Verdict 2009,vision 2005

The May 16 verdict that will rewrite the contours of the Lok Sabha may not exactly be a direct fight between a Congress...

The May 16 verdict that will rewrite the contours of the Lok Sabha may not exactly be a direct fight between a Congress-led alliance and a BJP-led one,but the two blocs,led by the Sonia Gandhi-Manmohan Singh-Rahul Gandhi trio and L K Advani,respectively,will be the principal claimants to power in Delhi. Interestingly,two sets of interventions,made by key aides of Rahul and Advani,way back in 2005,adequately captured the political projects that the two parties wanted to work on for Verdict 2009.

In a paper titled Dreaming of India in 2010, published in the December 2005 issue of Seminar magazine,Kanishka Singh then looking after healthcare initiatives with social entrepreneur Dr Devi Shetty in Rahul Gandhis parliamentary constituency of Amethi made a key point on a younger political leadership for this ageing nation.

Our leaders are older than they ought to be. Our citizenry,also our greatest asset,is young. A severe visible disconnect exists between the separate time horizons that each of these two groups are focused on and invested in. Therein lies the problem, he wrote. Singh,who went on to become a key aide to Rahul,noted in the paper,He saw India becoming by 2010 the most populous democracy governed by young,modern,idealistic and innovative leaders, and India becoming the worlds fastest growing economy administered by a democratic coalition government.

Comparing the leaderships of the BJP and the Congress,Singh wrote: The writing is on the wall with regard to a generational shift in the BJP by 2010; the Vajpayee-Advani duo will no longer be at the helm of that party five years from now. The period between now and 2010 is likely to herald a partial dismantling of the gerontocracy that India has evolved into during the post Rajiv Gandhi era8230; A younger leadership in India will,by default,have the ability to think and act beyond a limited five-year time horizon.

In the rival BJP,too,some words written by Sudheendra Kulkarni,then working as party national secretary and aide to Advani led to lot of rumblings in the Parivar. This was the time when the BJP leader made his controversial speech on Jinnah,during his visit to Karachi in June 2005. In his letter to Advani,widely dubbed as his resignation letter from the post of an office bearer,Kulkarni made four key points.

He wrote: The BJP-RSS relationship will have to be recast; the RSS should not micromanage the affairs of the party; it must,especially,not make any public comments on the top leaders of the party; the BJP must distance itself completely from the extremist elements in the VHP,and the BJP must make principled and concerted attempts to reach out to Indian Muslims.

While Aam Aadmi ke Badhte Kadam is the Congress theme song in the ongoing election,Young India constitutes a key component of the party blueprint whether its about developing a new crop of leadership,youth representation in ticket distribution or introducing organisational elections in Indian Youth Congress and NSUI.

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Similarly,while good governance,development and security is the BJPs promise to the electorate in the present elections,it was a visit by RSS strongman Mohan Bhagwat,along with two other leaders,to the residence of L K Advani early this year that set the stage for a new dynamic equilibrium in RSS-BJP ties with the latter getting the autonomy to take its own political decisions making Advanis the last word on all organisational matters in the crucial election season.