Milind Deora stops short of accusing Rahul
If you do not have the courage to blame the leader, then target the coterie around that leader. This is the sense one gets from young Congress leader Milind Deora's accusation that Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi's rootless advisers had through their flawed inputs to the leader largely contributed to the party's drubbing in the lok Sabha election. Mr Deora himself lost the election by a handsome margin from a constituency in Mumbai of which he was sitting Member of Parliament. There is no disputing that nearly all members of the party vice president's advisory group which planned and executed the election campaign were political lightweights who had their ears more to the hum of air-conditioners than to the ground. Quite a few had not even contested any major election and yet were in charge of crucial battle States. Reading between the lines of what Mr Deora has said, one can conclude that this bunch of advisers not only gave Mr Gandhi a misleading picture, but also blocked access of senior grassroots leaders to the party vice president who was the Congress's face in the election. One assumes that Mr Deora did not face this problem since he is considered close to Mr Gandhi. But if he did encounter the wall of advisers — and, like him, many other leaders in similar positions did — then it speaks poorly of the manner in which Mr Gandhi managed the affairs of the party. Those like Mr Madhusudan Mistry and Mr Jairam Ramesh, from all accounts, dominated the planning and execution of the election strategy on Mr Gandhi's behalf. There were others who had been parachuted from outside the realm of politics and given key responsibilities in areas of which they had no understanding.
But, while allegations that the Congress vice president's advisers messed up are true, it is equally a fact that Mr Gandhi had personally chosen these advisers. He cannot escape responsibility and culpability. Moreover, Mr Gandhi has been in active politics for at least 10 years now and had successfully contested two lok Sabha elections before the just concluded one (which too he won, but with a vastly reduced margin). He has been travelling the country and interacting with the people. How could he then not have caught the buzz in the airIJ How could he not have realised that the inputs he was receiving, the strategy that his men were creating, did not match the ground realityIJ How did he fail to understand that communication was not working at various levelsIJ Either he could not read the writing on the wall or he blindly accepted what he was served. Either way, he demonstrated failure of leadership. But this is what Mr Deora, and others like Ms Priya Dutt, who too have spoken out in similar tone, are reluctant to accept — at least in public. Perhaps a real revamp in the Congress, which Mr Deora and many others like him in the party want, can happen if top leaders show the courage to quit and pave the way for the deserving.