectations will only keep rising. Also, one must remember that every development paradigm will have winners and losers. It is just in the nature of things.

Economists will argue that a developing country like India should focus solely on poverty elimination and not on inequality. There is truth to that argument. But, politically speaking, inequality becomes an issue. Envy is a powerful human instinct that we ignore at our peril. The legendary Charlie Munger has taught us that the world runs on envy, not greed.

What does the future hold for Congress?

Let us gaze at the crystal ball through the triumvirate of leadership, organisation and ideas. On leadership, Rahul Gandhi has timed out the old leaders. Many of the old ministers of the erstwhile UPA governments are in their 70s and could be discarded in the next 5 years.

Whether Rahul will retain any legitimacy or will Priyanka Gandhi take over the reins is anybody's guess. But the lesson that any political observer should have learned over the last 10 years is that the Congress will never let go of the Gandhis.

Let us remember that leadership is an ephemeral entity. A simple person with no extraordinary skills can become a leader just by standing as a counter to a competing idea or a person. As Lord Varys in a conversation with Tyrion Lannister reminds us from the Game of Thrones, "Power resides where men believe it resides. It's a trick. A shadow on the wall. And a very small man can cast a very large shadow."

In terms of organisational renewal, it remains to be seen if they pick more 'nepokids' or grassroots workers for key positions. Though the means of direct communication with the voters have become stronger over the years, organisations with strong grassroots workers remain important.

Good party workers build their own careers by 'being there' with the people and providing the human touch, which becomes handy during the 'Get Out The Vote' operation during elections.

For the ideas of the leadership to actualise, Congress needs a competent organisation. They could do well to follow a bottom-up process, perhaps by starting to ask the old Seva Dal members. God save them, if they hark back to rootless hangers-on. They should remember that foreign economists are one-trick ponies. They should shun the vocal minority that pushed them to the extreme left. A Congress Working Committee of unelectable loyalists will sink it to the oblivion.

On the ideas front, to begin a claw-back to the centre-left space, the Congress mandarins have to develop a long-term philosophy/ideology and a vision document based on it.

Piece-meal manifestos for state elections without an umbrella of ideology will be ineffective in building a coherent national narrative. The most exciting intellectual job in Indian politics is not to guess where the BJP goes from here, but if and how the Congress will regain the Centre-Left space (BJP will be alright).

After the ideation, begins the hard job of making the ideas percolate to the cadre, training the leaders to speak precisely, before laying it on the altar of the people. Vox populi, Vox dei!

That seems like a tall ladder for the party to climb. Before all of the above, the party should acknowledge that it has a problem, and has to course correct it. Even a three-peat of two-digit seat tallies (as it looks now) sometimes may not be enough for Congress to acknowledge the rot that has set in.

The BJP will not be a silent onlooker even if the Congress tries to regain its senses. Gujarat, perhaps, gives a pointer to how the BJP will tackle it politically. The BJP has decimated or co-opted the opposition in the state. Even the last man standing, Arjun Modhwadia, had to quit the Congress.

India is a massive country with a billion-and-a-half aspirations. And, we are seekers by nature. There will always be a market for new ideas and new paradigms. It looks like it may take decades for Congress to set its house in order.

A coherent grass-roots driven playbook that takes them on a journey to reclaim the centre-left space from the current extremism is the simplest in the sequence of the complicated tasks on the shoulders of the current Congress leadership.

If they continue to hang on to nostalgia and to dither, the centre-left space will be taken by someone else. Politics abhors a vacuum. The party should take Rahul's mentorship issue as a premonition.