Indira Gandhi-lookalike Priyanka stepped out to campaign and immediately took the headlines. How did this happen and why could it not happen with Rahul Gandhi? Would her taking charge of the campaign from the beginning have made a difference to the fortunes of the Congress?
Let’s look at the question about Mr Gandhi first. The consensus is that he is boring, ineffective and, in street language, a loser. He radiates very little charisma and his messaging is unclear.
This is juxtaposed with the person of Narendra Modi, who is very charismatic, superb at crafting a simple narrative (“India is in trouble, I will save it”) and totally effective at telegraphing this message.
As a campaigner, I do not think we have seen a politician of the quality of Mr Modi. He is without question the biggest leader that the Bharatiya Janata Party has produced. I said this on Rajdeep Sardesai’s show a long time before this wave, and he asked if I included Atal Behari Vajpayee in that, and I said that I did.
Against such quality, someone like Mr Gandhi has no chance on the campaign trail. Mr Gan-dhi’s outlook, I have always believed, is nuanced and realistic. Unfortunately, so is his language. The old cliché is that one must campaign in poetry and govern in prose. If you’re going to campaign in prose, you will switch off voters as Mr Gandhi has done.
This is why Priyanka, who came in from the sidelines and then blew Mr Gandhi off the front pages with her one liners on Mr Modi (calling him childish at one point), is different. She has something common with Mr Modi and that is the ability to speak simply, clearly. We can see it in how she reacted to the reports that Mr Modi had apparently said in an interview that she was like a daughter to her.
Her response — “I am Rajiv Gandhi’s daughter” — was brilliant for what it said and how it was put. I don’t think Mr Gandhi has the presence of mind to have responded in this fashion. As a campaigner Priyanka is superior to her brother. Would she have made a difference to the election had she come in earlier? I would say that there is a two-part answer here.
The Congress narrative, to the extent that I can understand it, has been a stress on continuing what Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi have done. That is to say, to try and achieve high growth and to focus on social spending, but also to emphasise that India had many problems which were not easily solved.
They have sought to continue this through Rahul Gandhi, who seems to be cut from the same cloth of slow and careful politics as Dr Singh is. And so the broad thrust of the Congress is encapsulated in his person. Priyanka does not have that same sense of nuance so far as I can tell from her utterances, and her manner is similar to Mr Modi’s and Indira’s, a charismatic style that the Congress has deliberately moved away from. This is why the Congress is stuck with Mr Gandhi, unless it changes its political narrative.
The second part to the answer is to not look on Priyanka as a competitor to Mr Gandhi but merely as a campaigner.
Here there is no question that the party has suffered from not having her work in the frontlines for longer than she has chosen to (or has been instructed to) campaign. As many people have noticed, she has the ability to frame issues and responses in one short and simple line. To have someone of that ability, and her obvious physical attractions, would have been a priceless asset.
It is remarkable to me that she was not deployed given the fact that the Congress recognised that this was a more important election than most, and also recognised that it was in trouble against Mr Modi, the most tireless and talented campaigner of our time.
Aakar Patel is a writer and columnist
