Neerja Chowdhury: Events pushing Rahul Gandhi into the Prime Minister's chair-10/9/ 2011

Neerja Chowdhury: Events pushing Rahul Gandhi into the Prime Minister's chair

Neerja Chowdhury | Saturday, September 10, 2011


There are three reasons why Rahul Gandhi may be compelled to take over as Prime Minister soon.

The first is the slide in the prime minister’s popularity — and authority. In his first term as PM, there was little that Manmohan Singh could do wrong and his honeymoon period lasted for almost four years. In his second term, there is little that Dr Singh can do right.

Anna’s agitation against corruption represented the growing anger of the urban, middle class Indians against the government. It was this very section that had voted overwhelmingly for the Congress in cities across India in the 2004 and the 2009 general elections. It is this very middle class which is now disenchanted with Dr Singh, once their darling as a financially upright leader and economic reformer who had brought them the mobiles and the malls and the 9% growth story.
Article continues below the advertisement...

Even on the foreign policy front, Mamata Banerjee’s latest snub has done little for the PM’s battered image, and it almost jeopardised the summit meeting in Dhaka. Mamata, who is after all a UPA ally, could have made her unhappiness on the Teesta water-sharing known to the PM quietly rather than pull out of the delegation at the last moment.

The latest bomb blast in Delhi could not have come at a worse time, highlighting the government’s failure also on the security front. There was a time when the TINA factor worked in

Dr Manmohan Singh’s favour; today the Congress party has begun to see him as a liability.

Already voices have been raised for Rahul Gandhi to take over as prime minister. Digvijay Singh had expressed the view quite openly. Praveen Aaron has done so by innuendo — by saying that the recent mishandling of the Anna agitation was done deliberately as part of a conspiracy to prevent Rahul Gandhi from taking over. Some believe that bringing Rahul in the hot seat may be the only way to do course correction.

Uttar Pradesh is the second compelling reason why Rahul may have to play a bigger role. Having acquired a personal stake in the forthcoming elections in UP, their outcome is going to be critical for his future prospects. A poor performance in UP will only reinforce the critics’ view that he does not have what it takes to give a lead.

There are elements in the BJP which feel that the Manmohan Singh government has exhausted its mandate, and that the party should now up the ante and give a political lead to the anti-corruption movement.

They even go to the extent of advocating en masse resignations by BJP MPs — as had happened during Rajiv Gandhi’s premiership in 1989 on the Bofors issue. It is another matter that the arrest of Janardhan Reddy or the ‘cash for votes’ case do little for the BJP’s anti-corruption credentials, but BJP leaders calculate that the Congress stands to lose more than them.

They believe that at the end of the day, with scam after scam tumbling out, and the Anna movement also having infected the cities and towns in UP, the upper castes in Uttar Pradesh will have no option but to look at the BJP with new eyes. The Congress on the other hand views Rahul as its trump card — that ‘Rahul as PM’ will force the upper castes to gravitate towards the Congress.

So far Rahul Gandhi had resisted these pressures, by indicating that he was not yet ready. But there is a third reason that might put pressure on him to change his mind. And that is his mother’s health, and she was abroad for over a month now for treatment for an undisclosed illness. From all accounts, she may not be able to play a proactive public role for some time till she recovers. She will want to see Rahul installed in the top gaddi, rather than wait till 2014. Even if the Congress loses in 2014, he would be Leader of Opposition — and on the political track.

As things stand, Sonia Gandhi’s very presence in Delhi, even as she recovers, will endow his actions with an added authority. But the situation is not without irony. That the son of Rajiv Gandhi, grandson of Indira Gandhi, great grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru, and great-great grandson of Motilal Nehru, should now need a political push by his Italian-born mother Sonia Gandhi, who had to give up the chance to grab the country’s premiership in 2004 because of her foreign origins.

That only goes to show the distance she has travelled, and the umbrella presence she has come to acquire in the party’s affairs.

The writer is a political and social commentator