Rasheed Kidwai on Rahul running out of road.

 The always excellent Rasheed Kidwai- provided you read between the lines-  has a great article titled 'What is next for Rahul Gandhi' in India Today.

Kidwai highlights an emotional speech given by Partap Singh Bajwa, leader of the Opposition in the Punjab Assembly at the Bharat Jodo Yatra in chaste Punjabi when he pleaded with Rahul not to let a ‘proxy’ run the office of the prime minister when the opportunity knocks again.

Bajwa's words were widely reported- Aj vaada karke jayeyo ethe, make this vow before leaving here  jadon chauvi de vich tuhanu Pardhan Mantri banauna asin. we will make only you Prime Minister. Kise hor nu nahi banauna. We won't make anyone else PM. Eh na hove asin jita ke ghaliye, It mustn't happen that you say someone else will be PM.  tusin kehdo aa duje nu bana dayiye. Say that you and not some other will be PM. Asin nahin je man-na. We won't accept any thing less. Aah stage ton sun lao. Pardhan Mantri tusin hi rahoge, asin hor nahi je koyee farji banauna Come listen to what is said on this stage. Only you will be the PM. We won't accept any fraud or bogus substitute. 

The term 'farji' could also mean 'proxy' and it was in this sense that journalists translated Bajwa's remark. However, 'bogus' is better because a 'farji' PM is also a faltu or useless PM. Nobody will listen to him and he, like Manmohan, will come across as a sort of ancient Egyptian mummy stumbling from one debacle to the next. 

Kidwai says-  Bajwa was not belittling Manmohan Singh- 

Yes he was. Manmohan was a 'parachute' PM. He was not a grass roots leader. Like  Amrinder Singh Warring, Bajwa was expressing disgust at courtiers and time-servers and defectors and opportunists monopolizing preferment thanks to intrigue and sycophancy. If Rahul became the actual leader he would soon stop listening to flatterers or rogues like the ex-BJP politician Sidhu. 

but making a larger point about the political authority being represented by those who earn it.

Earn it by being born to Mummyji and Daddyji who was born to Grannyji who was born to Great-Granddaddyji. 

Bajwa- a hard headed Sikh speaking hard bitten Punjabi- was making a more sensible point. There is agent-principal hazard when you rule through a proxy- more particularly if you don't let the proxy rule. Control rights must coincide with beneficial  rights for incentive compatibility to obtain. A divorce between ownership and control is ultimately fatal to both. Bajwa himself, though the son of a three term MLA, had worked his way up the party hierarchy. He had paid his dues. He retained his seat despite the AAP landslide. Rahul must listen to Bajwa because it is the Bajwas who represent the living breath of the Party. No doubt, the Party can gain by paying for a 'Yatra' or walkabout, but there won't be any Party left if the hereditary owner of the property doesn't take over, not the management of the Party necessarily, but the office of Prime Minister. Why? Putting the heir by primogeniture of the Dynasty into the Prime Minister's seat is the raison d'etre of the Party. Take away the reason for existence of an enterprise and the enterprise will collapse. 

Kidwai, who wrote a book about Sonia, is too diplomatic to come out and say what everybody is thinking. The Dynasty can no longer afford to be 'absentee landlords' because their land is almost all gone. 

Kidwai writes 'The Congress, as India Today’s recent 'Mood of the Nation' survey indicated, is poised to get 68 Lok Sabha seats if the general elections are held today. Logically, therefore Congress or Rahul would need to at least double the tally in order to be in ‘driver’s seat’ or near to it provided the Narendra Modi-led NDA falls short of 272 figures'

Kidwai is a very smart man. He knows that Rahul won't get to be PM even if, as happened in 2004, his party gets 145 seats. Why? The Left Front had 43 seats back then. Now it has 6. Moreover, Vijayan- having defeated anti-incumbency- won't ally with Congress. Why should he? He has a Muslim son-in-law. Why not make the Left Front THE Secular Party of the Nation? Temple going Rahul represents Hinduism vs Hindutva. But full-blown Brahminical Hinduism is more noxious to the Muslims of Wayanad than Nationalism with a slight Hindu tinge. Why should they re-elect Rahul? Why not see where a Muslim-CPM alliance takes them? 

What will happen if the NDA vote collapses because of some unforeseen economic calamity or corruption scandal? Surely, the Janata 'Parivar' would be a more acceptable ally for Mamta and Nitish and Stalin and so forth? The big problem- even if a non-NDA, non-UPA, coalition is possible- is that Congress would do what it did in the Nineties to ambitious politicians- viz. make them 'King for a day' and then pull the rug from under them. Thus, only if Congress makes minimal gains in 2024 can there be a stable non-NDA government. In other words, the prospects for Opposition rule improve only if opposition parties first cannibalize the Congress vote. This makes regional satraps more secure at home while also improving the expected stability of a 'Janata Parivar' (as opposed to Sangh Parivar) administration at the center. 

Bearing this in mind, we may be able to make some sort of sense out of Kidwai's next observation- 

Rahul’s own position on this issue is ambivalent, perhaps due to ‘strategic’ reasons.

There's a video of his 'Fun chat with Kamiya Jani from Curlytales' where he discusses what he would do if or when he became Prime Minister. Sadly, watching it did not make my tail wag- probably because it was too curly. 

Just as he allowed Bajwa to get away at Punjab, Rahul faces a tricky position to rule himself out just at a time when the yatra has created a ring of promise and euphoria around him.

That will fade. Once Rahul resumes his habit of talking bollocks in Parliament no euphoria will remain.  

As a leader of the Congress, he can not be seen as forgoing the party’s cherished dream of occupying the central space in national politics, Parliament, and everything that comes with it.

And yet, his appearances in Parliament can have no other effect.  

At the same time, temperamentally, Rahul is neither ambitious nor a power wielder. Like his illustrious mother, Rahul secretly fancies himself as a trustee of power.

But Mummy could be the Regent of her son and heir. So long as her son wasn't known to be a moon-calf, she wasn't a 'lame duck'.  But Rahul can't be a Regent because he doesn't have a son or daughter.  You can't be your own trustee. Declaring yourself a Non Performing Asset is fine, but you don't get to appoint yourself the Liquidator of your own bankrupt enterprise. 

Kidwai knows very well that Rahul's plight has worsened because Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury- one of only two Congress politicians to keep his seat in West Bengal- is attacking Mamta even more violently than he attacks Modi. The plain fact is, thanks to Rahul, there is only Congress blood in the water and the sharks are circling. Adhir Ranjan and Bajwa and many other Congress stalwarts fear they will be wiped out politically by the end of the decade in the same manner that the sycophants of the Windsor dynasty fell upon lean times after the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty took over. 

Old timers in Congress offer a solution to this delicate issue revisiting 1977 when a fragmented Opposition had fought against Indira Gandhi. Even as an assortment of socialists, Jan Sangh and other regional leaders got themselves out of jail, they kept aside their personal ambitions and one-upmanship just to achieve the singular objective -- to edge out Indira.

Which would have involved throwing her in jail and keeping her there.  The problem was that the Jan Sangh had done well in the elections but its leadership looked weak. Nana Deshmukh had refused to become Deputy Prime Minister. Vajpayee was ferociously attacked by Swamy as a drunkard who had disgraced Gandhian India by swilling Vodka with the Soviets. 'Dual membership' sounded like a smart way to cannibalize the Jan Sangh vote but it turned out to be counter productive. The Sangh Parivar emerged as cohesive while the Janata Parivar was just a bunch of opportunists presided over by the supreme opportunist Nitish Kumar. 

It is a different matter that the rainbow Janata Party could not last its term and paved the way for Indira’s return but the first part of the 1977 story has relevance in 2024.

No it doesn't. Indira was hated in 1977 because she kept trying to cut our goolies off. Once she promised to keep her hands off our testicles, we were prepared to put her back in power. By contrast, Modi is loved and admired across the length and breadth of the country. Indeed, there was a rumor in Tamil Nadu that Modi would stand from there in 2024! Stranger things have happened.  

Can Rahul and perhaps Mallikarjun Kharge, the 88th president of the AICC, make a public declaration that the Congress would not necessarily be eager to lead an alternative government?

Kharge can't, otherwise the wolves in his party will come after him. Let him concentrate on winning Karnataka- where, as in Himachal, the BJP deserves to be punished.  

This unilateral pronouncement is likely to pave the way for a purposeful endeavour against the Modi regime till the completion of the 2024 parliamentary polls.

But, if Congress gives up its raison d'etre- viz to put a Gandhi in the PMO- it will split into its own, State and District level, dynastic factions.  There will be a hundred TMC style parties making and breaking alliances of convenience. Sonia had the luxury of appointing a technocrat as CEO. Rahul doesn't because he himself cut off Mummy's CEO's legs by tearing up a Government ordinance on live TV. 

Kidwai directs our attention to the forthcoming Congress plenary session at Raipur. Will anything dramatic occur there? I, personally, have campaigned hard for the victory of nice-doggie-woggie-with-an-adorable-curly-tail in the Working Committee elections. For too long have the Dynasty's puppy dogs and pussy cats been excluded from prominent positions within the Congress organization. Currently only half of the members of the Committee are nominated so as to ensure representation of Women, Dalits etc. Why have puppy dogs and pussy cats been excluded? 

Kidwai ends by mentioning the Gehlot v Pilot battle in Rajasthan. Once again, what he does not say is what is truly interesting. The BJP seems to be going easy on Gehlot on the 'paper scam' issue- highlighted by BJP stalwart Kirori Lal Meena. There is an obvious caste aspect to this. Whatever happens in Raipur- Kidwai hints that Gehlot will be kept on- will affect the BJP strategy for the forthcoming election. Surely they can't be hoping Pilot will jump ship? How would that even work? The guy is married to Farooq Abdullah's daughter! But then Varun Gandhi is still in the BJP. His trajectory isn't exactly awe inspiring. The one good thing which could have come out of 'Bharat Jodo' was a reunification of the Gandhi family. But, Rahul says Varun is betraying the family ideology by cozying up to Fascists. This is hilarious as only Rahul has a grandfather who was an actual Italian Fascist. Thus, as things stand, Rahul's long walk has run out of road. He has shown he is good at walking. We already know he is bad at talking. As for 'walking the talk', that is where Rahul continues to stumble.