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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Four mistakes that will cost the Gandhi family
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Four mistakes that will cost the Gandhi family

Why is the first family of politics campaigning no differently from any other election?

The Gandhis are carrying on business as usual, despite polls predicting the worst ever performance of the Congress party. Photo: PTIPremium
The Gandhis are carrying on business as usual, despite polls predicting the worst ever performance of the Congress party. Photo: PTI

What on earth are the Gandhis up to?

On one hand they say this is an important election for India. On the other, they carry on business as usual, despite polls predicting the worst ever performance of the Congress party.

If there is a sense of urgency, a sense of impending disaster in Narendra Modi winning (as the Prime Minister warned on 6 January), it is difficult to see in the behaviour of India’s royal family.

They are campaigning across India, yes, but no differently from any other election. Given the hammering the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) has received, quite justifiably, in the media, it is amazing to me that the Gandhis haven’t reached out and done damage control.

Rahul Gandhi had a couple of interviews, including that bizarre one with Arnab Goswami that was embarrassing for both the quality of questions and answers, but that’s it. He has left it to the journalists to pick their lead from what is on offer in the campaign speeches. Unfortunately for the Gandhis, Modi has a superior talent for native humour, producing the telling quote and for reduction. He can summarize an issue in a way they cannot. He will win the battle of taking the headlines seven times out of 10. It is up to the Gandhis, if they want it, to change this. Or, at least to try to.

It is shocking that Sonia Gandhi has not offered to be interviewed. She comes across as earnest and well-meaning in her interactions, even if she is poor at communicating. It would have been important enough a story for news organisations to play up if she had spoken at length on the big issues.

I understand that she is unwell, but even so her campaign schedule is quite strange. Her first election rally in Telangana, in the region which returned most Congress MPs in 2009, came only on 16 April. If you’re going to be this casual about places that have large pools of extant Congress support, you’re done for.

The second thing the Gandhis did wrong was not to have gone after Modi for his record in Gujarat. This had to partially do with the fact that the family has been pragmatic to the point of being opportunistic in that state. There’s no reason for them to have put a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) man Shankarsinh Vaghela in charge there. It destroys their credibility as a secular opposition. Besides, Shakarsinh is not particularly intelligent and cannot communicate, especially in English, meaning the Congress posture in Gujarat remains regional and hidden.

For all these years, the Gandhis have had little original to say on the appropriation by Modi of Gujarat’s success. It was only on 20 April that Rahul Gandhi finally said: “Gujarat model of development was created by the people of the state. Is it that Gujarat was sleeping for 60 years and Modi came and changed the entire landscape? The textile and the diamond workers toiled. But no, everything was done by Modi. That is his thinking."

Why did he not take this line of attack for all these years when the Gujarat model balloon was being visibly inflated? it is difficult to say.

It was Arvind Kejriwal who in one short tour, with his limited resources but sharp baniya mind, attacked Modi where it hurt. It is not a coincidence that Modi chose not to engage with him. He picks his battles carefully and knows which ones he cannot win. He has no problems attacking the Gandhis, because they rarely fight back. Sonia Gandhi in particular. A report from 4 April said that without taking Modi’s name, Sonia Gandhi told an election rally in Jharkhand that some opposition leaders were selling dreams, as if “they will change everything in one day with a magic wand". “Will the country chose a Prime Minister a person who will be a big liar?" she said at Ramgarh in Hazaribagh district.

All this vagueness is very polite and civil but will not win elections in India.

The third mistake of the Congress was not to have used Manmohan Singh to attack the simplicity of Modi’s message. The Prime Minister was reluctant in his decade of power to engage with Indian journalists, and I have empathized with him for this. There is little of value that such encounters produce. But he is the man who has said Modi would be a disaster for India. If this is so, he should explain why. He cannot just leave it for voters to divine the reason. The other thing that occurs to me is that if this reluctance is his personal style, the Gandhis should have pressed him to take to the media at least now and explain the issue to top editors.

That brings me to the fourth thing, which is that the Congress isn’t clear about the issues. After months of getting pounded by the best and most coherent election campaign in our history, when Sonia Gandhi finally spoke, it was on the wrong issue.

In her three-minute video to counter Modi, she said: “What are these values that are the very heart and soul of our motherland? They are love and respect, harmony and brotherhood. In a word, non-violence."

She added: “Living with these feelings for each other across religions, castes, communities, regions, languages is what makes us one strong nation. These have been the bedrock of our progress. These are the essence of our Bharatiyata, our Hindustaniyat."

In taking on this aspect, Sonia Gandhi has got it fundamentally wrong.

It’s not a negative campaign that Modi has waged. He is not asking for votes on religious grounds and the electorate is not responding to him because of ideology.

It is the positive aspects of his campaign, the ones in which he promises to bring about a dramatic change in the way we are governed, which have propelled him to the cusp of victory.

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Published: 22 Apr 2014, 12:08 PM IST
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