Journalism of Courage
Leaders, seniors and juniors alike, have to be among the people, Rahul Gandhi recently said, noting, rather self-critically, that he too was perhaps a little away from the people and that the Bharat Jodo Yatra was aimed at bridging such a distance. And this distance, he added, could be called arrogance too.
So, did it take Gandhi 100 days and hundreds of kilometres of arduous walk from Kanyakumari to Rajasthan to realise such a simple and plain political fact? Its answer would be in the negative. Warts and all, Gandhi has always been brutally frank when it comes to his party and its internal functioning. Some would say he has been rather “sanctimonious”.
Recall his 2018 remarks when he admitted that an “internal” and “generational fight” in the Congress along with issues of “corruption” had contributed to the party’s defeat in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. In 2017, he had admitted that a “certain amount of arrogance” had crept into the Congress midway through the party-led UPA 2.0 government and that it had then stopped “conversations with people”. Or his remarks at the Udaipur Chintan Shivir earlier this year, when he admitted that the Congress’s “connection” with the people has been “broken”, which needs to be forged urgently.
The problem, Congress leaders say, is not with the diagnosis of what is ailing the grand old party but finding a cure to it. In fact, the cure is also known. The question is how to do it. In managerial terms, the problem lies in the execution – fixing the root causes of the Congress’s health issues. The party is prone to applying band-aids.
As the Bharat Jodo Yatra completed 100 days and is now headed to its last legs, party leaders say the cross-country march – the party’s biggest national level mass mobilisation in decades – was an “emphatic success” on two counts.
It has “re-energised and re-activated” the organisation and managed to dispel to a large extent the deep-rooted perception that Gandhi was inaccessible. His in-house critics would say it was not a perception but a reality.
“There were various layers hampering communication between the 24, Akbar Road (AICC headquarters) and the grassroot workers of the party at district and block levels. There was this perception that Rahul was inaccessible. That has been demolished to a large extent. His inaccessibility has changed quite a bit,” a senior leader said.
And the Yatra has aroused curiosity and sympathy for the party among the public too. “We like people who put themselves through pain. The people get fascinated by leaders who struggle,” a leader said, striking an optimistic note.
On the other hand, many leaders say the larger message of the Yatra – highlighting the threat of communal polarisation, division and hatred as well as raising bread and butter issues like price rise and unemployment – has not found resonance among the people yet.
Many Congress leaders accept that addressing the image deficit is only part of the problem. The reality perhaps is different. The question most of the leaders ask all the time is how to get people to vote for the Congress again. And the party has not really been able to find an answer to that.
The Congress, most leaders, concede, needs a narrative. The Yatra might have helped in finding inputs for it but that story which will again attract people to the party is yet to be weaved. So in a way, the Yatra – despite all claims of its grand success by the Congress leaders – is the beginning of a long journey.
And here comes the real problem. For the Congress severely lacks execution capabilities. A case in point is Gandhi’s claims following the Congress’s rout in the Delhi Assembly elections in 2013.
Then the Congress vice president, Gandhi had argued that the Congress has the ability to stand up to the expectations of the people and that he was going to put all his efforts to transform the party’s organisation. “I am going to make sure that a transformation happens, and I will do it in ways in which you cannot even imagine. We will involve people (in the party) in a way you cannot even imagine right now,” he had said.
A party leader said: “Whether we like it or not, the BJP has a story which appeals to the people. He (Rahul) realises that the party has to come up with a credible story to bring back voters. Otherwise the Yatra will only be a song and dance. He now has enough inputs from the ground to give shape to that story. But the processes in the Congress are cumbersome. Once the Yatra is over, I am sure he will definitely do something in terms of getting the processes going to shape the Congress story.”
