Editorial: The Irrational Highs And Lows Of Rahul Gandhi

Such are the compulsions of competitive politics that coalition-making is always problematic, especially in the absence of an ideology or an emotive issue. With politics reduced to the naked pursuit of power, no constituent likes to be short-changed by the other. Therefore, the tug-of-war over seat-sharing in the two rival alliances in Maharashtra should not surprise anyone. It is par for the course. With a broken polity, and too many wannabe chief ministers in the mix, the end-result is bound to be unpleasant. Yet, both alliances have to live with internal tensions, and put up with several exits and last-minute entries into the respective folds, with both coalitions embracing the rejects of the other and fielding them against their former colleagues. In any case, with two of the regional parties split in the middle, each faction of the Nationalist Congress Party and the Shiv Sena will hope to try and prove its primacy through the ballot box in order to validate the claim to be the real inheritor of the undivided party. Neither the Congress nor the BJP suffer from such fratricidal strife currently. Yet, the two main national parties have had to accommodate junior partners, yielding much electoral space which they in normal course would have reserved for themselves. It is interesting to see how the
Congress Party has had its sails cut further under pressure from the Uddhav Sena and Sharad Pawar’s NCP. In a way, it was a self-goal. Rahul Gandhi exuded unwarranted exuberance after the Lok Sabha poll, believing that the party’s 99 seats presaged its return to power in the not-too-distant future. In reality, nothing could be farther from the ground reality. The Congress had not regained its old mojo; it had merely ridden to a decent figure in parliament on the shoulders of its allies. Because Rahul misread the verdict, he began to behave arrogantly, giving short shrift to the very allies who had helped him attain a respectable strength in parliament. He was naïve not to have learnt the first lesson of coalition politics, that is, no ally would help grow its partner for fear it could eventually swallow it. The irrational exuberance of Rahul probably lost his party the Haryana Assembly poll. It virtually snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, and has now so demoralised Rahul that the party leaders in Maharashtra and Jharkhand against their considered and grounded assessments of Assembly prospects are under orders to yield to the excessive demands of Sharad Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray and Hemant Soren, respectively. Haryana may have already cost the Congress in Maharashtra at least a score of seats. Based on the Lok Sabha outcome, where the Congress strike rate of over 75 percent was far superior to that of the SP- NCP and Uddhav- Sena, Nana Patole and company had reason to demand more seats from the two partners. But the 85-seats or 90-seats each formula virtually places the three constituents on the same footing, ignoring the superior ground-strength of the Congress.

The Congress has a problem managing coalitions. Even the surprise formation of the UPA government in 2004 was made possible by its ~sutradhar,~ the late CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury who showed the ropes to Sonia Gandhi how to paper over differences among partners and how to manage inter- and-intra-party contradictions. A while earlier, another CPI(M) leader, the late Harkishan Singh Surjeet, had played a stellar role in bringing together disparate groups to forge a ruling alliance under Deve Gowda. The point is that the Congress party of today lacks a leader with experience and political nous to negotiate the alleyways and byways of the political terrain teeming with all manner of carpet-baggers and power-brokers whose sole aims is to line their own pockets with filthy lucre. Nothing underlines the folly of the Congress leadership more than its decision not to contest any of the ten Assembly by-elections in UP despite pressure from the local leaders. A nearly 150-year-old party with a glorious past abandoning the largest state in the Republic for fear of defeat does not augur well for its revival. It will demoralise its local leadership, encouraging it to look for greener pastures elsewhere. Which brings us back to Rahul the leader. He cannot play the all-conquering hero one moment, out to vanquish all in his way, and next moment lay down arms and concede defeat, leaving the field for rivals to grab without a contest. Maturity lay neither in exulting overmuch in the Lok Sabha outcome nor in sinking into depression after Haryana. Seems the anti-Modi commentariat class was in a tearing hurry to announce the arrival of the Gandhi scion after the Lok Sabha result. The manner in which the Congress has allowed it to be pushed around by its allies in Maharashtra, Jharkhand, UP, etc., underlines yet again the continuing immaturity of Rahul Gandhi. Period.