Congress’ new revival mantra: Rahul will hit road and connect with masses, as Kharge handles party

After more than three years of floundering around without a proper organisational head, India’s oldest political party, the Congress, this week finally ended the interminable ‘will he, won’t he’ farce about Rahul Gandhi returning to the helm by appointing veteran Mallikarjun Kharge as full-fledged party president. It has at least temporarily halted the confusion and disarray convulsing the Congress which has been diminishing at an alarming rate without leadership or direction ever since Rahul Gandhi appointed in 2017 as president quit his post in a fit of pique at his party being routed in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Yet there is a big question mark on whether what used to be one of the most powerful and long lasting political dynasties in the world can rule through proxy which the affable and accommodative octogenarian new president is clearly.

Strange paradox

In a strange paradox even as a battered and bruised Congress drags itself back into the battlefield for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections just one and half years away, Rahul Gandhi — largely responsible for his party’s current plight — has made a fair beginning to his Bharat Jodo Yatra.

Even the national media — partly out of political bias but also with some justification — which has heaped ridicule on the Gandhi scion over the past several years, has been impressed not just by the crowds drawn by Rahul in his journey across India but the palpable chemistry between him and them.

For a leader so distinctly uncomfortable in party politics, he has looked so much more at ease kissing babies and touching the feet of the elderly while walking on foot through villages directly connecting to people rather than from the dais of a political rally that our netas usually do.

It is true that the Congress leader has so far been careful to travel through states in India where the Congress has still a semblance of an organisation and some public support avoiding the vast areas of darkness for the party particularly in what is known as the cow belt of north India.

It is also quite possible that the crowds who have greeted Rahul Gandhi so enthusiastically have done so not because of his political message but more in instinctive response to a leader who doesn’t look like the usual politician at all.

Most importantly, his success at reaching out to people on a personal if not political basis as well as the positive coverage by the normally scornful media has to some extent must have restored at least some self-confidence in a leader buffeted by so many successive failures.

The dilemma of Congress

The dilemma of Rahul, his mother Sonia and sister Priyanka along with the Congress is how to make actual political capital of what till now appears to be just good optics after a series of public relations disasters. Rahul Gandhi’s successful padayatra apart from boosting his own ego has no doubt revived the drooping spirits of the party cadre in the regions he has toured. However, it remains to be seen whether this by itself would lead to a Congress resurrection or even a partial revival.

It may be recalled that in the two years leading to the 2019 polls that coincided with Rahul taking over as Congress president the party seemed to be heading for a comeback. In the 2017 state Assembly polls the Congress ran the BJP close in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s bastion Gujarat before he pulled off a last-minute electoral coup. Next year the Congress did even better snatching away Karnataka from the BJP after an unlikely coalition with the regional Janata Dal (S) offering it the chief ministership and then went on to win three BJP-ruled states Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.

The irony of history

It all led to premature jubilation in the Congress that it was on its way back to power only to be belied in the 2019 parliamentary polls. A combination of factors including the Pulwama terrorist attacks leading to a surgical air strike deep inside Pakistan on the eve of the polls, Congress arrogance impeding electoral adjustment with regional parties, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s political killer instinct led him to a successive second term and a complete electoral rout of the Congress.

Rahul Gandhi’s childish tantrum at this dramatic turn of events abruptly handing back the reins of the party to his ailing and aging mother who after months of chaos became interim president in the hope that he would resume his duties has only compounded matters.

With the Gandhi family not ready to be in charge of the Congress nor give up control things have drifted from bad to worse as highlighted by the recent ludicrous developments around the recent party president’s election. With the official candidate Ashok Gehlot turning hostile refusing to give up his chief minister’s post in Rajasthan, the maverick Shashi Tharoor throwing his hat in the ring and the last-minute candidature of Kharge as a proxy candidate have not only embarrassed the Gandhis but whittled down their stature.

Yet, the irony of history is that despite their political incompetence the Gandhi family still has far more star appeal than any other Congress leader and regardless of the grumbling and mumbling the party has little other option but their weird brand of leadership. For the moment it seems that with Kharge formally in charge of the organisation and Rahul Gandhi along with his mother and sister hitting the road to revitalise the party image, the Congress will pursue this dual strategy the success or failure of which remains to be seen.

The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator. Views expressed are personal.

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