THE CELEBRATED TEAM AND A GOOD BEGINNING NOT SUSTAINED
Much has been
written about the celebrated team of Rahul Gandhi. They started very well. I am
not going into the overall details here. Here, it is basically about what Rahul
Gandhi talked and how it all went kaput. Rahul’s speeches sounded really
different initially. They sounded politically off-beat and that was the best
thing about it. They sounded politically experimental and that was the needed
aspect of it.
But it didn’t
get the support of the task-master in Rahul. He has worked hard. We saw it in
the elections of Bihar in 2012 and Uttar Pradesh in 2012.
Though the Congress party says the defeats (the humiliating ones) could
not be attributed to Rahul Gandhi, it was indeed Rahul’s loss.
And it
happened because Rahul could not walk the talk. There came many issues when the
country, especially its youth expected from him to take a different stand from
the worn-out line of the now-debased Indian politics, especially on the
corruption and Lokpal issue. He simply toed the line of the politicians who
were conniving to derail and dilute the Lokpal Bill.
He was biased
when it came to his visit to the agitating farmers in Bhatta Parsaul in
Uttar Pradesh where the Congress party was not in government. He didn’t show
that alertness in reacting on the police firing on Maval farmers of Maharashtra because his party was a
coalition-government partner there.
There are
similar case studies where Rahul had to take a different and clear stand.
But Rahul
either didn’t speak or if spoke, the words sounded more of speechwriters and
not his, increasingly sounding more and more alienated from the vital
facts.
The transition
that was a must from a communication management launch-pad for a beginner to
the growing presence of a full-grown politician with a difference looks
to have lost its rhythm midway.
It cannot be
said if Rahul and his team haven’t thought on these lines as Rahul’s speeches
and his ‘Team RG’ have been much in news and the recent history cannot
claim positive coverage. But given the consistency of the dull approach, one is
driven to believe that they haven’t or they prefer to ignore (for reasons, they
only can understand).
Giving
high-pitched speeches with an angry-mannerism has become style of Rahul and
that is good if exploited well. But that is not happening. Rahul is touring the
length and breadth of India India India
Also, covering
a vast area needs a divergent approach in words. Every speech has to be backed
well by sound research to get localized in the local context where it has to be
delivered.
But the
ones delivered during the campaigning in the Gujarat
assembly Election of 2012 say ‘no
lessons were learnt’ again.
To continue..
