There is no mistaking the fact that Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s much-heralded conclave of opposition leaders has proved to be a damp squib. The writing is indeed on the wall that whatever be the aspirations of his mother Sonia Gandhi, Rahul has failed to convince the leadership of various opposition outfits that he could be their potential leader to be cast in the role of a prime minister in the making. Not only has his own performance as an organizer and team leader been found grossly deficient but there is the other aspect of there being too many aspirants for prime ministership in the opposition, each of whom wants to undercut the others. Congress president Sonia Gandhi, acutely aware of Rahul’s limitiations but unreconciled to anything but the best for him, has been waiting for the right opportunity to get him accepted as leader but time and again that opportunity has eluded him.
Over the years, Sonia has been able to establish her own credentials but Rahul is a different kettle of fish. He is ill-informed, shallow and tends to be loose in the choice of words. While she is wily and enigmatic, he is a simpleton to the point of being too naive and brazenly unschooled in the art of politics as it is played in India. The manner in which he has been shouting from rooftops without a shred of concrete evidence that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is personally corrupt, has evidently not gone down well with people at large.
The phalanx of opposition parties that came together on a common platform during the Parliament session to oppose demonetization was “a dream come true” for the Gandhis, but the euphoria was short-lived. Rahul goofed up when he went ahead for a meeting with the Prime Minister with a team of Congressmen, ignoring the representatives of other opposition parties, many of whom were waiting for his call. Many opposition leaders minced no words in expressing disappointment at Rahul’s attitude. The meeting yielded no results that could be cited in the Congress’ favour. The Prime Minister exchanged pleasantries, accepted two memorandums and bade goodbye to the delegation in a shrewd and calculative action that made the Congressmen look like fools.
For Tuesday’s meeting, one after another, the opposition parties ditched the Congress. Some of the parties that did attend chose lesser-known leaders to represent them. The only solace that Rahul could draw was that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee made common cause with him by being personally present. Being an inveterate critic of Modi, Mamata has been unrelenting in her criticism of the Modi government. But even she has personal ambitions of sitting on the prime ministerial ‘gaddi’ some day.
The Left, which has also been a bitter critic of demonetization and stood shoulder to shoulder with the Congress in Parliament, chose to keep away. Said CPI (M) leader Sitaram Yechury: “Several opposition parties have reservation about the way the meeting has been convened. We were not consulted about the agenda of the meeting.” This feeling was voiced by some other parties too. Another big failure for the Congress was the inability to bring round Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, besides Orissa’s Naveen Patnaik who has consistently stayed away from the politics of New Delhi, and kept a distance from Rahul Gandhi. The Bahujan Samaj Party also did not attend. The media conference that followed the meeting in New Delhi was an occasion for Rahul and Mamata to compete with each other on Modi-baiting.
What is of concern to people at large is that the opposition has, while criticizing the government on anything and everything, not laid out its own thoughts on an alternative line of action for the country’s governance. Do the principal opposition parties have a leader who they would like to project as an alternative to Modi in one voice? Is the boycott of Parliament the panacea for the country’s woes? If demonetization is not the answer to curbing black money, what is the right answer?
