Casting couch!
Rarely has a television interview with a politician become subject of a should have- shouldn’t have discussion around the country, as the prime time show with Rahul Gandhi broadcast by a TV channel on Monday night. Since what followed – and continues – are debates on and off TV, whether the Congress Vice President, whom the party wants to project as its face in the April/May Lok Sabha election, got the mileage his advisers wished for, the import of the show will dawn on the voters only after the chatter about the atmospherics dies down. Inasmuch, it is a pity. In his first big media interview in 10 years – though he gave a Hindi newspaper an interview a week earlier – Mr Gandhi did attempt to explain how he wants to reform the way India and his Congress Party are run.
Even if he failed to explain and add substance to his wish list with detailed policies – which tells on the mismatch of intent of the interviewer and interviewee – it couldn’t have been a better manifesto on changes India needs desperately. “What I want to do is going forward is basically focus on three things: Focus on empowering our people, truly empowering our people, giving them democratic rights within the political party. I want youngsters who come in and really, really push democracy in the party. I want to empower them and I want to make India, together with everybody, taking everybody together I want to put India on the manufacturing map, I want to make this the centre of manufacturing in the world. I want to make this place at least as much as a manufacturing power as China.”
Inviting criticism for speaking like an outsider by confessing “I look like an anomaly in the environment that I’m in,” he went on to say: “What I feel is that this country needs to look at the fundamental issues at hand, the fundamental political issue at hand is that our political system is controlled by too few people and we absolutely have to change the way our political system is structured, we have to change our political parties, we have to make them more transparent, we have to change the processes that we use to elect candidates, we have to empower women in the political parties. … I don’t hear the discussion about how are we actually choosing that candidate, that is never the discussion.” What Mr Gandhi said effectively means he wants the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty which has dominated India’s post independence politics, to end with him. His determination was reflected in his statement: “This fellow over here is thinking deeply and is thinking long term. That’s why I’m attacked. Attack me all you want. Beat me to death. It’s not going to stop me. I’m going to keep doing it.”
Indian National Congress, as the grand old party that is credited with and blamed for everything we see around — even for the brief interludes when assorted parties ruled, most notably the BJP’s grandiose rule under A B Vajpayee’s premiership – clearly is no monolith. The party is made up of its local leaders as disparate as they come, from Goa to Arunachal or Uttarakhand to Kerala. It held together in the name of the dynasty when contending parties in coalition and outside pulled apart and calls for strong majoritarian rule threatened the pluralist nature of our country. Mr Gandhi is promising devolution of that power structure. It is for the leaders at the state level hold him to that in the interest of the nation we dream of for the 21st century rather than find derisive humour that distracts from the issues aired in the hour-and-a-half session, for which the party and the channel gave such media build-up to ensure it was watched around the country. It is important because there are enough political pranksters who would put the nation on the casting couch they say Mr Gandhi was, just for laughs.
What Rahul Gandhi said effectively means he wants the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty which has dominated India’s post independence politics, to end with him
