If only Rahul had Rajiv’s passion

It was trumpeted as his first television interview in a decade. But what came through during a 75-minute one-on-one session with India’s leading English news channel on Monday’s primetime evening slot was a complete washout. Even if one rules out as juvenile delinquency the unforgiving deluge of Facebook-Twitter rib-ticklers that followed, the Rahul Gandhi interview must have left even the most ardent party supporter befuddled. What exactly was he trying to say? Did he even have an answer to some of the questions that were asked? Most of his replies were diversionary at best and evasive at worst. The only clear bottom line emerging from the Congress vice-president’s halting words was a gloomy medical bulletin of a comatose patient: The Congress story for 2014 is perhaps over.

To be honest, not too many people had expected the Gandhi scion to come up with anything radical or revolutionary in a television interview – given his almost noncommittal role in party affairs for the best part of the last 10 years.

Point granted.

But the issue on hand is not about expecting an Obamaesque oratorial finesse or histrionics of the ‘brand Modi’ variety. All one wanted to see and hear was a few honest admissions about himself and his party and some hint of a road map for the kind of India that the Congress party’s veiled prime ministerial candidate had envisioned. But what was dished out was a stale mixed platter of half-baked ideas and a generous sprinkling of jargon like “women’s empowerment”, “democratic right” and “right to information”, which served little purpose apart from ensuring a top-10 association of such key words with the name ‘Rahul Gandhi’ on any internet search engine!

And that is sad. That is unfortunate.

In a year when the century-old party is facing its toughest challenge at the hustings since the 1977 rout, a platform like the interview on Times Now could and should have been used to reach out to the target audience as clearly as possible. There were numerous take-off points during the show when Rahul could have steered clear of a blinkered vision and presented a fresh take on issues. On the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, for instance, Rahul could have tendered an unconditional apology and said just one simple word: “Sorry”. More so, since party president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have already tendered an apology. But here was Rahul, taking recourse to feeble alibis such as “I was not in politics then” and trying to duck the barb with a cursory reference to the hackneyed law-will-take-its-own-course kind of a refrain.

Similarly, to the query on dynastic rule, he failed to come across as a modern-day, free-thinking Indian, ready to throw the trappings of an illustrious surname out of the window and build a political equity purely on merit. Instead, Rahul’s reply that being born into the Gandhi family was “something that he didn’t get to decide” had the ring of a hopeless resignation to fate. True, even today, the ‘Gandhi’ surname does matter a lot in a party where the rank and file is too happy to be subservient to a certain lineage. But that cannot be an excuse for a person to hold his punches on an issue that he himself had promised to address the other day at the All India Congress Committee meeting at Talkatora Stadium in New Delhi.

Theatrical pitch

On the criminal-politics nexus too Rahul sounded contradictory. When grilled as to how could his party have an electoral alliance with Lalu Prasad Yadav, a tainted lawmaker, Rahul stunned everyone, saying that the alliance was not with an individual but an “idea”! It is hard to believe that this is the same Rahul who had stormed into the Press Club of India in New Delhi a few months back and made an almost theatrical pitch against his own party for having backed a piece of legislation that would allow lawmakers with criminal records into parliament.

Speaking from the vantage point of one of India’s most popular news channels, the Congress vice-president had just the kind of platform he needed to launch an all-out attack on Narendra Modi, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) prime ministerial hopeful. However, even there it was a case of lost opportunity. One would have expected him to tear into the Gujarat Chief Minister for all the jibes and snide comments that he has been making about Rahul and his party. Yet, Rahul preferred not to look the enemy in the eye. One wonders whether it was the fear of further polarising the Hindu vote that prompted Rahul to hang fire on Modi’s strident trident.

Rajiv Gandhi, Rahul’s father and former Indian prime minister, was an absolute rookie when he was thrust into politics. But even he had shown some genuine interest in chalking up a new course for India for the 21st century. That he was let down by his coterie is a different story, but at least in the five years that he was at the helm, Rajiv left an impression with his vision – be it ushering in the IT and telecom revolutions in India or the Ganga Action Plan for a pollution-free river that still constitutes India’s lifeline in terms of socio-cultural integration or for that matter the Anti-Defection Bill that ended the deeply entrenched malpractice of horse-trading in Indian politics.

Rajiv will probably not be ranked among the pantheon of greats in India’s prime ministerial hall of fame, but no one ever doubted his sincerity when he said during his first few days in office: “I am young. I too have a dream.”

If only Rahul had said something along those lines.

Perhaps Sonia and the Congress leadership’s desire to present Rahul as a perfect finished-product has resulted in too long an incubation period and attributed too heavy a face value to a blue-chip scrip, robbing it of a heart and soul of its own.