Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Why the country needs Gandhis?' that was published in Newsband

Why the country needs Gandhis?

Rahul Gandhi returned from a long “leave of absence” from the political arena. Rahul Gandhi was joined by Sonia Gandhi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. A huge rally was organized against the land acquisition legislation. Rahul Gandhi staged a frontal attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi,

The real truth is that Rahul Gandhi and his Congress party has been responsible for all the harm done to farmers, because they ignored 50 years of global warming and pollution. It is their party that subsidised Gas and Petrol to encourage more pollution that is now having damaging impact on the weather.

Rahul Gandhi’s speech had virtually no substance to offer on the topic of the Land Acquisition Bill. It was a juvenile attempt at irrelevant slogans and crass attacks on personalities.

The questions are: Why do we need only Congress in Opposition? Why do we need to track every movements of the Gandhi's family? There are much bigger issues and many other leaders have criticized the same issue more effectively. We need to focus on the leaders who discuss to provide a more effective and balanced solution rather than giving importance to making a come-back to the political arena.

It was clear that this time Rahul Gandhi was trying to come out of mommy's boy image. In assembly also he tried to be strong but apart from this he needs to improve his political skills to combat the strongest politician of the time PM Narendra Modi. He should indulge in strong sensible talk of the matters of country and public interest.

It is true that a strong and dynamic opposition is very essential to the vibrant functioning of a Parliamentary system of government but Rahul Gandhi is getting too much coverage in this particular issue of Land Ordinance more for his 'repackaged' come-back and less for his pragmatic opposition role, on which he had failed actually in recent times. Also the focus of the Congress was to push through their dynastic first family leadership and not on suggesting any relevant practical solution to the contentious Land Rehabilitation bill.

Media is praising a person just because he made a front attack on Modi. What is this? Even a street politician can make such attacks and is doing this. If one reads the speech of Rahul Gandhi in the Parliament, one does not see a logical, cogent, rational and point-by-point argument on why the bill introduced by the Bharatiya Janata Party is anti-farmer. The whole country was expecting, nay hoping, that an enlightened Rahul would emerge after 56 days of deep reflection but all hopes were dashed to smithereens. The entire speech was dedicated to personal attack, innuendos and targeted at the gallery.

The question is why there is an inherent tendency to see Gandhis succeed? Seems many people believe that Gandhis have some perpetual entitlement to rule the country, for this they have a subconscious desire to see them succeed. As if by some divine decree they have been given the perpetual right to rule and it’s just an aberration that they are out of power and must come back by some means or other. It’s just that the rudderless 'leaders' of Congress are propping up this dynasty for their own good. Is it not a shame that even after 65 years of independence, they get to rule by virtue of birth? Yes we need a vibrant and effective opposition but not a political family without any merit.