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Dear Mr. Gandhi,
It’s that time of the year where one set of elections are done and dusted, while people are getting ready for the next one. And, it looks like one of your former lieutenants has already made a head start. But one election has been evading the public for the last couple of years, the Congress Presidential and CWC elections. The elections have been regularly postponed and now, it looks like they won’t be held till the end of the pandemic. But once the pandemic is over, comes a pivotal decision. Sir, for the sake of the country, please do not contest the Congress presidential election. And never do in the future.
The electoral walloping that the Congress has faced in elections in the recent past has generally shown 2 patterns. One, in the states with a Congress-BJP direct fight, the BJP has managed to effectively crush the Congress in either the elections, or by the tactics of Saam, Daam, Dand, Bhed. Looking at the next UP elections, Saam seems to have done the trick with Mr. Prasada.
Second, everywhere that the Congress has badly lost, it has still managed to retain about 20% of the votes on average nationwide. The good news is despite the drubbing, a sizable percentage of the population still is willing to vote for the Congress. The bad news, vote shares don’t matter in a loss.
P.M. Modi and the BJP have effectively used social media and ground networks to create something that is quite vital to electoral success, something that Congress under your leadership has never been able to create; a positive, smart, charismatic, and hardworking perception of Narendra Modi, and a negative, unintelligent and silver-spooned perception of you.
In all likelihood, you sir, are as smart, hardworking, and creative as your supporters say you are. And in all probability, we have all been taken for a ride regarding your perception like we have been by this Govt in other cases in the last 7 years. But unfortunately sir, all that matters is that a negative perception of you has already been set in the eyes of the public. Every single voter of the BJP finds a version of himself or herself in Narendra Modi, the aspiring David who has risen the ranks and worked hard to succeed in life trying to fight Rahul Gandhi, the Dynast Goliath who is the epitome of the system that is keeping them down. Policies, schemes, freebies will never be able to overcome this perception. And this perception is NEVER going to change.
To quote Albert Einstein, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result”. If in elections after elections, if the Congress still has the same face of leadership, it is never going to succeed. The BJP to its credit, quickly realized this more than a year before the 2014 general elections, when they sidelined their tried and tested leader L.K. Advani to make Narendra Modi the face of their campaign.
Incidentally, the only 2 major states where the Congress has recently won against the BJP in a direct fight are Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, where new faces of the Congress (Pilot and Baghel) were able to defeat the tried-and-tested C.M.s of the respective states.
Additionally, what is not helping your party is confusion and leadership paralysis. Since your public resignation as Congress President nearly 2 years ago, there has been no visible leadership at the top. All there have been are promises of a “Free and Fair” intra-party elections and a silent murmur of your return from your self-imposed Vanvas by your personal loyalists. Senior party intellectuals demanding change and stability are branded as dissenters or Gang-of-23. Potential party presidential candidates are either sidelined, or they live in fear of repercussions in the party in case you ever decide to come back as the president. And your silence has been the root cause of this confusion.
Now for the first time in 7 years, something has changed. The horrible handling of the pandemic by the Centre has caused a dent in the false perception of the Prime Minister. The opposition will need to strike hard when the iron is hot, and respectfully Mr. Gandhi, you are not the heaviest hammer.
Mr. Gandhi, if political parties want to bring change in the country, they must be amenable to change within.
If you do not let the Congress answer the question “If not Rahul, then who?”, we might never be able to answer, “If not Modi, then who?”.
The country will never forget your sacrifice.
Thanks
(Disclaimer: Not a supporter of either the BJP or the Congress. Voted NOTA in the last election.)
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.
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