Most Congress leaders have yet to see the writing on the wall. They hold on to the belief that only the continued leadership of the Nehru-Gandhi family can save them. They fail to realise that the family just led them to disaster
The pathetic and well-deserved drubbing the Congress has received in the general election has left its men and women blinking with surprise, confusion and despair. They still cannot comprehend that India has finally grown up and seen that the Nehru dynasty is arrogant, incompetent and presumptuous. Also, its courtiers have spent so long bowing and kowtowing to the ‘Family’ that they have long since lost their spine. A few die-hards like Mani Shankar Aiyar, Digvijaya Singh, Manish Tewari, Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Ajay Maken are displayed difficulty in swallowing the bitter pill of Mr Narendra Modi becoming the Prime Minister of India.
UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi came out with a grudging line congratulating the victorious leader of the BJP. After calling Mr Modi a “maut ka saudagar” and letting loose every agency in the book to try and fix him all these years in Gujarat, it was probably humiliating to wish him well now. The speech with her son at her side on the day of the result was as unsatisfactory as every other speech the people of India have had to hear over the years. It was, as always, pre-written, awkwardly read in the usual heavy Italian-accented Hindi, and seemed like a painful job that was better over as briskly and unfeelingly as possible.
The basic decency of a defeated party in not attacking the victorious party for at least the traditional ‘honeymoon’ period of 100 days has been tossed overboard. Mr Tewari has already stated that the BJP has engaged in double speak, accusing it of attacking Pakistan during the campaign and then calling Mr Nawaz Sharif to the swearing-in.
It forgets its thorough incompetence in dealing with Pakistan and Kashmir, which has kept things at a standstill for almost a decade. All good intentions ended as just so many hollow words. Everyone agrees that Mr Modi’s master stroke was graciously reciprocated. Whatever may have happened before or may happen in the future, positive and peaceful gestures leading to fruitful talks are the only way to achieve a positive result in neighbourly relations. Tough talk during elections is a necessary backgrounder to show that India is not a soft state, but will be a firm and reasonable one. According to Mr Ajay Maken, Ms Smriti Irani had neither experience not education to handle the HRD Ministry. A non-graduate, Italian-born has ruled the country from behind a transparent curtain, and the Congress was all set to put Mr Rahul Gandhi in the Prime Minister’s chair despite his obvious lack of political expertise and his little known education, before that. Congress spokespersons forget that people in glass houses should not throw stones.
Many have consistently said ever since Ms Gandhi took over the Congress leadership that she is neither political, nor inspiring, nor Indian in her way of thinking, speaking or her body language. She has behaved like a disengaged Empress whose very presence alone is presumed to attract people and power. She never engages spontaneously other than reaching to shake hands with the great unwashed from behind a barricade, and always appears in a hurry to get away from any sort of public discourse. One senior Congress leader privately bemoans: “She only listens and does not respond because of her European bent of mind”. Ms Gandhi have never deigned to engage in unrehearsed public debates with their peers in other parties on any forum. They demand cocooning and have now been engulfed by it.
As had happened when Indira Gandhi was defeated in 1977, advisers, coterie, think-tanks, kitchen cabinets and backroom boys as they are variously called, are now being blamed for giving bad advice. But what about the responsibility of the taker of the aforementioned adviceIJ How competent are leaders who, in a period of 10 years or more, cannot discern good advice from badIJ Is the country a nursery class for aspirants to learn the ropes of running a country only after they are in seated in its highest chairIJ It may be recalled that this was one of the reasons for the problems that beset Rajiv Gandhi.
Real leaders earn their positions by working among the people, knowing the pulse of the country and articulating it spontaneously. That is the only way of ‘connecting’ in politics. They work their way up from the bottom of the ladder and through struggle. They understand the aspirations of the people. They should be able to judge characters and situations and think out of the box to find solutions to tough problems. Real leaders get various inputs from a range of people, but they alone decide on the best course of action and take responsibility for it. It is clearly necessary for the Gandhis to understand what ‘The Buck Stops Here’ actually means.
The call for Ms Priyanka Vadra to step in is another display of the congenital disease afflicting the ‘grand old party’ and its media courtiers. look at media archives of the 1999 election; it will show magazines and newspapers delightedly exclaiming, “Priyanka arrives and spices up the campaign in Amethi!” Who was it that said, “History repeats itself first as a farce and then as a tragedy”IJ