20 January 2013, 06:53 PM IST
As non-events go, it was a significant one. After months of hearing about Rahul Gandhi's ascension to 'an important role within the party', the promised elevation to the position of Vice President took place. In line with Rahul Gandhi's overall reluctance to assume responsibility, coyness was exercised about announcing that he would be the Congress' Prime Ministerial candidate. For a party that is faced with a remarkable lack of options, with the Manmohan Singh experiment having spluttered out of gas, and rendering the division of power, such as it was, between the party and the government discredited beyond repair, the reluctance to take the only meaningful option available and get on with it would have been difficult to understand, had it not become an established pattern by now.
The most significant statement that can be made about Rahul Gandhi is that his presence is a matter of stochastic speculation rather than grounded fact. He is sometimes present, occasionally in great quantity and with stubborn frequency but mostly not at all. He hovers wraith-like above issues the country considers important and pursues pet projects, some understandable like that of building the party apparatus ground upwards in UP, and others mysterious like his strange obsession with the Youth Congress, as doomed an enterprise as any. That he has failed to produce results in a consistent way in both could be overlooked given the enormity of the venture, but that he has not attempted more fundamental and structural changes within the party and the government is perplexing, for someone anointed a leader for so long.
The refusal to look beyond some immediate self-determined tasks is located in a larger desire to limit one's own boundaries and live in a state of denial about his own destiny. Regardless of whether Rahul Gandhi wants to lead the Congress party or not, and what his own personal ambivalence about power might be, the Congress party has put itself in a place where it cannot survive without him. It can make do with some wispy sign of his presence, but it needs the certifying legitimacy of someone from the dynasty to contrive a sense of coherence and purpose about itself. As a party that is located in the swampy ambivalence of weak centrism, and goes where political expediency takes it, the Congress has increasingly run out of things that give it a sense of unifying purpose. The constituencies that it could count on, including the minorities and the backward castes do not find it stands up for them strongly enough, and it has disdainfully ignored newer constituencies like the urban middle class. Various regional forces have taken big chunks out of its traditional voting bases, and to make things worse, its allies today are among the weaker forces in their own regions.
The only thing that gives it some structural strength is that it has put the leadership question beyond the pale of ambition and debate. By ensuring that no individual other than a family member can aspire to real power, the Congress does not have to worry about the one question that bedevils the BJP as to who should lead it. Of course, as a result, the Congress has deliberately undercut its ability to build strong regional leaders, since their ambition is difficult to contain and manage. In any other context, the abjectness of the wheedling indulged in by senior, accomplished politicians in getting a dynastic stamp to the leadership of the party would be pitiable, if it did not contain a kernel of pragmatic necessity. The Congress without a presumptive and automatic leadership, would fall apart having nothing else to sustain it. Rahul Gandhi is being led to become a leader; if the party had its way, his writ would run in everything except in the choice of the party leader. However, what is a necessary solution for the Congress may not translate into an advantage at the polls. Rahul Gandhi has been saved up for so long, that by the time he has been pressed into service, he is no longer the shiny new weapon he once was presumed to be. Even then, no one really knew what he stood for, but he looked plausible as the new face of an old idea. Today, he stands bereft of any enigmatic charisma or any substantial bankable achievement; an idea that has been spoken so long that it has become stale through persistent disuse.
As things stand, in 2014, an absence called Rahul Gandhi looks all set to face someone who is only too keen to be an overpowering presence, Narendra Modi. Mr Modi feels no shyness whatsoever in imposing himself on any situation and in taking both responsibility and credit wherever possible. The BJP has its own dilemmas with regard to Mr Modi, but in a head-to-head contest, it would be unwise to rule out the attractiveness of the idea of a firm hand restoring a sense of order when faced with an option that seems to be uncomfortable with the idea of shouldering responsibility. Against a Modi who seems to be a cauldron overflowing with ambition, Rahul Gandhi comes through as a vacuum of intentions.
The trouble with Rahul Gandhi and in a larger sense with the Congress is that it has come to think of the question of leading the country as an internal one. Its decisions are based on the convenience of individuals, and the need to preserve their utility. Mr Gandhi is fighting against his legacy with earnestness, as if that were the central question facing the country today. Rahul Gandhi wants to have his cake and not eat it too and that is a luxury the party can no longer afford. He may hold a losing hand, but he himself is a card that the party has no choice but to play.
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