THE RATTLED DYNASTS

THE RATTLED DYNASTS

Rattled to their back teeth by the spectre of an  electoral rout, Congress is desperately casting about for a way to reverse their predicament. Unable to convince anyone that giving waste-land in Gujarat to Gautam Adani at a concessional rate for him to set up job-generating industry is tantamount to crony capitalism, Congress strategists are looking around for new spit balls to throw.

They’ve mostly finished trying to malign Modi on the matter of his wife Jashodaben, as she is legally married to him still, and has not featured in his life for decades by mutual consent. Congress backed off from its mock horror and fake morality on this issue when confronted with the threat of the BJP going public with a number of illicit and juicy scandals concerning the Gandhi family, past and present, as well as a number of senior Congress ministers.  

Next, Farooq Abdullah of National Conference in Kashmir,  who was quoted just the other day saying that the Congress game was more or less up, and that it was ‘too late’ now. And that Rahul Gandhi should have joined the government at least ‘three years ago’ to establish his governance credentials. Overnight, the self-same gentleman is seen spewing intemperate and insulting fire and brimstone. Kashmir is a hot button issue, and Farooq going ballistic is either an oblique critique of Modi and the BJP at a minimum, or an effort to fan the separatist movement at the maximum, in order to polarise Muslim votes further in the rest of India.

Ironically, a communal riot is difficult to organise in the Kashmir Valley because there are no Kashmiri Pandits left there to attack! Still, son Omar Abdullah lost no time in blaming the Opposition PDP for the ethnic cleansing of Pandits, holding his own Abdullah dynasty blameless. Omar also expressed a mealy-mouthed hope that the Pandits would return to the Valley, and dared Modi to visit to campaign, inadvertently underlining the communal and hostile atmosphere rife there. With friends like this, Congress does not need enemies.  

The sudden rodent images, coming from Congress missile cum dynastic port-of-last-resort, Priyanka Gandhi, is understandable. The numbers, of deserting people, and dwindling probable wins, is enough to unnerve anybody. Coupled with the massive Congress corruption and culpability, it must be the stuff of nightmares.

Senior Congressmen have given up their electoral ghost. Many have been busy buying property abroad and shifting large sums of money out of the country. And some have found themselves nominated Rajya Sabha berths.

Rae Bareli and Amethi however must be secured as a sine qua non, because a Nehru-Gandhi kicked out of Uttar Pradesh, is a Nehru-Gandhi more or less on its way to be kicked out of politics.  Nevertheless, erstwhile southern bastions being considered, even this time; Medak, in now messed up Telengana, Chikmagalur in Karnataka and Alappuzha in Kerala. Still, to the heat and dust the dynasts must go, and wheedle out another victory out of their not so quiescent ‘pocket boroughs’. Going south, for insurance, in this keenly contested election, is not going to look so good, despite a surging Narendra Modi standing from both Vadodara and Varanasi and poised to win both.

But if either Sonia or Rahul, or both, actually lose in Uttar Pradesh, despite Priyanka pitching in, it will tell quite a story of terminal decline. But, I hasten to add, this may be as much of a pipe dream as Mulayam Singh’s persistent ambition to become prime minister.

Aggressive Priyanka, like milder brother Rahul, ailing mother Sonia, and over the last decade or more, husband Robert, live behind high walls and in protected compounds, surrounded by fawning courtiers. At least Robert had his hardscrabbling back history, full of bankruptcy, suicide, and sudden death, to draw practical experience of life from. Sonia Gandhi, coming from a modest background too, well appreciates the decades of benefits she has enjoyed by marrying into the Nehru-Gandhi family.  But Robert worked quite fast to monetise his influence with the dynasts, and became an instant fat cat with many toys to match.

The Gandhis themselves, uniformly low on education, and with little knowledge of economics or governance, always play the emotional card at the hustings. They have nothing to drone on about except the dynasty itself, its ‘greatness’ and its ‘sacrifices’, because theirs is a totally self-referenced world. 

So when Priyanka emerges into the light and thunder of electoral battle, she looks, to put it in her own words ‘baffled’ and ‘spooked’, just like her brother or mother. They can’t believe a real challenge can be mounted against them democratically. Priyanka is also apparently convinced, being the wife, and proverbially the last to know, that her husband Robert, an Anglo-Indian with the Errol Flynn moustache, is blameless.

Of course, the accuracy of Robert Vadra’s own description of India, run by his mother-in-law for the last decade, being a nation of ‘Mango people living in a banana republic’, tallies with the ease with which he defrauded it. So what if there is no legal wrong doing except in minor infractions, it is the limitless influence of the Gandhis over its functionaries and appointees that he put to good use. If  Rajat Gupta can go to jail for insider trading, so can Robert Vadra for the exercise of undue influence over government chief ministers, bureaucrats, real estate companies, and others.

Priyanka too is probably not the ‘pained’ and ‘outraged’ ingénue she pretends to be, because not too long ago when Robert allowed he might join active politics, she smiled her dimpled smile, and said she thought it was extremely unlikely, as he was too much the ‘businessman’. 

But Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is presently on the offensive, posturing about her ‘big heart’ and being an ‘insider’, invoking Indira Gandhi’s determination, promising to retaliate against BJP ‘lies’. It is ironic to hear her squealing about Modi’s crony capitalism, when a major beneficiary of the very thing levels the charge!

 Meanwhile, the Congress is losing credibility at an alarming rate.  Not only are Congress politicians, high, medium and lowly Congress ‘workers’ deserting, but erstwhile Congress intellectuals, voters cum supporters, urban and rural, rich, middle-class and poor.  

Now the last hope that Congress is nursing, is a wishful barrage of ‘internal assessments’ which are far more optimistic than the opinion polls, or indeed the B JP’s internal assessments.  Congress war roomers think, improbably, that it will win 140 seats on its own, presumably out of some 160, they have tagged as Congress leaning vote-bank seats. And then, they say, they are all set to prop up a third front government.  

(1,099 words)

April 28^th, 2014

Gautam Mukherjee