The jury is out, and the decision has come along predictedlines. A day after Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family, andpresumably also of the ruling Congress, made what is being made out to be adefinitive, coming-into-his speech at New Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan, Congressleaders are already daydreaming of the future, while the opposition leaders areattacking him from all quarters, for advocating interests of the baba-log andconfusing it to mean the ‘aam admi’.
Amid posters as imaginative as "Rahul as next PM"and "future of the nation", and some sporting Gandhi caps saying“Main hoon Rahul”, a take-off on the India Against Corruption’s hugelysuccessful “Main hoon Anna” caps, the Amethi MP went on the offensive onSunday. “I have come to realise that the biggest problem we face today is thatthe system, more so the political system, is closed for the aam admi,” he said.“It keeps on hitting and putting stumbling blocks against aam admi (but) theCongress will take the onus of changing that system and opening it up for theaam admi.”
While it sounded more like a protagonist’s lengthy sermon ina Bollywood flick, blaming every problem staring at everyone and her granny andnanny on that obtuse and obfuscating word called “system”, Gandhi didn’t offermuch solution in how to tackle or bulldoze past that system. That’s a pitysince his party has been in power for the last eight years. His co-speaker atthe rally, Manmohan Singh has been the prime minister for as many years, andthe other leader, his mother Sonia Gandhi, the chairperson of the rulingcoalition for those many years.
So what did the party and the government do all these years,and in the decades since independence, when it has been in power for all but adecade at most? It’s not enough for a leader, even a young Turk way into his40s now, to be seen as throwing up a problem, and not ways and means to getpast it. That is for the followers to pose, and wait for the leader to address.
Gandhi also had a question: if the Congress could supportVajpayee’s NDA government on issues of national importance, such as the Kargilwar, why can’t the opposition back the Manmohan government on FDI in retailsector? All hell, of course, broke loose with that. While senior BJP leaderMurli Manohar Joshi reacted sharply, saying “Did they (Congress) oblige the NDAby supporting us in Kargil war?” Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut ridiculed him sayingRahul is both a bachcha (novice) and kachcha (juvenile) khiladi in politics.“If Rahul does not understand the difference between Kargil and FDI in retail,he has no right to be in politics,” Raut said.
So what exactly was import of the young Gandhi’s thunderingmessage to the nation? While not many were able to deduce it, Congress leadershad, by Monday morning, presumably seen, heard and deciphered enough to see thefuture. It’s spelt R, A, H, U and L, they nearly stated.
