It’s Rahul baba’s turn to discover India

It could be time, though, to call Rahul-baba in for a little chat. Not only is he endangering his life for no reason, but he seems very confused about political realities. What was he thinking when he said there was no internal democracy in the Congress? Who was he pointing his finger at? So first he needs a short lesson in the history of the Congress that explains that, since the time of his grandmother, people who made a noise about inner-party democracy have been booted out of the party without a second thought. This is why, after his father’s tragic murder, the party’s senior leaders had nobody to turn to but Mummy to ‘save’ the party.

Lesson No 2 has to be about India’s changed realities. There was a time when the Nehru-Gandhi name was a magic mantra that could make millions of desperately poor, hopelessly illiterate Indians rush off at election time and vote for Congress. That time is gone. A few more village tours, hopefully in less dangerous districts, should make it clear that today, the aam aadmi has middle-class aspirations. He wants schools, roads, jobs and a standard of living. This means he want to earn enough to build a nice little house with running water and electricity, send his children to a private school, have a colour television in the living room and a Nano parked in the drive. Charisma no longer works like it used to.

Lesson No 3 is the most difficult of all, since it involves acknowledging that Mummy’s attempts in the past four years to woo back the old Congress vote banks have failed. Massive schemes to ‘alleviate’ poverty rather than end it have served mostly to keep poor people in poverty. Attempts to bring the Muslim vote bank back by doling out charity have so far shown no signs of working either.

These are old-fashioned ideas in an India that has changed immeasurably even if our political class has not.

Unless young politicians of Rahul Gandhi’s generation realise that instead of silly gimmicks they need to be thinking seriously about how we can improve education and healthcare and our hopelessly outdated systems of governance, there is no hope. You do not need to discover India to discover this.

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