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RAHUL 2.0 MUST NOT MISS OPPORTUNITIES

YB WEB DESK. Dated: 7/2/2020 10:40:19 AM

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi turned 50 last week and celebrated his birthday quietly in view of the Coronavirus outbreak. His father Rajiv Gandhi became the Prime Minister of the country at the age of 40. Rahul, too, could have become the Prime Minister in 2009 when the Congress Party returned to power or at least a Cabinet Minister during the ten years of the UPA’s rule from 2004 -2014. However, Rahul had his own ideas of leadership. At the swearing-in ceremony in 2009, I asked him why he did not become a Minister and his reply was, “I don’t want to do ten things at a time. I want to do only one thing at a time.” Now, Rahul’s loyalists are getting impatient to bring him back as the party chief. Nobody knows why he resigned last year after the Lok Sabha poll results or why he is coming back as the Congress president. It is pertinent to note that though not holding any office, it is Rahul who is fighting from the front on behalf of the Congress Party, though Sonia Gandhi too, is writing letters and participating in meetings with the political leaders and the Prime Minister. The indications of Rahul’s return as the party chief were clear at last week’s meeting of the party’s top policy-making body, the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting, where there was a clash between the old guard and Rahul. The power struggle was visible when Rahul was critical of the old guard for not supporting him in his campaign against Prime Minister Narendra Modi either now or earlier during the 2019 poll campaign. The old guard is wary of personal attacks against Modi as they feel that the negative campaign against the Prime Minister will not work. Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, a known Sonia loyalist, was the one who raised the issue in the CWC meeting and the “Rahul lao” chorus began soon after. One of them even suggested that a virtual meeting should be organised to bring Rahul back as the chief of the party. Rahul 2.0 will see a new brand of the Gandhi scion. From the “angry young man” of the earlier days, Rahul 2.0 will be seen as a mature and effective leader, who alone can take on Prime Minister Modi. Rahul is being projected as an intellectual who can hold his own with global experts and economists. His conversations with experts like former Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan, Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee and former US diplomat Nicholas Burns were meant to convey that. Rahul has also been engaging the media as was evident by the three free-wheeling press conferences he held in recent weeks.