And yet, the destruction of that mandate, the loss of the feel-good mood, was rapid in the 1984-89 Parliament. It was also so severe that it has now taken the Congress 25 years to be able to form a government that looks like its own, and that can even fire the imagination of an aspirational India, a fact that even Arun Jaitley acknowledged in his opening speech as the leader of the opposition in Rajya Sabha. What can Sonia, Manmohan Singh, and their Congress partymen learn from the verdict of 1984 so that they do not make the same mistakes again?

It is sometimes said that Rajiv Gandhi made too many mistakes because he was inexperienced, too young for the job, that the burden of prime ministership fell on his shoulders five years too soon because of his mother’s assassination. There may be some truth in that. But, for the dramatic loss of popularity that took place 1986 onwards, more factors had to be involved. And some of these were rooted in the essential nature of the Congress and its senior leadership’s basic instincts.

If you go back to that phase, some initial mistakes were indeed made because of inexperience, the very faulty handling of the Punjab peace process (after a spectacular beginning with the Rajiv-Longowal peace accord) by a (then) largely inexperienced team of political managers, led by Arun Nehru and Arjun Singh. But what is inexperience is also sometimes freshness, boldness, or the ability to break from the past, to make a new beginning. Rajiv’s most brilliant achievements also came in this “inexperienced”, “innocent” phase, when he relied on his own instinct for change that gave him the mandate: the peace accords with MNF rebel Laldenga in Mizoram and AASU-AAGSP in Assam. Both led to elections that brought the agitators and insurgents in power, of course in cabinets sworn to defend India’s Constitution, and defeats for his Congress party. But for a national leader with vision, and the blessing of a great mandate, these were historic achievements. I happened to cover both elections, and heard slogans like, “Congress party murdabad, Rajiv Gandhi zindabad.” A more “experienced”, less “innocent” politician would not have seen the enormously greater value of India’s victory in his party’s small defeats as he did.

... contd.