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Rahul Gandhi needs to remember that whenever Congressmen demand for his elevation to the party president post , people of India silently demand his road map for India as Indians still remember Pt Jawaharlal Nehru gave ‘ panchsheel ’ and ‘ NAM ’ which continued to remain main ingredient of the Indian foreign policy till early eighties , Indira Gandhi gave Bangladesh which broke the back bone of the Pakistan and forced them to switch from direct war to proxy war , Rajeev Gandhi gave IT and telecom revolution while Sonia Gandhi gave RTI and MNREGA . In the name of those Congress stalwarts , he can ’ t think of getting elevated to the power corridors with ease . When we talk about these leaders , their contribution automatically starts oscillating into our minds and hence Rahul Gandhi is expected to showcase that kind of idea for India and since he is about to become Congress Party president may be before 31st of December 2016 , it ’ s better he starts giving some hint of his idea for India to counter the popularity of Narendra Modi .
To counter the criticism being propagated by his political rivals , Rahul Gandhi has timely realized the importance of social media and regular interactions with the media people . But , most heartening is the minutes being noted by his people standing behind him and the journalists means they are gathering the bunch of questions and the kind of problems that India is facing and if they are providing proper answers to him after the meeting , then such answers can be used for Rahul ’ s Idea for India . Rahul was once averse to hiring poll strategist Prashant Kishor but post 2014 Lok Sabha debacle , he has agreed to learn from his mistakes which are a good sign for his political future . However , these steps required some extension . Rahul Gandhi will have to go down the memory lane and think if he had retained leaders like Jaganmohan Reddy and Himanta Biswa Sarma , Congress Party could have been in different position ; probably they could have at least won the number of seats required for the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha .
Some people may argue that Himanta was in Congress in 2014 but they know he was only a Congressman without any responsibility and the leader was sulking and feeling sidelined by Tarun Gogoi and his son . We are deliberately putting Jaganmohan Reddy and Himanta Biswa Sarma here because these two cases give hint of paralytic information network of the Team Rahul . In both cases , Rahul relied on his information network and in both cases Congress party had to suffer huge losses . So , here he needs to work upon and develop a network which was once a hallmark of his uncle Sanjay Gandhi . A leader who is supposed to give leadership to the nation is not expected to be an emotional one . But , he or she is not expected to be ruthless too . The leader has to possess balancing power between his close ones and the important but not so close ones . He need not to go too far , the way Sonia Gandhi engaged herself with Subodh Kant Sahay is a glaring example of how to manage important but not so close party leaders .
So , it ’ s need of the hour that Rahul Gandhi should continue his flexibility while dealing with his baiters . It became visible in Punjab when he succumb to pressure exerted by Captain Amrinder Singh and asked the party high command to either announce him chief ministerial candidate or he will defect from the party with his supporters . Ironically , Captain didn ’ t keep these barbs behind the curtains . He was openly delivering such statements into the media so that nobody should come in between the high command and Captain . Had he shown this flexibility ahead of the Maharashtra assembly polls , especially when the age old BJP-Shiv Sena had announce split , things could have been better if not different from the current scenario .
So , in short , Rahul Gandhi is all set to take over party president post from Sonia Gandhi , but he must keep in mind that today ’ s Congress needs a national leader who is flexible enough to keep his Congress block intact and at the same time ahs to acceptable among the regional secular parties fighting with BJP without hitting the Congress interest . Feedback on : - reporter @ dayafterindia . com
November 16-30 , 2016 The Dayafter
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