RahulG and his Congress Vice-Presidency

Leftist leaders and their propagandists in the media were seen going gaga over the supposedly successful tour of Gujarat by the heir apparent of the lost kingdom of Congress party. One of them sent me a news item in the Firstpost, touted to be “one of India’s largest digital platform for news, analysis and opinions”, funded again (like the Wire, by tycoons) by Mukesh Ambani (RIL to be precise) considered for the purpose of criticising Narendra Modi, a “crony capitalist” in NDA regime! With a blaring headline “Gujarat seems to be viewing Rahul Gandhi differently” the report writes about the “rousing welcome” RahulG received in Vadodara where “Roads were full of cheering and whistling crowds....walking in the sweltering heat and then waiting hours amid beating of drums and screams.” Remember Vadodara was from where Narendra Modi won the election by a resounding 845464 votes, defeating Madhusudan Mistry of the Congress by a margin of 570128 votes. In the 2009 Lok Sabha elections Balkrishna Khanderao Shukla (BJP) had won with a the majority of 4,28,833 votes out of the total votes 7,47,129 and a whopping vote share of 57.40%! Before Mr. Shukla, BJP's candidate Jayaben Thakkar had been contesting and winning in the constituency since 1998. When Modiji chose to represent Varanasi from where also he had won, in the by-election held later BJP’s Ranjanaben Bhat won the seat by a margin of 329507 votes, under a lower voting percentage! BJP has been in power in Gujarat since 1995, and during the last assembly elections in 2012, with the highest voting percentage since 1980, BJP won 116 seats out of 182 (the Congress won the remaining). That was when UPA government was going for the scalps of BJP leaders including its Chief Minister, Narendra Modi; and milk and honey was flowing in the rest of India!

Forwarding the Firstpost report glorifying the leadership qualities of RahulG in the above background astonished me by the obvious desperation on the Opposition’s side to go fishing for material giving boost to anti-BJP politics! I mentioned to the Comrade that reports of RahulG “reaching out to the people across central Gujarat” with “measured aggression” in his speeches made me only laugh because I too found, like many important people that  “no decent/real debate possible on Rahul’s talents in a context they simply don’t exist!” It is noteworthy however that Rahul followed some strategic guidance and visited four temples as he launched the Congress campaign for the state election due by the end of this year, in a desperate attempt to appeal to the larger Hindu votebank, and assure people that “Congress is no longer a Muslim-alone-party"(though a far-cry from the old KHAM - Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi and Muslim strategy)  as Ashutosh bewails. Then our darling goes talking inanities such as the women in RSS weren’t allowed to wear shorts, showing clear  lack of poor women-empowerment according to his understanding! From those high places in “political oratory” he walks straight into a lady’s toilet to the merriment of media who had to be cleared from the scene of extreme embarrassment by his SGP guards!

It is appalling however, to see die-hard Leftings admiring Congress party simply locked into the idea that they must reassure the country of the family’s lineage as Gandhis, though distinguished only by the surname they have assumed to con the Indian public. For Congress party given to highlighting even the smallest of things the members of this family claim to have done for the country or to keep the family name alive, is the only stock in trade for almost seven decades now. To have two dull people leading it since 1998 was of course the Indian GoP’s call indeed. The party however doesn’t lack talent to operate scams to the tune of billions and billions of rupees though!

For a student of political science, it is obvious that, for whatever strange reasons. the Congress party made Nehru family an impresario of India’s freedom struggle. The freedom movement anchored them as they swiftly usurped the surname Gandhi after Nehru’s death; it became their livelihood as none of his progeny could have made a different livelihood unassisted! Rajiv’s career as a pilot was a joke. Nobody knows what Rahul was doing “14hrs a day” in the US as he claimed, before coming to India to “practice leadership”!

Now RahulG is chosen as future (!) leader, the real question is indeed “how can a person who does not possess the knowledge, skills or presence of mind to face a television anchor, ever face the nation?” RahulG is 47 plus, but his learning curve is flat. I believe whoever wrote that “RajivG had left two vain, malicious, noisy and stupid children, as ever disgraced God’s creation; without a virtue to compensate for their vices and without a spark of genius to justify their arrogance” was a genius!

RahulG is a person I consider not only unqualified for the office, but also mean-spirited, vulgar, incredibly stupid and psychologically erratic. So for me under Pappoo’s shameful and appalling vice presidency with measured or all-out aggression, the Congress party could be expected to roll headless in coming Gujarat elections!  With the Leftist Opposition also anxious to find a glimmer of hope in the guy’s assumed “leadership qualities” I find it terrifying that the entire family’s, and Rahul’s in particular, legitimacy at this level of  India’s political life is going outrageously unquestioned, despite the guy’s obvious suboptimal personal characteristics!

When I responded to my Comrade friend with the above observations, he shocked me saying that first, he was happy to see how Pappu gets me “riled into blind illogical rage” because he thought I was worried about the future of BJP in Gujarat as well as nationally; for, Pappu was eventually going to pip “the pop star politician” Modi! To save his intellectual airs he added as an after-thought that he had “no love lost for either and would like to see them fight each other to the finish”. For him it “looks like age is on Pappu’s side and with little else to commend the one over the other, that might price decisive!” How cleverly the guy is hoping against hope! This attitude is an essential part of the “interesting saga of Indian Communists' serial pitches for covert or overt tactical tango with Congress when they come under mounting heat of larger political challenge!”