Rajiv Gandhi’s defeat in 1989 inaugurated the coalition era in Indian politics. Will Rahul complete the circle, and shut the gates on multi-party coalitions forever?

How does one bridge a 25-year gap? Can Rahul Gandhi’s victory in the election of 2009 be compared with his father Rajiv’s colossal triumph of 1984? Both events triggered a surge of media reportage on a new generation taking charge of India’s destiny, of a cleaner, more efficient political culture that would do away with the shibboleths of the old.

Yet, it must be said the sense of hope and optimism is measured this time. There is none of the wild euphoria that accompanied the Rajiv mandate of December 1984 and gave the Congress over 400 seats in a Lok Sabha of 543. Perhaps India has grown up, become cautious or even cynical.
The circumstances are different. In 1984 India was still, in so many ways, a closed, insecure society. A prime minister had just been assassinated; the year itself had seen political and social turmoil — insurgency in Punjab, violence in Assam, democratically-elected governments subverted in Srinagar and Hyderabad. The mood was bitter, nasty and sombre. India clung to its New Prince as if he were a talisman.
When Rajiv told the Congress centenary conference in Mumbai in December 1985 that he was committed to ridding the party, and Indian politics, of “power brokers”, India believed him, or wanted to. It was a different age — when the magisterial sway, the command of a single supreme individual could move a whole nation and change its future.
In a sense, Rajiv had it easy. He came to power on the crest of an emotional frenzy, discovering India — through a series of visits to the interiors — only after becoming prime minister. Expectations were crazily high. When the first signs of failure and fallibility came, his political instincts were just not sharp enough to cope. The edifice crashed in three years.
Rahul has come up the harder way. When he formally entered politics — standing for election in 2004 — the Congress was on the ropes, not favoured to win. It came to power fortuitously that year as an overconfident BJP paid for poor state alliances. The Congress-led UPA government was precarious, dependent on the support and vulnerable to the blackmail of robber-baron regional allies and an obstinate, cussed Left.
Rahul didn’t join the government, didn’t take on a high-profile job. He put his head down and got to work. He travelled to the rural backwaters of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, Assam and Maharashtra, and far beyond. Wherever he went, he met poor rural folk, ordinary small-town college students, down-at-heel citizens.
Not everybody saw the virtues. Many dismissed it as naïve politics or as a quest for photo-ops. In retrospect, it must be recognised that Rahul was only seeking to rediscover the framework of old-fashioned politics. He was going to the people, to claim them as his own. His branding was perfect — a man comfortable with the masses and not devoted to the high life or to business conferences.
In a sense, the election of 2009 was Rahul’s teaser-trailer. In Uttar Pradesh, he established that a fatigue factor had set in with the prevalent political actors and voters were happy to give him, and his Congress, a chance. In doing so, they were willing to break strict caste-based barriers that had dominated the state’s polity for two decades.
In Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Madhya Pradesh, among other states, he experimented with younger candidates, taking a risk that he felt was necessary for the long term. In many cases it paid off. In Mandsaur (Madya Pradesh), Meenakshi Natarajan, an earnest 35-year-old, born to a business executive originally from Tamil Nadu, defeated a BJP veteran who had served several terms.
In Tamil Nadu itself, the formidable Vaiko was defeated by Manik Tagore, a neophyte and son of a
school-teacher, who spoke
soberly, made no references to the Tamil Tigers and had no legacy to boast of or carry around as baggage.
Admittedly, Natarajan and Tagore are exceptions. So many others of the Congress’ “Rahul generation” are simply sons and daughters of political parents and have had that head-start. Yet, grant Rahul this, he has made an attempt to change things. He has also learnt his politics bottom-up. His apprenticeship has been a longer and deeper one than his father’s. It will, presumably, allow him to take the knocks with greater equanimity than was Rajiv’s experience.
Rahul the politician has established his credentials but how much do we know about Rahul the individual and Rahul the policy-maker? That final identity is particularly important because while he has given the impression of being a diligent learner over the past three odd years, the fact is his party is already seeing him as a potential prime minister in the next three odd years.
In this period he will be expected to speak his mind on foreign policy, internal security, big-ticket structural changes in the economy. Thus far he has limited his public views to welfare, to rural development, to income redistribution, setting up an effective dole system and working with NGOs and civil society institutions.
Politically, this places him left-of-centre, but only just. The appropriation of development agencies and NGO activists by the Congress, as a means to build an alternative political cadre almost, is a strategy that Rahul has readily embraced.
However, this is also a man who carefully, even silently, backed the India-United States nuclear agreement, arguably the most dramatic rightwing swerve in the history of Indian diplomacy. He
has spoken loosely of the need for economic reform as only growth can generate the surplus that will be necessary for welfarism. Nevertheless, he has been vague on the details. India may have decided it likes Rahul Gandhi, but it still doesn’t know him enough.
Rahul, however, is working to a definite plan. As senior leader Pranab Mukherjee told a television channel just after the May 16 verdict, the party dreams of contesting all 543 seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha election.
Its individual success in Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh — fallow areas for decades — has given the Congress courage. Already, there is talk of breaking the state-level alliance with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and going it alone in Maharashtra’s Assembly elections in October 2009.
That will be the next test for the Rahul doctrine. His father’s defeat in 1989 inaugurated the coalition era in Indian politics. Will the son complete the circle, and shut the gates on multi-party coalitions forever? At some point between now and 2014, Rahul Gandhi will find out. So will the rest of India.

Go to TOP