No one should envy Rahul Gandhi although the fact that he is born with a silver spoon in his mouth. It is also a fact that his entry in to politics was smooth as he belongs to the famous Gandhi-Nehru family. There is no denying that so far his party had made all efforts to protect him from all sorts of criticism, though it had never failed to bestow credit on him even at slightest pretext. But Rahul Gandhi will be robbed of all such advantages once he becomes the Congress president in the beginning of next month. There will be no one to protect him from any failures. To survive in the post he will have to ensure electoral success for his party which has become rare these days. He will have to keep it in mind the golden rule of democracy which says that one who can get votes for his party is eligible to become the leader. Otherwise, he will have to vacate his place for another leader. More importantly, in this battle he will be the lone warrior.
Besides, Rahul Gandhi is not as lucky like his father Rajiv Gandhi. As a matter of fact, Rajiv Gandhi became the prime minister even before being elected as the leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP). The then President Zail Singh faced lot of criticisms for this decision. Besides, when Rajiv became the prime minister, he didn’t face much opposition. Whatever opposition existed during that time was virtually blown away by the strong sympathy wave following the assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. So Rajiv was able to easily win the general elections in 1985 with the highest number of seats in the history of Independent India. Thus creating a record which is yet to be broken.
But unlike Rajiv Gandhi, the Congress president in waiting will have to start virtually from scratch. At present the Congress is not in power at the Centre. More, apart from Karnataka, the party is not in power in any of the major states in the country. The situation is so bad that even in some states the party’s presence is limited to signboards only. Rootless leaders are plenty in the party. But it is difficult to find even one single leader with mass support base in the party. The situation has encouraged the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to give a call for ‘Congress Mukt Bharat.’ Besides, his main opponent will be Narendra Modi who is way ahead of Rahul Gandhi in terms of popularity, experience and effectiveness. One should not forget the fact that very recently Narendra Modi has been ranked among the top three influential leaders in the world. So it will not be easy for Rahul Gandhi to bring back the old glory of the party. Over the years BJP has emerged as an alternative of the Congress party. Presence of regional parties in most of the states has also made the task difficult for the Congress. So far we have not seen a magic wand in Rahul Gandhi’s hand. So to revive the party the new Congress president has to work really hard. So he should be given sufficient time to prove himself. After all he is taking over the reins of the party at a crucial juncture.
