Outlook English - Print Subscribers Copy Outlook English, 16 April 2018 | Page 14

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Coming Of Age
ON E-MAIL Vanet DeSouza: This
of India. That makes it a national treas-
ure—and the present office bearers of
the party are its custodians, including
Rahul and Sonia Gandhi. They are not
the owners of the party. Sadly, this
thought is missing from the head of the
typical ‘Congressi’. This can be gauged
from their conduct and public utter-
ances. Under the garb of secularism,
most Congressmen are actually com-
munal and divisive. This statement is
completely justified, one only has to
count the number of Congress leaders
who have left the party to join the BJP
on such flimsy grounds as not getting a
ticket or an office-bearer’s post. Most
importantly, they all are arrogant.
Their arrogance was spilling over when
they were in office.
refers to Raga Darbari On High Notes,
your cover story on Rahul Gandhi.
While the sensationalist PM Modi is
taking the public for a ride, Rahul is
winning hearts with his simplicity. But
the Congress is still not able to
convince people of its capabilities. It
has also not been able to expose the
BJP’s gross mismanagement in states
like Chhattisgarh and MP. The BJP
government is performing poorly, but
its leaders are good at distracting the
public’s focus by making use of their
twisted rhetoric. Rahul needs to devise
a workable counter to this.
CHENNAI Kangayam R.
Narasimhan: The proof of the pudding
is in the eating. Apart from winning
Punjab and a good number of assembly
seats in Gujarat, Rahul has not done
much to elicit attention. While he
fought ferociously in Gujarat, he lost
lamentably in the North-East. In UP
and Bihar he just played the role of a
junior partner. The real litmus test for
the Congress president will be the
Karnataka assembly polls, where he is
playing for high stakes by mixing poli-
tics and religion. If Rahul loses
Karnataka, his objective of working
with like-minded parties to evolve a
common workable programme to def­
eat the BJP might come a cropper.
Other parties, having their own politi-
cal orientation, might be chary of acc­
epting Rahul as their leader. In the
Congress plenary session, Rahul spent
more time targeting Modi than in spell-
ing out a clear alternative for the coun-
try’s major economic problems like
unemployment, farmers’ distress or
education. However, I thought that the
economic resolution recommending
the imposition of 5 per cent cess on the
country’s one per cent richest was the
highlight of the session, for it could
April 2, 2018
narrow the gap between the rich and
the poor. Rahul has compared the
Congress to the Pandavas from the
Mahabharata. But if the Congress
rea­lly wants to beat the BJP, Rahul
must try and piece together a credible
anti-BJP coalition to be able to win the
Kurukshetra war of 2019.
CHENNAI Akash Verma: I refer to
Game of the Ashramites. It’s interesting
to see the extremely low bar Rahul
Gandhi has to clear in order to become
cover story material for media outlets
like Outlook. He gives an ‘ok’ speech
(god knows who wrote it) at best and
visits a few temples, and the media
thinks he is PM material.
BANGALORE Gilbert D’Souza: As
you rightly pointed out, most
Congressmen/women are not aware of
the heritage they have gained, acciden-
tally. The Congress was the political
party responsible for the independence
ON E-MAIL Pramod Srivastava: The
optimism around the SP-BSP camps for
a bright electoral future is understand-
able given their recent wins in the UP
bypolls. But what is the Congress party
celebrating after losing its deposits in
all the bypolls? It only makes for a case
of “Begani Shaadi Mein Abdullah
Diwana” (beating the drums in some-
one else’s wedding).
ON E-MAIL Ravi: A ‘combative’
Rahul Gandhi! So says Outlook. While
reading the article, I had those mom­
ents of doubt about whether I was
reading an INC newsletter or a news
magazine. It eventually dawned upon
me: Outlook is efficiently handling its
job as an unofficial mouthpiece of the
Congress. It is not mere chance that
they think Rahul has come of age. It is
also not a coincidence that this issue
came out around April fool’s day. The
joke’s on us, I guess.
All About Timing
HYDERABAD P. Arihanth: This ref­
ers to Minority Position (April 2). It is
one-liner
ON E-MAIL Jitendra Kamath
The ‘boy who cried wolf’ can only go so far as to be patronised once in a while by a media house.
14 OUTLOOK 16 April 2018