Revamp your own campaign, Rahul

It seems the Rahul Gandhi-led Congress election campaign is headed for doom. Not only have the Gandhi scion’s empty promises to Amethi’s Dalit people have been exposed as hollow and utterly forgettable, his party’s unashamed use of Sunita Koriin’s name to boost the Congress’ dwindling electoral prospects has also come out in the open. For all of Rahul’s dining and sleeping in Dalit huts and makeshift mud homes of the OBCs and the BPLs in Amethi and Rae Bareili, the Gandhi home turfs, very little has actually changed for the people living there. The icing on the unpalatable cake of Congress’ horseplay was Rahul Gandhi’s much publicised stay at Koriin’s hutment, but his deplorable amnesia over his favourite Dalit woman’s plight once the television cameras had left the site pulled the plug on Congress’ telegenic pro-poor speechifying. Clearly, Rahul has more to answer for, including not only the disgraceful performance of his party in last year’s assembly polls in four major states of the Hindi heartland, he must also shoulder the ultimate responsibility of Congress’ widening disconnect from the masses for which it claims to bat for, whether through beneficent schemes that fall short of proper implementation, or through its aam aadmi rhetoric that has now been hijacked by the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP.

By the look of it, Congress is fast-tracking its own demise and reaching for political wilderness with copycats advertorials and toothless campaigns ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. Rahul’s fading charisma has compelled the party to bring Priyanka Gandhi in the fray, but without a meaty manifesto and a thorough overhaul of its ecopolitical agenda, Congress is only a sinking ship in the severely churning sea of Indian politics. Problematically enough, the Congress’ blindness to the Gandhi scion and its dogged refusal to see beyond the dynastic glue will surely prove to be its nemeses, particularly this time since real alternatives have been put forward. Both Narendra Modi-led BJP and Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP have much more to offer to the people of India than the grand old party, which, other than its lip-service to a dehusked secularism, has practically nothing on its plate.