As Rahul Gandhi gets ready to take over as Congress president in the coming weeks – with Sonia Gandhi having told the news channel NDTV on October 13 that “it is now happening” – there is a sense of deja vu in the party. The Nehru-Gandhi scion’s elevation has been so long in the coming that now that it is round the corner, the enthusiasm among the cadre is outweighed by growing uncertainty about how the party will shape up under his leadership.
Though it is acknowledged that no two leaders are temperamentally alike and that each has his or her distinctive style of functioning, comparisons are inevitably being drawn between Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi, who has had a record 19-year run as party chief.
Sonia Gandhi took over as Congress president in 1998 after the dramatic ouster of two successive party chiefs – PV Narasimha Rao and Sitaram Kesri. She inherited a weakened party that was in power only in four states and had been reduced to 114 seats in the Lok Sabha. She guided the Congress to power in 14 states within a year of taking over and subsequently steered it to victory in the 2004 and 2009 Lok Sabha polls after successfully stitching up alliances with a group of disparate political parties.
Rahul Gandhi is taking charge of the Congress when its numbers in the Lok Sabha have dwindled to 44, its organisation is in poor shape and its footprint across the country has shrunk to a couple of states. Clearly, the new Congress president has a tough task at hand, faced with the challenge of strengthening the organisation, re-establishing the party’s credibility and reversing its electoral fortunes.
From political novice to ‘devi’
Unlike her son, who has had the luxury of a 13-year apprenticeship, Sonia Gandhi was a novice when she entered politics. But she proved an adept learner and soon emerged as a leader in her own right. She was well aware of her limitations in managing a complex party like the Congress and was equally conscious of the growing Opposition campaign against her because of her foreign origin. Instead of initiating large-scale changes in the party, she continued with the existing political set-up that comprised experienced hands such as Pranab Mukherjee, Arjun Singh, AK Antony and Janardan Dwivedi, who virtually ran the party on her behalf. She also had the advantage of having a confidant in Ahmed Patel, her low-key but powerful political secretary. Instead of taking unilateral decisions, Sonia Gandhi adopted a system of extensive consultations with the senior leadership to the extent that she was branded a status quoist.
“Sonia Gandhi was extremely tentative when she took over,” said a member of the Congress Working Committee, the party’s highest decision-making body. “She was so conscious of her inexperience that she hesitated in taking decisions in case she upset anyone.”
He added that the raging controversy over her foreign origin also made her very careful. Sonia Gandhi deliberately kept a low profile, never veered from the written script and avoided making any off-the-cuff remarks either in public or in private conversations with party workers. She converted her handicap to her advantage by presenting a carefully cultivated image of an enigma. Another senior party functionary remarked, “This main chup rahoongi maxim actually enhanced her status among the party cadre to that of a devi.” Her decision not to accept the prime minister’s post in 2004 added to her popularity with the masses and further established her as the party’s unchallenged leader.
Congress decline under Sonia
On the flip side, Sonia Gandhi allowed the party organisation to slide in the decade that the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government was in power. Instead of using this opportunity to strengthen the Congress organisation and build a second rung of state leadership, she chose to overlook the drift in the party. The Congress Working Committee was rendered virtually redundant as it met infrequently and never held any honest brainstorming sessions that could have enabled the leadership to get inputs from the ground. The upshot was that the gap between the party and the people widened as Congressmen were busy running after power and positions during the United Progressive Alliance regime. Rahul Gandhi admitted as much on his trip to the United States in September, when he pointed out, “Around 2012, arrogance crept into the Congress party and we stopped having conversations with people.”
As a result, Rahul Gandhi will be inheriting a party organisation that is in far worse shape than it was when Sonia Gandhi took charge as Congress president. While she succeeded in rebuilding the organisation and bringing about a semblance of unity in the party, it will be more difficult for Rahul Gandhi to emulate his mother even though he is not weighed down by any major corruption charges (except the National Herald case, in which he and Sonia Gandhi are accused of conspiracy and cheating with the aim of acquiring properties and assets owned by the National Herald newspaper) and cannot be accused of favouring his family. As one Congress leader said, “As in the case of [Narendra] Modi, nobody can charge him of promoting his dynasty… he has a family and, at the same time, he does not.”
Rahul Gandhi’s challenge
However, Rahul Gandhi is in dire need of a credible and effective political apparatus, which the Congress is sorely lacking at present. While Sonia Gandhi took full advantage of the party’s political establishment, Rahul Gandhi has surrounded himself with inexperienced and non-political players who have little or no grassroots knowledge. “Sonia Gandhi was fortunate because she could turn to seniors like Pranab Mukherjee and Arjun Singh for advice while Ahmed Patel was an ideal political secretary, serving as a key link between the party president and the cadre,” said a former Congress chief minister. “Rahul Gandhi will have to put such an apparatus in place.”
Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi are also temperamentally different. She was a hard worker, a consensus builder and known to be accommodative as she gave party workers a patient hearing and never took hurried decisions. Rahul Gandhi, on the other hand, is impulsive, believes he knows it all and is inaccessible to party workers. For instance, when Himanta Biswa Sarma raised a banner of revolt against former Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi before the Assembly polls in 2016 and predicted that the Congress would lose if it did not replace him, Rahul Gandhi did not take the feedback seriously. He is learnt to have turned Sarma away, saying, “So what if we lose.” Sarma promptly joined the Bharatiya Janata Party and ensured the grand old party was decimated in the northeastern state.
Rahul Gandhi’s actions were in sharp contrast to that of Sonia Gandhi, who promptly despatched Ahmed Patel to placate an angry Virbhadra Singh when he threatened to quit the party if he was not projected as the chief ministerial candidate in the 2012 Himachal Pradesh Assembly polls. She gave in to him and the Congress went on to win the state.
Another difference between the two is that while Sonia Gandhi was happy to continue with the party’s old and established style of functioning, Rahul Gandhi has made it clear he is not impressed with it and that he wants to change the existing set-up and usher in greater inner-party democracy. He tested the waters in the Youth Congress when he did away with the nomination culture and held elections for the posts of office bearers. While the exercise was widely acknowledged as well-intentioned, it was a failure as it ended up promoting the use of money and muscle power.
While Rahul Gandhi’s ideas were dismissed as unworkable by party leaders close to Sonia Gandhi, the Congress vice-president succeeded in alienating them as he always eyed them with suspicion. In fact, he made no effort to hide his disdain and distrust of established party leaders and workers, convinced they had a vested interest in maintaining status quo in the party. Instead of relying on his own party leaders, Rahul Gandhi promoted outsiders such as Mohan Prakash, Madhusudan Mistry and Raj Babbar, who were known to be in his core team. Long-serving Congress members predictably resented this and chose to stay from party work.
Rahul Gandhi has since made amends. He has inducted some of Sonia Gandhi’s team members such as Sushil Kumar Shinde and Ashok Gehlot as party general secretaries and given them charge of the poll-bound states of Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat, which are scheduled to hold elections this year. “Hopefully, he will blend the old with the new to provide greater synergy to the organisation,” said a party general secretary.
Clarity on chain of command
Despite misgivings about Rahul Gandhi’s leadership capabilities and his style of functioning, news about his imminent elevation has come as a relief to Congress workers as it will provide greater clarity about the chain of command in the party. According to Congressmen, the party had been functioning with two power centres so far. They pointed out that each time Rahul Gandhi took a decision, Sonia Gandhi’s loyalists prevailed upon her to defer the move on some pretext or the other.
Congress leaders hope now that the uncertainty over his elevation is over, Rahul Gandhi will become more accessible to the party rank and file to enable him to get feedback from grassroots workers. They also expect faster decision-making and a revamp of the party organisation. “Hopefully, we will witness a generational change in the party as was the case with the BJP when Modi and [Amit] Shah took over,” said a Congress general secretary.
Agreeing that the Congress is in dire need of a change, party leader Anil Shastri said, “It is expected that more changes will take place in the party organisation. Party workers are also depending on Rahul Gandhi to take quick decisions on pending matters.”
But most importantly, Rahul Gandhi has to start winning elections. So far, his track record on this front has not been encouraging. The party’s win in the last Punjab Assembly elections earlier this year after a string of defeats over the past two years was a morale booster for the Congress vice-president, even though it was widely acknowledged that it was Amarinder Singh who led the party to victory. All eyes are now on the Gujarat elections, the next battleground that will see a face-off between Rahul Gandhi and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah. While the Modi-Shah duo cannot afford to lose their home state, the Congress is putting up a spirited fight, encouraged by growing public anger over the poor implementation of the Goods and Services Tax, the economic slowdown, the agrarian crisis and atrocities against Dalits. In this instance, the BJP is fighting with its back to the wall as it has far more at stake in Gujarat than the Congress.
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