Opinion - Leader Page Articles   

Grooming a reluctant heir apparent

Harish Khare

Rahul Gandhi remains a reluctant politician and this has serious repercussions for the Congress as an organisation and for its much-delayed process of renewal.

THE HON'BLE Member of Parliament from Amethi has been sighted. Not in the Lok Sabha but in Kabul, as part of the Prime Minister's entourage. For most of the monsoon session, which ended on Tuesday, Rahul Gandhi was not to be seen or heard in Parliament; and, most certainly not when the Lok Sabha was debating the Nanavati Commission report on the horrible events after his grandmother's assassination. The young man could have given a personal and emotional account of how desperately his father tried to restore order even as the slain grandmother was yet to be cremated. If there was one moment for the young scion to step into the limelight, the Nanavati report debate was it. He could have helped correct an enduring perception of complicity at the top. Instead, Mr. Gandhi felt obliged to attend some obscure workshop in some obscure German town, organised by some obscure foundation. A peculiar sense of priorities, to say the least, for a man who would be king.

Rahul Gandhi may or may not want to be heir apparent, but it does seem that the Congress party is not giving him a choice. When he intervened for two minutes in the Lok Sabha (during the budget session on the plight of sugarcane farmers in Uttar Pradesh), the entire Congress establishment went into a collective ecstasy. Since then Congressmen, young and old, have been longing to applaud his maiden speech. They will now have to wait another few months.

Meanwhile, according to the All India Congress Committee grapevine, young Rahul is all set to be given a formal role in the party after the Hyderabad Plenary session next October. As per the script, he is to be appointed a general secretary of the party, which would automatically give him a seat in the Congress Working Committee. This is deemed to be the most propitious way of anointing an heir apparent, as Rajiv Gandhi was anointed in Indira Gandhi's time.

The democratic ethos is against the idea of family rule as also of any kind of family entitlement; it is never easy to be an heir apparent. Rajiv Gandhi was also a reluctant bridegroom, but once he gave into the demands made on him in the name of the family tradition he took up the assignment with considerable gusto. He collected around him a group of powerful managers who helped him tap his family reflexes, some admirable and some not so admirable. While he did bring a kind of new energy to the Congress, during this apprenticeship Rajiv Gandhi was encouraged to behave rudely to Congress Chief Ministers. One celebrated public tantrum at the Hyderabad airport targeted at the elected Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister became the provocation for N.T. Rama Rao to launch his Telugu Desam. And, then, again the then heir apparent's coterie meddled in Kashmir, getting another elected Chief Minister sacked, triggering a long and painful process of discontent and alienation in that troubled State.

To his credit, Rahul Gandhi has so far avoided getting into dicey situations. Mostly because he has kept Congressmen and indeed the entire party at arm's length. Rather sensibly he has built an aura of remoteness around himself, which the average Congress leader finds difficult to breach. It is a new situation for the organisation, because for all these years the party leaders had got used to the idea of Priyanka as the next standard-bearer. Most party leaders found her a "natural" inheritor of the Indira Gandhi mantle — ebullient, charming, resplendently relaxed with crowds. Suddenly on the eve of the 2004 Lok Sabha election, it was announced that Rahul, not Priyanka, would be initiated into the family trade. It was a matter to be sorted out within the Family. The party had no say in the matter.

The current assumption among the average Congress leaders is that after Dr. Manmohan Singh had successfully performed as Prime Minister for five years, the baton would be passed on to young Rahul. This calculus also ensures that there is no conflict of interests between the Race Course Road regime and the 10 Janpath establishment. Before the Family can reclaim the throne for one of its own, the Congress has to be restored in the voter's mind as a party of responsible governance. Hence, the supreme importance of Dr. Manmohan Singh.

As far as the family rule liturgy goes, it is all fine. Except that the anointed heir apparent remains a reluctant politician and, even more, a reluctant apprentice. This has serious repercussions for the Congress as an organisation and for its much-delayed process of renewal. The toll is already evident. Because there is no visible challenge to Sonia Gandhi's leadership and the line of leadership succession is also unambiguously clear, the Congress finds it difficult, almost impossible, to undertake chores normal to a national political organisation. For instance, its recently conducted internal organisational elections turned out to be a grand bargain among factional leaders. The party missed a historic opportunity to renew its links with the people of India. Because of the Congress' self-structured inability to re-engage itself with a new and changing India, the party is even incapable of undertaking the short-term task of garnering support for the government's ideas and initiatives. Nor is the party prepared to take advantage of the Manmohan Singh Government's programmes and policies. For instance, there is no mechanism in place for the Congress to make political capital out of the National Rural Employment Guarantee regime. A political party that does not have any incentive to reach out to the masses cannot hope to retain for long its control over the government. For now the Congress has reason to feel complacent, but in the next few months the nature of its support will be severely tested in West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Bihar. If the party managers are alert and reasonably wise, they will want to use the interregnum till the next Lok Sabha election to put the family matrix to good use.

Magic of the leader

It is axiomatic that an heir apparent role enjoins that Rahul Gandhi will be called upon to demonstrate, sooner or later, his capacity to move the crowds. The "charismatic leader" syndrome is delicately predicated on the assumption that the "leader" will garner votes for the party in return for uncritical and unquestioning support. And even though the Congress model of family rule is being sought to be replicated in many other parties, the Nehru-Gandhi family itself has to rediscover the magic.

It may be sobering to remember that in May 2004 despite Ms. Sonia Gandhi's presence in Rae Bareli and Rahul Gandhi's candidature in Amethi, the family connection did not produce votes and victory for Satish Sharma in the adjacent Sultanpur Lok Sabha constituency. The "magic" works only where the party has a reasonably decent organisation. Without such an organisational presence, the family "magic" is not sufficient to make the critical difference. Yet the young heir apparent has not shown any inclination to immerse himself in the rather thankless, unglamorous and exacting task of party building. Even Uttar Pradesh remains unattended.

It may be worthwhile to recall his great-grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru's views on revitalising the Congress. In October 1952, he travelled to Madras to address a meeting of the Congress legislators and workers. "I want to say straightaway that I am glad that there were a good number of failures for the Congress Party in Madras State. Nothing is so good for an organisation as to be knocked on the head. Nothing is so bad as to have an easy time, and no challenge being thrown out. A passive, inactive organisation deserves to fade away."

Jawaharlal Nehru could speak out frankly because he had not burdened himself with the task of ensuring the victory of each and every Congress candidate. His leadership was not anchored in the family name or charisma; his leadership grew out of a long apprenticeship. He bonded with the party bosses as well as with the masses. His grandson redefined the relationship with the party. Now Nehru's great-grandson is being grafted for a role for which he is not only unprepared but is also reluctant to prepare himself. And the party has a much reduced reach and presence.

In itself, the issue of Rahul Gandhi's strengths and weaknesses would be an internal matter of the Congress. But these qualities do become a matter of larger concern because the heir apparent's pluses and minuses do hamper the party in its discovery of its national role as a sheet anchor of Indian politics. And the longer the Congress delays this task, the deeper and more intractable will become the task of pan-Indian governance.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

No double standards on terrorism
Tax sops an illusory attraction
Grooming a reluctant heir apparent
A politics of transfusion in Maharashtra
The problem with creating Islamist phantoms
How to avoid civil war in Iraq
Close the matter
33% reservation
Interlinking rivers
The Sarabjit case

Copyright © 2005, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu