Rahul Gandhi - Failure Analysis To Improve Learning

Failure analysis to improve learning is not a bad idea at all. That is what Rahul Gandhi is currently doing in the family backyards of Amethi and Rae Bareli. He is finally forced to listen to people who count. People on the ground! And they aren’t making music for his ears. I actually couldn’t find a good antonym for ‘Evolution’. ‘Devolution’ doesn’t exactly fit as an antonym. So the best I could come up with as a sequel to a previous post titled ‘Evolving the Gandhi’ was ‘Dissolving the Gandhi’. That one was about how NDTV wanted us to believe RG had evolved and was decimating every opponent in UP. This one is a lot more humble because it’s not nice to rub salt into wounds. So has the man learned anything? Well, first of all the Narcissist seems to be without his sycophant in chief, Digvijay Singh, for a while. If that riddance is permanent then it’s definitely is a good start. But has the narc himself changed any?

“It was a thoughtful, mature speech by young leader Rahul Gandhi. If you closed your eyes and listen to the voice, one could hear echoes of Rajiv Gandhi speaking 25 years ago..”. That was none other than Psychophant Chidambaram during the plenary session of the Congress in December 2010. And no, there’s no spelling error in the name. Any intelligent man would be seriously offended by such sycophancy, but RG either didn’t mind or let it pass. Then the titles of Yuvraj, Prince and all that probably led RG to believe all the nonsense being spread by a media fed and doctored by the ‘spinsters’ around him. Arrogance was further on display when a group of villagers from Ralegan Sidhi, Anna Hazare’s hometown, were led to believe that they were invited by RG for a meeting in Delhi. Sure, they turned up in Delhi in October 2011, only to be told no such meeting was scheduled and were sent back. That was an opportunity to build bridges with Anna but dealt with undiplomatically.

The list of extraordinarily silly utterances by RG  will make a very long list. There is a departure from the past though. For once, RG stepped up and stated he accepted responsibility for the thrashing in UP. What after that? Has he stopped uttering gibberish? Hardly! In a meeting in Delhi to analyse the UP disaster, to an angry member claiming Congress paid a price for ignoring upper castes, he proclaimed “I am a Brahmin too”. That gaffe was enough for another round of jokes on the social network and even in the MSM. That done, last week of April, he rushes off to Satara district in Maharashtra to visit drought-hit farmers and has lunch with some. Seriously, at age 41 do you have to visit every stricken area to understand problems? Droughts have been a permanent problem in India at some place or the other. And what do farmers have to say about his visit? “He has come, his father had come, Indira Gandhi had come but nothing has ever happened”. And Prithviraj Chavan, the CM of Maharashtra, tags along with RG on his trip like a small-time assistant.

Symbolic theatre like dressing up as a muslim or a tribal or eating at Dalit homes do not entice or impress voters anymore. It may have worked for RG’s grandmother and father but doesn’t work anymore. Even his greatest promoters in the media like Barkha Dutt of NDTV or Vinod Sharma of Hindustan Times have shut up after his moronic display and the UP results. Oh and where are the ones who cooed “She is so charming, so natural, should be in politics”! Well, that was about Priyanka Vadra who has simply disappeared from the scene after the elections for peaceful resort locations. Let’s see if she surfaces during the monsoon. In what should now be the most serious confrontation with truth for RG has to be his current visit to Amethi. For meetings to analyse the UP debacle RG had come prepared to give the little people a pasting but instead had to face a barrage of unexpected angry retorts from his own Congress workers.  All this came in response to Rahul's repeated warnings about taking action against erring party workers during the March election. Here are excerpts from Rediff.com

"Rahulji, you may fix the responsibility on us, but don't absolve yourself of the larger responsibility for the debacle." … According to an insider, one of the party workers in Salon, where the party nominee lost miserably, went to the extent of accusing Rahul of depending solely on "middlemen". He even sought to ask Rahul, can you recognise and name five workers who were closely involved with the electioneering process," to which Rahul confessed apologetically, "sorry". "How is it that your own party leader Pramod Tiwari managed to do so much for his constituency in the neighbourhood," asked another worker, leaving Rahul completely stunned. (That, in reference to lack of any development work in Amethi).

"What we needed urgently was ruthless surgery by plugging the loopholes and by restructuring the party well before the crucial Lok Sabha elections in 2014," observed Binda Prasad, the head of Chatoh Block in Salon assembly constituency. "It is high time our top leaders prepare themselves to listen to harsh truths if they sincerely want the party to stand up on its feet again," he added.

While accusing every other party of playing communal politics the UP election proved once and for all that the Congress is the most communal party in India and is hell bent on dividing the nation on religious and communal and caste lines. While he was visiting drought-prone Satara, RG’s mother was surprisingly charming the Lingayat community in Karnataka. If RG really wants to accept responsibility for anything he has to first act on something. First, learn about India and Indians. I mean seriously learn. People are not fools. Secondly, sack nation-dividers like Salman Khurshid, Beni Prasad Verma, Sriprakash Jaiswal who campaigned on communal lines. And, of course, he has to permanently get rid of muck-spewing Digvijay Singh. That’s asking for too much. His latest aide is a Jenny-come-lately called Meenakshi  Natarajan ,Congress MP, who wants to gag the media and wants a regulatory body with sweeping powers to ban and punish media. Hardly the wisdom learned from failures in choosing aides I would say.

Manish Tewari, in a debate last night on presidential candidates, suggested that in a nation of youth someone younger may be a better choice than APJ Kalam. Dr. Subramanian Swamy who was also on the debate pointed out to Mr.Head-To-Toe that it’s not how old you are but whether you are able to “inspire the youth” that matters. For a so-called ‘youth-icon’ Rahul Gandhi has failed miserably to inspire any confidence in anyone, young or old. Apart from a terrible poverty of knowledge RG is also handicapped by an equally severe poverty of ideas. Unfortunate, I would say, for a man who had so many opportunities. Another lesson RG must learn - whatever the media hypes, the opposite is usually the result. Failure analysis to improve learning is a good exercise, except that it has a flip side – the acronym is FAIL!