What Rahul needs is a big broom

There is speculation that the so-called sabbatical of Rahul Gandhi is because of petulance at not getting his way in the party. His differences with his mother and Congress president Sonia Gandhi are being cited as reasons for the need to “introspect”. But it may be too early to conclude that his differences with her arise from a young man’s impatience to take over as Congress president. For all his alleged faults, Mr Gandhi does not come across as greedy for power. He is also intelligent enough to know that his image has taken a more severe beating than that of the Congress or his mother, and so this may not be the best time for him to take over.

He must know he still has to earn his spurs by demonstrating his ability to win elections, his people connect, and his credibility as a serious politician. There is no denying a marked deficit on each of these counts in his public persona. However, it does seem that he has become something of a convenient whipping boy not only of his political opponents but also of those Congressmen who have got used to the Gandhi family doing all the running around so that they can enjoy the fruits of their campaigning.

Surely he alone cannot be blamed for the rout of the Congress, which began with the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections in 2012. None of the young rising stars of Uttar Pradesh, many of whom were ministers in the Manmohan Singh government, were able to deliver a single Assembly segment from their respective constituencies. In the Lok Sabha election, Rahul and Sonia Gandhi won their own seats in Uttar Pradesh but a Jiten Prasada or an R.P.N. Singh did not. In the Delhi Assembly election, how fair is it to blame Mr Gandhi for even an experienced leader like Ajay Maken losing his deposit?

Therefore, while this may not be the right time to elevate him, it may be an opportune conjuncture for him to experiment within the party. It is perhaps here that real differences exist between him and Mrs Gandhi. He wants to radically restructure the party, while his mother is being advised against drastic changes by those who stand to lose the most. Mrs Gandhi is surrounded by a clique of bickering advisers trying to defend their political turf. They have no mass base and are clever not to contest elections. They never get blamed for electoral debacles. She listens to them because it is comforting to listen to old advisers. However, she ought to be listening to those who want to experiment to survive in a rapidly changing political environment.

This is the right time for the Congress to make changes and send out two clear messages — that the party can put together a credible leadership, and that it is serious about taking up peoples’ issues. There is no major state election in the offing where the Congress might have a crucial stake and the general election is still far away. It is possible that a restive electorate may not find the Narendra Modi government able to deliver soon enough on its electoral promises and even the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) may find it impossible to sustain its politics of freebies in Delhi. Time is always on the side of the challenger. But the Congress will have to show that it has the makings of a challenger.

Four years ago, with Mrs Gandhi heading abroad for a surgery, she was forced to experiment with the idea that a collective leadership of four — including Mr Gandhi — would run the Congress. Yet, the party is not willing to revive that plan now when it is imperative to get rid of the old parasites and put together a new panel of credible leaders from the states, who reflect the change taking place in the country.

There is a plethora of issues today that traditional political parties take no serious cognisance of. Conflicts over common and natural resources and depletion of livelihoods vary across the vast geographical and climatic zones of India; the ordinary citizens want to have a say in decision making and in the implementation of government plans about their own welfare, including provisions for quality education and healthcare; tribals and forest dwellers live in constant fear of being displaced by one big project or the other; Muslims and Christians are being forced to question their familiar identities. If there are people who speak for these threatened and marginalised social groups, they have no voice in politics today.

The Congress did right by joining the peoples’ movement against the provisions of the new Land Acquisition Bill at a time when the BJP is increasingly being seen as pursuing the corporate agenda at the cost of the marginalised. It is the alienation of the most deprived that any new political party would have to cash in on — just as the AAP did in Delhi. The important lesson to learn for any political party trying to reinvent itself today is that politics has become decentralised with new spaces for political activity opening up locally and even hyper-locally. A new politics needs to occupy these new spaces. This is the introspection that Mr Gandhi needs to do, not meditation in a cave.

Whatever else Mr Modi may or may not have done, he and his party in their political arrogance have alienated liberal and democratic civil society groups, trade unions cutting across industry and agriculture, and non-governmental organisations working with the poor and marginalised across the country. The Congress Party, if it has to reinvent itself, has to do so by participating in these localised struggles. It should not aim at taking them over — but rather join them because it shares their concerns. A new leadership will emerge from these movements and some of them will align with like-minded political groups and parties. The Congress must present itself as one such choice. For that it needs a “Swachh Congress” campaign. Mr Gandhi should be given a big broom to begin that process.

The writer is a journalist based in New Delhi