Rahul Gandhi must ask a fundamental question about his politics

Rahul is focused on generating negativity about PM Modi and his party. He doesn’t realise that he must also address the negativity his rivals have generated about him for two decades.

Lok Sabha LoP Rahul Gandhi | Ankit Roy | ThePrint

Guess when Union home minister Amit Shah went abroad the last time. In 2006, as per his official website. Is it that he hates foreign soils or climes? Of course not. It’s because he is a 24/7 politician. He doesn’t take breaks—not even within India. That’s what makes him what he is—a formidable politician who is respected and/or feared as much by his friends and foes in politics as by civil servants in his ministries.

You may wonder what this yardstick of foreign travels would say about Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He has made over 150 foreign trips in 11 years. Does that make his political commitment any less? Not at all. Modi’s foreign visits are also a part of his role as a 24/7 politician. These visits go into his branding as a ‘Vishwaguru’ back home.

What should we make of Rahul Gandhi’s foreign tours? On 6 September, five days after the Congress leader completed his yatra in Bihar, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took a dig at him for ‘slipping away’ yet again ‘on a clandestine vacation in Langkawi, Malaysia’.

“Looks like the heat and dust of Bihar’s politics was too much for the Congress Yuvraj, who had to rush off for a break… while people struggle with real issues, Rahul Gandhi is busy perfecting the art of disappearing and vacationing,” wrote BJP IT department chief Amit Malviya in an X post.

A few days later, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) shot off a letter to Gandhi and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, expressing serious concern about the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha violating security protocol during his foreign visits. For good measure, the letter specified the dates of these travels to six countries—Italy, Vietnam, Dubai, Qatar, the UK, and Malaysia—in the last nine months.

A non-serious politician

It’s not the first time that Gandhi’s foreign visits have become a matter of public debate. The BJP has been highlighting his frequent trips for years. The idea, obviously, is to paint him as a reluctant or non-serious politician who loves foreign lands. One can understand if Gandhi’s friends and admirers call it cynical politics.

After all, how can you blame an individual for taking breaks to maintain work-life balance? If he prefers foreign locations, so what? If a lecturer, banker, corporate executive, or journalist can take a break, what’s wrong with Gandhi doing the same? These questions and arguments do have merit. That Gandhi continues to fly abroad frequently, ignoring barbs from political rivals, also suggests that he does not even want to be seen as a 24/7 politician.

For all one knows, Congress strategists think Indian youth identify more with a different kind of leader—an idealist, bike-driving, T-shirt wearing merchant of love with six packs who can deliver talks at foreign universities. There are talks about his popularity on Instagram, Facebook and other platforms.

All these things may be true, but they aren’t really translating into the Congress party’s vote share that has remained almost stagnant over the last three Lok Sabha elections—19.52 per cent in 2014, 19.66 per cent in 2019, and 21.4 per cent in 2024. Even the marginal gain of 1.74 percentage points in 2024 (and also a gain 47 seats over the 2019 tally of 52) has to be seen in the context of the Congress being a part of the grand alliance, INDIA. A congress leader can argue that the party contested 93 seats less—328 in 2024 against 421 in 2019—and so the point about the stagnation in the vote share may be misleading. Maybe, but the Congress gaining from the Opposition unity can’t be disputed either. The party’s performance in subsequent Assembly elections also doesn’t suggest that.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that the Congress could have secured 2-3 per cent more votes if it had contested more seats. But that would also be seen as stagnation for a party whose lowest vote share since Independence and before 2014 was 25.82 per cent in the 1998 parliamentary election.

Obviously, Gandhi’s brand of politics and his attempted image makeover haven’t translated into votes for the Congress, no matter the hype and the hope of his fandom. It’s also a fact that PM Modi, despite his declining popularity graph, is still far ahead of Gandhi when it comes to people’s faith in him as a national leader. Asked to choose the leader best-suited as the prime minister in India Today’s latest ‘Mood of the Nation’ survey, 52 per cent opted for Modi and 25 per cent for Gandhi. So, what is it that Gandhi is missing here?

Focused on the wrong negatives

In an interaction with a political consultant last week, I got a sense of what might be driving Gandhi’s politics. As per surveys by the consultant, people’s votes are swung more by negative emotions. So, a leader is likely to be judged more by his follies or failures than by his virtues or achievements. That’s why, the consultant said, most of his focus is on immediately addressing any negative issue surrounding a leader. In 2014, did the people vote more against Manmohan Singh or more for Narendra Modi? Both emotions were certainly at play, but which one was more dominant is difficult to say. We had rather easy answers in the past. The people toppled the Indira Gandhi-led government in 1977 primarily because of their dislike for her—not because they wanted Jayaprakash Narayan (Morarji Desai, eventually) to be the prime minister. In 1989, the dominant anti-Rajiv Gandhi sentiments endeared VP Singh to voters.  

Rahul Gandhi is convinced that negative emotions play a larger role in dictating people’s voting behaviour. Or so it seems from his campaign strategy in the run up to both 2019 and 2024 elections. Almost the entire focus of his campaigns has been on projecting PM Modi in a negative light—from ‘chowkidar chor hai’ slogan to jibes at ‘56-inch chest’ to ‘murder’ of the Constitution. ‘Vote chori’ is only the latest.

Given that the BJP’s tally came down to 240 seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Congress strategists must be feeling emboldened. They may want to have a re-look at the BJP’s vote shares—31.34 per cent in 2014, 37.7 per cent in 2019, and 36.9 per cent in 2024. After 10 years of the BJP’s rule at the Centre, the ruling party’s vote share went down by less than 1 percentage point: 0.8. And the Congress’ vote share went up by 1.74 percentage points. The difference between the vote shares of the two parties was still 15.5 per cent—a huge gap.

What the political consultant was trying to say was the need to address the negative sentiments, if any, against a leader. This holds true for every leader, be they in the ruling or the opposition party. So, you know now that this consultant doesn’t work for Rahul Gandhi. While the Congress leader is entirely focused on trying to generate negativity about PM Modi and his party, he doesn’t seem to realise that he also needs to address the negativity that his rivals have generated about him over the last two decades.

For instance, he can’t afford to be seen as a non-serious politician. Making an issue of his foreign trips may be cynical, but it’s politics at the end of the day. A section of the urban, middle-class, liberal, aspirational people may find it perfectly alright. The poor and the underprivileged may not get the same message, though. They may also be aspirational, but probably not enough to identify themselves with a high-flying globetrotter. It’s nobody’s case that a leader shouldn’t travel abroad, but he must find a way to counter the rivals’ attempt to paint him as a non-serious politician.

This is just one example. PM Modi’s principal challenger should know the things about him that keep the voters away from him and his party. He must also know how to address those negative things. Rahul Gandhi can do that only when he admits to himself that while the 2024 Lok Sabha elections were a setback to PM Modi, they were no victory for the Congress.

We have discussed the numbers above. The next step, of course, is for Gandhi to ask himself: ‘What’s wrong with my politics?’ He can’t ask the people around him. They are all yes men and women. They are the ones who keep him in a make-believe world. Rahul Gandhi must fire them first if he wants to get an honest answer.

DK Singh is Political Editor at ThePrint. He tweets @dksingh73. Views are personal.

(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)