UP vs UPA

Rahuls post-mortem may not help if he continues to be in a bubble of his own making

Rahuls post-mortem may not help if he continues to be in a bubble of his own making

Rahul Gandhi has finally talked to the Congress candidates in Uttar Pradesh in the just-concluded assembly elections. The two-day exercise was carried out ostensibly to take stock of the partys poor performance,to understand what went wrong,and fix responsibility. But even as the conversation was long overdue,it has clearly taken place on the wrong side of the polls. The UP results have underlined that the Congress campaign was disconnected from the states people. It relied overly on symbolic interventions by a set of senior central leaders on fraught issues ranging from Batla House to minority quotas,that boomeranged. It failed to engage with the absences in governance and infrastructure that UPs aam aadmi contends with daily,or with his aspirations. Perhaps if Rahul Gandhi had heard out his partys candidates before the votes were cast,he might have become the face of a different,more grounded,campaign. Who knows,if he had done that,Congresss performance in UP would have been closer to its hype.

As he listened to the accounts of winning and losing candidates in the partys war room in the national capital,however,it must be hoped that Rahul allowed his attention to wander from what the candidates said,to what they dared not put into words. When they vented anger on the unresponsiveness of central leaders to local realities and the candidates needs,for instance,did Rahul ask himself whether he was part of the problem? The Congresss UP disconnect did not just have to do with the overweening influence of a set of leaders out of touch with the state. It also stemmed from the excessive reliance on the persona and message of Rahul Gandhi.

The problem in UP,Rahul may or may not have realised by now,was that for all his several visits to ground zero,he seemed to have strategised and operated in a bubble. Ironically,even as he made a move to reach out to the partys UP candidates,he again reaffirmed his distance from the call of the current political moment. Take the hot button issues. The Congress-led UPA is confronted with compelling questions about the slide in civil-military relations and about undermining carefully nurtured institutional checks and balances; its allies are restive; states are thumbing their noses; the retrograde provisions in its budget have chilled investors; the policy drift continues. In such a time as this,it is surely odd that the partys most powerful general secretary and member of the core team deputed to run the party when its president takes leave of absence for health reasons,chooses not to intervene in any of the debates. Rahul is right,UP is key to the Congress but is that at the expense of the UPA?