India is a great paradox. Constitutionally, we are a democratic republic but most of our political parties are dynastic. Leadership of all parties, barring the Communists and the BJP, routinely passes from one generation of the controlling family to the next without a murmur in protest. The last time someone protested, he found himself ejected out from the party with contempt. It is a different matter that since then Sharad Pawar has reconciled himself to doing business with the same dynasty. And is ready to grovel before the next generation of the Firm for staying relevant in his small pocket-borough of western Maharashtra.
Of course, we cannot blame the scions of the party controllers for keeping the top leadership strictly reserved for themselves since, eventually, they seek endorsement from voters who, swayed by caste, creed, money power, et al, elect them election after election. Scan the who’s who of political parties and it will strike you that not only the Congress but even every regional party too is now a family-run enterprise. Therefore, it is futile to find fault with the formal entry of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra into politics.
She was all along active behind-the-scenes, roping in that jocular figure Navjot Singh Siddhu into the party and clinching the disastrous pact with Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party ahead of the 2017 UP Assembly poll. There is merit in the charge that the Congress President has anointed his sister as party general secretary and as in-charge of eastern UP because he himself did not feel up to the task of salvaging the fortunes of the party, nay, of the dynasty. Following the unilateral BSP-SP pact which divided the 80 parliamentary seats in UP between themselves, leaving two on mercy grounds for the Congress Family, Rahul took a huge gamble by deciding to contest all of them on his own.
Priyanka’s formal plunge is meant to signal to the Bua- Babua twosome that even now it may not be too late to let in the Congress under the BSP-SP tent. Coming days will prove whether the two main regional parties are sufficiently impressed by the entry of Priyanka Vadra Gandhi to accommodate the Congress in their alliance. Of course, the chances of Mayawati playing ball are negligible, her reasoning being that risking the revival of the Congress would ultimately weaken her hold on her captive Dalit vote-bank. Besides, she is convinced that whereas her supporters transfer their votes to her allies, the voters of the allies don’t vote for the BSP. Priyanka faces an uphill task reviving the moribund Congress organization in UP.
The fact that even in the supposed pocket-boroughs, namely, Amethi and Rai Bareilly, the family had to seek the assistance of the SP and the BSP for retaining those seats underlines the near irrelevance of the Congress in the largest state in the country. The much-touted charisma which she is supposed to possess — and, which, the Congress supporters insist, Rahul lacks, might come to naught in a most polarised electorate, divided as it is into mutually hostile segments on caste and religious lines.
Besides, with the deepening of democracy and a growing voter awareness thanks to the information revolution wrought by the 24×7 television channels and ubiquitous smart phones, a photogenic persona might prove woefully inadequate to fetch votes for the Congress. Days of a mai-baap sarkar are long behind us. People now want results, good outcomes — and not merely abuses against the ruling party and empty slogans. Besides, Modi is no push-over. His record in office might have fallen short of the promises he made in 2014, but he has delivered where it matters the most.
The life-altering services like the provision of tens of millions of LPG cylinders to fire rural chulahas, electrification of thousands of villages and rural homes, direct delivery of various subsidies into the Aadhaar-linked bank accounts, etc, etc, will not make it easy for anyone to take him on in eastern or western UP where yet another princeling, Jyotiraditya Scindia, has been assigned the task of reviving the Congress. Last but not the least, the scams surrounding Robert Vadra, which, notably, were detailed in the media when the UPA was still in power, would dog his wife at every step.
Of course, corruption and Congress are inseparable twins, with no member of the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty having held a decent day job to justify their Maharaj-like life-style. Meanwhile, it is shameful the way vast sections of the media, including television channels, have fawned over her coming. It is as if she has already conquered India but for the minor nuisance of an election.
