Leadership lessons: Five mistakes made by Sonia Gandhi that Rahul Gandhi cannot afford to repeat

In a few days, Rahul Gandhi will be anointed as the Congress’s president, succeeding his mother Sonia Gandhi who led the party to two successive Lok Sabha election victories. As he takes over a party whose national footprint has shrunk drastically and whose organisational apparatus is in a shambles, Rahul Gandhi can take lessons from his mother’s 19-year stint at the helm, the longest of any Congress chief.

For one, senior Congress leaders who have worked closely with Sonia Gandhi said, Rahul Gandhi could learn from how she put in the hard hours to get a grip on the intricacies of running a complex organisation when she took over as the president in 1998. She also earned a reputation for working harmoniously with senior leaders, patiently handling difficult situations, and leaders, to build consensus.

Sonia Gandhi’s legacy is not flawless, however, and Rahul Gandhi would do well not to blindly emulate his mother. In particular, he must avoid repeating these five mistakes of Sonia Gandhi.

1) Overdependence on advisers

When Sonia Gandhi took the Congress reins, she was a political novice and under attack over her foreign origin. As a result, she became completely dependent on a handful of senior leaders, so much so she was left to be little more than the party’s public face. It was a win-win though: while these leaders looked after the organisation, they allowed Sonia Gandhi to emerge as the unquestioned leader of the party.

On the flip side, Sonia Gandhi overlooked the transgressions of the party functionaries. The situation worsened after the party’s second Lok Sabha election victory in 2009, when Sonia Gandhi got so busy keeping the coalition government together she paid little heed to organisational matters. In 2014, under her watch, the Congress recorded its worst electoral performance, reduced to 44 Lok Sabha seats.

Sonia Gandhi also abandoned Indira Gandhi’s tested policy of ensuring no leader became too powerful to be a parallel power centre; the former prime minister would actively encourage or support the detractors of such a leader. By abandoning this policy, Sonia Gandhi had perforce to pander to powerful regional leaders such as Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Virbhadara Singh, Ajit Jogi, Amarinder Singh and YS Rajasekhara Reddy.

Rahul Gandhi may be tempted to follow this approach to keep peace in the party, but it is fraught with risk. He cannot forsake older, experienced leaders, of course, but he needs to ensure young leaders are well represented in his team. He will need all the skill at his command to put together a balanced team of the old guard and Gen Next, while ensuring that no leader becomes so powerful as to undermine his leadership.

2) Perpetuating status quo

Initially, aware of her inexperience, Sonia Gandhi was naturally cautious and tentative. But even after she got a firm grip on the party, she hesitated in taking decisions, apparently because she did not wish to upset or annoy anybody. She was similarly loathe to make organisational changes that could potentially create trouble for her. As a consequence, the Congress’s state units became riven with factional battles, and dissenting voices grew louder and more strident. As decision-making in the party slowed down, Sonia Gandhi acquired the reputation of being a status quoist. Her loyalists, of course, defended her, arguing she preferred giving people a long rope rather than taking drastic action.

Rahul Gandhi should avoid going down the same road. He should not be seen as indecisive. At the same time, he cannot afford to rush decisions without weighing all the pros and cons. It is a big ask, not least because he will have to take full ownership of his decisions now.

3) Abandoning party headquarters

In 19 years as the party chief, Sonia Gandhi barely used her office at the Congress headquarters on Akbar Road, New Delhi. Her office wore a forlorn look, opened only occasionally for cleaning. On the few occasions she did visit the Congress office, it was for the limited purpose of presiding over a party meeting or attending the Congress foundation day programme. She never used the office to meet the party’s workers. Such interactions were always organised at her 10, Janpath residence, but only a chosen few were allowed in as as access was tightly controlled. Taking a cue from her, most party functionaries, with the exception of the treasurer Motilal Vora and general secretary Janardan Dwivedi, too stayed away from the office. Party workers wandering around the row of locked offices, desperately seeking an audience with their perpetually unavailable leaders, is a common sight at the party’s headquarters – and that tells its own story. “Milte nahin hain,” is the common refrain among the wandering cadre.

Rahul Gandhi needs to improve on his mother’s record by holding regular meetings with the Congress’s rank and file. And by holding these meeting at the party’s headquarters rather than at his residence, he can turn the Akbar Road office a hub of activity. This will send a powerful message to the rank and file that the new Congress chief runs an open house and that there is a forum available to them to vent their grievances. Congress leaders maintain that if Rahul Gandhi visits the headquarters even once a week, other party functionaries would follow his example, dispelling the widely-held perception that they are inaccessible to the workers.

4) Outsourcing parliamentary leadership

While there is no denying that Sonia Gandhi is extremely diligent about attending Parliament, she does not personally lead the party’s charge in the Lok Sabha. She is not known to make impromptu interventions in the course of debates and has made few speeches. When she has participated in debates, she read from prepared texts, leading her opponents to derisively describe call as “a reader and not a leader”. In the course of her leadership of the party, she outsourced the task of taking on the opposition in Parliament to Madhavrao Scindia, Shivraj Patil, Pranab Mukherjee and now Mallikarjun Kharge. If Rahul Gandhi is to be seen as a serious challenger to Narendra Modi, he has to be more proactive in Parliament. Instead of making short angry speeches, which are more in the nature of sound bytes, he should use Parliament to make serious, substantive speeches to delineate his vision on subjects ranging from the economy to international affairs.

5) Keeping the media at bay

Unlike the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Congress has always viewed the media suspiciously. Consequently, Sonia Gandhi’s advisers made sure the media had limited access to her. The few meetings she did have with journalists were choreographed. Because communication between the Congress president’s office and the press has been non-existent, the media has had to speculate and second guess developments in the party. Rahul Gandhi’s record isn’t any better. Except for a couple of long interviews, his engagement with the media has been limited to sound bytes to TV channels.

As the Congress president, Rahul Gandhi should be readily available to the media on specific days at the party headquarters to explain the party’s position on various issues. LK Advani, M Venkaiah Naidu and Nitin Gadkari were able to effectively put forth the BJP’s viewpoint when they led the party in large part because they were accessible to the media. If the Congress wants to change its and Rahul Gandhi’s public perception, it must ensure communication lines between the party president’s office and the media are always open.