Soon after filing his nomination papers from Amethi on April 12, where he declared shares in the unlisted company Young Indian but not in the Associated Journals Limited, which set the stage for him and his mother Sonia Gandhi to take-over the valuable real estate of the National Herald and allied publications, Rahul Gandhi dismissed pre-poll surveys that predicted a rout for the Congress, denied making a personal attack on Narendra Modi (read retreated after adverse feedback), dodged the issue of primaries to elect the party president and vice president, and accused the BJP of serving corporate interests to the exclusion of the common man.
In a 27-minute interview to Ajtak on the eve of the 4th phase of polling, the Congress vice president stoically asserted that he expected the results to be “quite good” for the party, pointed out that pollsters had got their numbers wrong in 2004 and 2009, and that much of the hype over the BJP was on account of its marketing skills and ability to generate more “noise”. It is a different matter that party insiders claim that the Congress is closely tracking about 160 seats in States where the party is in power or in coalition; this suggests the limits of its expectation in the current elections.
The Congress’s base, Rahul Gandhi said, is the poor; “our contact programme is better,” and even psephologists agree that the poor vote for the Congress. Denying making personal attacks on the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate, Rahul Gandhi said the Congress fight with the BJP was ideological (vichar dhara), because it was against concentrating power in one person (read Modi, not Sonia Gandhi) and wanted to give rights to all people. He missed the irony of former media advisor to the Prime Minister, Sanjay Baru, releasing an explosive book on April 11, stating that Sonia Gandhi not only concentrated all power in the UPA in herself but even cleared Government files before the Prime Minister, though she had no constitutional right to even look at Government documents.
Defending the party’s rights based paradigm (RTI, Right to food, Right to education, MNREGA), Rahul Gandhi explained that while he agreed that there should be development, roads, schools and colleges, he believed that the poor needed a base, “minimum ground” to take off, because “they can’t eat the road”. Hence the Right to food and MNREGA, he said, adding that the BJP believed in giving all power to three or four industrialists and thinking that other issues would sort themselves out, but that kind of “trickle down has failed in the US also”.
Though far more poised than in his interview to Times Now, Rahul Gandhi obliquely conceded that this election was unlikely to go the Congress way by insisting that his priority was to empower the poor so that they could “take off. The poor need a launch pad to progress”.
Frontally attacking the Gujarat model, he said it favoured select industrialists and that one man who was worth Rs 3000 crore ten years ago had suddenly risen to the level of Rs 40,000 crores. Originally, Gujarat launched itself on a platform of small business, and cooperative movements like Amul milk. But this businessman (he declined to name Gautam Adani, whose photograph with his brother-in-law Robert Vadra went viral over the social media since this critique) was gifted land the size of Vadodara for a meagre Rs 300 crores. At the same time, he said, “the textile industry in the State is finished; the diamond cutters are perishing and their children are dying of hunger. The farmers are crying. The state has maximum labour disputes”. This, he insisted, is the true face of the Gujarat model, which cannot be seen behind the marketing.
Executing a skilful U-turn on the Gujarat Chief Minister’s personal life which he had intemperately attacked at Doda in Jammu & Kashmir on April 10, Rahul Gandhi countered that the BJP leader “represents an ideology that is dangerous for India. My fight is against that ideology. Also, in Gujarat his economic ideas, well, to entrust all wealth to two or three people is dangerous, this is my fight”.
To a pointed question about the fundamentalism represented by Azam Khan and Mulayam Singh, the Gandhi scion replied, “We are fighting the Samajwadi Party in UP. We don’t have a partnership with them. Our country progresses only when there is communal harmony”. Dodging the issue of alliance with Lalu Prasad Yadav in Bihar after tearing up the Ordinance to protect convicted lawmakers, he said that the UPA has been in power for 10 years and while there may be some debate about the growth rate, he claimed it was a high rate of growth, roads were built, power generated, and 15 crore people raised above poverty line.
Distancing himself from the rampant corruption that has tarnished the UPA image at home and abroad, Rahul Gandhi took the line that “Corruption is a reality”. To combat it, he said, an institutional framework was needed. His interlocutor did not ask why the extant anti-corruption bodies were so powerless under the UPA, and why CAG was attacked when it came out with the truth. Sidestepping this issue, he attacked the BJP manifesto for not explaining the party’s strategy to fight against corruption! He claimed that the biggest weapon in fighting corruption was the Right to information, “I intervened during RTI. I was not at the forefront, I stayed in the background. When Lokpal was being discussed, I spoke about a Constitutional Amendment. A Constitutional Lokpal would be stronger than the Lokpal bill we have passed. The one that has been passed is institutional, a body like the Election Commission”. It would, however, be a long haul, he admitted, without going into the quality of governance in the UPA that has created public revulsion against corruption.
Rahul Gandhi remained in denial about the stagnant growth and lack of employment opportunities and insisted that the UPA had delivered a much higher growth rate than the NDA. The problem, he alleged, was due to the global recession which led to a slowdown in India as well, and the people understood this. It is the business class that needs to understand that there must be a partnership between the common man and industry leaders. Contradicting previous assertions, he said, “If you focus only on the poor and forget the business class, we will not progress”.
The UPA’s mega plans, he pointed out, include the manufacturing corridor, roads, power, but also the poor. People want trained workers, and it is our responsibility to provide training to the poor in our small towns and villages who are the human resources of the future. Unlike Narendra Modi who rattles off ideas for skill development and employment in virtually every rally, Rahul Gandhi did not give his ideas about human resource development. Regarding the shoddy state of infrastructure in Amethi, he squarely blamed the ruling Samajwadi Party which was responsible for the roads, electricity and schools. On its part, he claimed, the Central Government had built national highways; opened bank accounts for 10 to 12 lakh women in Amethi and changed their lives. While concluding, he accepted a question on his own marriage saying, “When I find the right girl, I will get married. I don’t get much time that’s true. But it’s about destiny”.
All in all, it was a soft interview and the answers lacked the bite, wit and substance associated with the BJP contender. But unlike the previous interview in which he came across as an utterly-at-sea ingénue, this time the Gandhi scion was more poised and conveyed the impression of one who, if not fully in command of his ship (his mother remains a hands-on captain), is determined to stay the course and muddle through. He seemed to appreciate that his current challenge was to stay afloat.
Niticentral.com, 14 April 2014
http://www.niticentral.com/2014/04/14/rahul-gandhi-accepts-congress-faces-tough-time-211370.html