The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Thursday 8 March 2012

MANDATE 2012: THE ANGRY YOUNG MAN IS NOT ANGRY ANYMORE! (PART-2)

Continued from: 

MANDATE 2012: THE ANGRY YOUNG MAN IS NOT ANGRY ANYMORE! (PART-1)



WHAT WAS THE INFLICTION POINT?

In 2009 General Election, the Congress party performed well in Uttar Pradesh winning 21 seats with 18 per cent votes. It was second only to the Samajwadi Party that had won 23 seats with 23 per cent vote share. It was indeed a significant gain for the party in India's most populous state where it was already written off. Even then Rahul Gandhi had campaigned hard.

And he was attributed as the ‘sole factor’ behind this meteoric resurgence of the Congress party in Uttar Pradesh.

Yes, Rahul Gandhi deserved some of the accolade but making him absolutely taller a factor was like being not able to read the writing on the wall when it was so clearly legible.

The first and the foremost pointer was the basic difference between the Lok Sabha and state assembly elections. A Lok Sabha election is fought mainly on national issues and the UPA government was riding high on the fine performance of UPA’s first term in the office as well as the populist Budgetary provisions like the windfall farmers debt waiver.

It was coupled with the rising anti-incumbency against the Maywati led BSP government in Uttar Pradesh. While the Samajwadi Party felt the pulse of the voter, the Congress party and the BSP failed to read it.

(I am not talking about another dying political force in the state, the BJP, unless, like the Congress Party and Mr. Rahul Gandhi, it too, doesn't take drastic change measures. It is beyond the scope of the subject matter of the write-up here.)

The incumbent state government continued its pathetic show and the central and the state leadership of the Congress party got busy in idolizing Rahul Gandhi as the next big thing in the Indian polity.

They both got complacent. While the BSP thought it would sail smoothly again on the Mayawati charisma, its intact Dalit vote bank and the caste engineering (Mayawati couldn’t see it was rapidly withering away); the Congress party thought it had got the panacea of its Uttar Pradesh problem in Rahul Gandhi.

The escapism of the boneless Congress leadership in Uttar Pradesh found a perfect match in the ignorant central leadership of the grand old party.  The 2009 election results pushed the state Congress leaders in the state of ‘supreme bliss’ instead of getting in the alert mode to deepen the gains by doing some solid hinterland politics. It also blocked the 2012 Uttar Pradesh vision of the Congress managers sitting in the comfort of the Lutyens' Delhi.

But then, has the Congress party not been so accustomed of looking down on the Federal structure of the Indian Union when it comes to the political representation of India as a whole?

Only the Samajwadi Party saw it as an opportunity to strengthen its party cadre in the state and build on a rising anti-BSP wave. In the follow-up they did tactical things like wooing Muslims and presenting a sincere political face away from the trademark Samajwadi Party gundaism by projecting faces like Akhilesh Yadav talking system clean-up and the populist vote bank policies in the language of the ordinary Uttar Pradesh walla.

During the same crucial phase, Mayawati kept on immortalizing herself by carving her identity in stones.

During the same crucial phase, Rahul Gandhi started conducting his experiments in the laboratory called Uttar Pradesh but sans the lessons learnt from the Bihar experiment.

THE LESSONS NOT LEARNT!

Like this time in Uttar Pradesh, Rahul Gandhi had campaigned hard during the 2010 Bihar assembly election. Like this time in Uttar Pradesh, he was the most sought after campaigner by the airwaves in the 2010 Bihar assembly election.

And Congress was almost annihilated when the results were announced getting just four assembly seats in the 243-member strong Bihar legislative assembly.

That slap in the face was the turning point when the Congress party could have learnt what went wrong and if there were other significant factors behind the spectacular performance of the party in Uttar Pradesh in 2009 General Elections.

But that didn’t happen. A comfortable run at the centre kept on greasing the complacency mode. They could not see it was not pro-Rahul Gandhi mandate in 2009 but was basically anti-Mayawati.

They could not realize it even after the Bihar drubbing that was mainly due to the non-existent organizational structure of the Congress party in the state. Instead, they deduced it was pro-Nitish Kumar and not anti-Rahul Gandhi.

SO MUCH FOR SO LESS!

Yes, we can say that when it comes to the ‘Rahul Gandhi’ factor. Rahul Gandhi’s political career is not even a decade old. In 2004, he announced he would contest the 2004 General Election from Amethi. That was the day and this is the day after almost eight years. This small period is really not enough for someone like Rahul Gandhi (he was really never in touch with the political pulse of the country before announcing his entry) to prove worthiness and suitability to hold the highest ‘functional’ office in the country.

Though Rahul has worked hard, has travelled a lot, he still has not been able to develop that connect with the masses, first in Bihar and now in Uttar Pradesh, these two experiments show us.

He started very well and looked sincere when he spoke through his representative seriousness reflected in issues and names like  ‘Kalawati’. He roamed across, went to Dalit huts, ate with them, got adventurous, did biking to skirt the administration to reach to his audience. He did so much but not sufficient enough and so, as of now, he looks to have got so less.

The blame always rests with the grand old party of India and its ardent family followers but Mr. Rahul Gandhi is also responsible for it in a major way.

IT WAS PR BUT WHERE WAS THE NEXT STEP?

Much has been written on the team that works for Rahul Gandhi, the team of expert communicators and managers. They worked genuinely indeed during the launch years. They gave Rahul a different identity; a politician with a difference who talked sense and looked impartial. Rahul’s speeches used to have an emotional quotient delivered in ‘angered’ tone and it clicked.

He looked fresh then.

But Rahul and his team could not gauge the basics of the next stage of his political career. It had to be more of Rahul Gandhi and less of PR. It had to be a Rahul Gandhi having his own world view extending and strengthening his image of the politician with a difference.

Rahul had created a hope in millions of being a positively ‘different’ political leader but when he started acting like an ordinary politician during the Parliament debates or during his election campaigns criticizing opponents overlooking the facts, it went against his initially built image.

Also, he adopted double standards on many issues. He campaigned for farmers of Bhatta Parsual in Uttar Pradesh but was deliberately late in reaching to the agitating Pune farmers as his party was the ruling coalition partner in Maharashtra. Imprints of such acts are killing any PR guru would tell you.
And this is not the standalone case. Volumes have been written on the misery of Rahul’s Kalawati even if she was the central theme of one of the most significant political speeches of Rahul’s career.

It is the high time that Mr. Rahul Gandhi starts reading the writing on the wall. He needs to do real politicking now. PR may help but it must not be the PR centrally. He needs to act sincere consistently. He needs to work on building the dilapidated organizational structure of the Congress party in core states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar first. And he needs to know how to criticize your opponents gracefully.

Getting angry on misery of ‘Bharat’ is good but, at the same time, adopting double standards on plenty of issues dilutes the gain making that emotional quotient look like a fake one.

He needs to see that Bhatta Parsual voted against him. He needs to read the why of this without fail.

His words and mood on March 6, 2012 sounded like this. Let’s hope his sincerity will act more consistently now.

His political longevity depends on how soon he goes back to building his image of the politician with a difference.

©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/