Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Can Rahul Gandhi revive Congress?' that was published in Newsband

Can Rahul Gandhi revive Congress?

Rahul Gandhi has yet to display his political abilities. The Bharatiya Janata Party rightly dismisses the ongoing election for the Congress president as a classic case of dynastic rule. Rahul Gandhi has to prove that he is capable of bringing about political revival of the Congress. So far Rahul Gandhi’s political behaviour has been found to be very ‘amateurish’. Some call it ‘frivolous’ and ‘caricaturish’.

In 2004 Gandhi was elected as MP, But he has not yet succeeded in creating any kind of impression till today. Narendra Modi had been chief minister for only two years. Yet he managed to emerge as a larger-than-life persona. Modi metamorphosed from being Hindu Hriday Samrat into the maker of the Gujarat Model. He was the right alternative to the corruption-ridden and policy paralysis-struck Congress.

The Congress party has slipped to third or worse position in ten States and is losing its grip in 320 Lok Sabha seats. Gandhi is yet to convince the people he is fit for the job. Rahul Gandhi is promising farm loan waivers, remunerative price for crops, free education and health care reservations for Patedars all sounding populist; on the other hand he sounds totally against corporates just to win the election by hook or crook. He is showing signs of fading away in course of time and the Congress might get resurrected by a non-Gandhi leadership.

That the INC is in a tailspin all over India for over two decades now is axiomatic. A decade back, Rahul Gandhi was plucked out from nowhere and installed as General Secretary of INC and head of Youth Congress, thus reinforcing the Nehru family's dynastic hold on INC which started in 1929 with the blessings of none other than Mahatma Gandhi himself. What has Rahul done to arrest the decline in this decade that one expects him to do all of a sudden and dramatically now? In fact, to neutral observers, Rahul has only hastened the decline of INC. Clearly, an unwilling and undeserving member of the Nehru family is being forced upon the party.

The opposition leader has to be responsible so that he is taken seriously. Taking a pot shot at everything Modi says or does, by itself, cannot be the only policy. These criticisms are to be based on ideas that have the interest of the nation at heart. Doling out funds that keep people happy for the time being is not in the best interest of and does not lead to nation building. Worse, doles create an expectation pattern and dependence on the Government rather than self-help and improvement.

Rahul has tried to use class, caste, and religious divides to try and form a coalition of the rabble and the seditious to beat a party that is trying to advance the nation. This is opposition for the sake of opposing the BJP and not for the interest of India or its people.