It’s sad how Narendra Modi has set the bar so low when it comes to answerability and doing press conferences that we are now literally worshiping anything that hits slightly above the belt. And Rahul Gandhi is grimly turning out to be an example of that. There’s no argument to the fact that Rahul is candid, kind, hearty and approachable, and has garnered a lot of attention and praise over the past few days with the slew of interviews he has been doing on the sidelines of his campaign trail. But on an honest note, I’m yet to be impressed by any one single journalist who has put forth commendable and much-sought-after questions or one interview where Rahul perhaps has catered to some larger pressing concerns to my satisfaction.
And if you feel anything close to what I do, I suggest you watch Arfa Khanum Sherwani’s (of The Wire) interview with Rahul which was a paltry 13 minuter but perhaps the best of them all so far. Her firm line of questioning is what mandates a real interview that we’ve been missing all along. Questions about why he thought it was important to stay away from the administration for the last ten years; why Congress, the principle opposition failed to question the intelligence failure in Pulwama were spot on.
Her questions pertaining to the pogroms on Indian soil and how the ensnared political class escapes every single time and whether the Congress party, if it comes to power is willing to draft a law against mass violence were laudable, considering ‘The horror of 1984’ which remains a perpetual issue for the Congress and the past five years of mob violence witnessed in India under the leadership of a man at the helm of the 2002 Gujrat pogrom.
Nevertheless, Rahul Gandhi’s answers have left me high and dry, viciously seeking more. They were evasive and circumventing, to say the least. I also wonder why he wound up so quickly with Arfa, though there has always been that time constraint in these interviews before his chopper took off to be fair to him. But that’s the whole point. We can love him all we want but cannot be falling over ourselves to be overly fair towards him. People going gaga over pyara RaGa need a greater level of introspection. The moot point here, in fact, is how we as a nation have stopped asking those bigger questions and seeking satisfactory responses from our leaders. This “Kuch nahi ke badle kuch toh mil raha hai” (Something is better than nothing) attitude has to go and it is indeed a disservice to the country and one’s own intellect. This should seize from being the new normal.
Rahul’s campaigns have taken him through close to a hundred rallies so far and they have all borne the same old repetitive humdrum of his “eternal constants” that he somehow glued himself to: Nyay, the plot-changing story of him consulting his think tank to come up with Nyay, how Nyay would help jump-start the economy, Rafale, Anil Ambani, Keeping farmers out of jail in case of a loan default, Kisan Budget, GST, employment aka promise to fill up the 22 lakh Sarkari vacancies, women’s reservation in the parliament and Central sector jobs.
At one point I was even fascinated by his ability to repeat the same docket three to four times a day on close to a hundred rallies, undeterred, unperturbed and completely focused on the issues he wanted this election to be about: beating Modi’s game of febrile Nationalism and Balakot, almost like Arjuna aiming for the bird’s eye, a comparison he himself has occasionally metaphorized. These are, no doubt, the core issues and uncontestedly so in that sense. But Rahul had literally not said a word different in these hundred rallies across the country so far or tried to capture the attention of the larger audience by being more engaging and spontaneous and in fact a little more deeper.
His sister Priyanka Gandhi, on the other hand, has been able to achieve that, by not limiting herself to the stated topics her brother had strictly adhered to. Her verbatim had taken the higher ground of citizens’ rights and the missing power of critical thinking. When she speaks about democracy, people’s rights, accountability of the larger powers, answerability of the leaders to their constituents, encouraging people to put them politicians on the spot and raise questions that matter, the menace of stray cattle in Uttar Pradesh to the local farmers, teachers, Asha workers in despair, and more importantly certain fundamental promises of the Congress’ manifesto-like free education in all Government Schools till 12th grade and free public healthcare, she most certainly strikes a deeper chord.
To me she even has a better way of describing the Nyay Scheme where she introduces the scheme as a facilitator of basic financial support to the people in distress so that their principal needs are met and they have a better chance of trying to improve their life circumstances, while her brother, on the other hand, has constantly described such a majorly socialist and ambitious scheme as something being done to balance Anil Ambani’s unjust bank account. This no doubt begets some cheer-leading from the crowds and the party workers but reduces the significance of such a massive and historic idea that you beautifully call Nyay.
Rahul’s rhetoric, therefore, leaves you asking for more. And if one has been observing his interviews keenly it strikes you that he hasn’t said anything that he did not during these campaign speeches. In essence, he has literally repeated what he has been saying all along in the format of a questionnaire and it’s unfortunate that interviewers allow him to do that but not squeeze him for more.
My basic disappointment with Rahul has been of how he has completely sidelined the issue of mob lynchings which was the greatest of the terrors manifested under the BJP regime grossly ruining the peace, sense of security which is the primary want of every citizen and the social fabric of this country in the past five years. Minorities: Muslims, Dalits were lynched to death, journalist, activists and rationalists were murdered in broad daylight, students, teachers and authors were incarcerated and stifled with sedition charges.
And I wonder why Rahul, in spite of the Congress manifesto promising to draft an anti-lynching law has not thought of it as an important point to elaborate upon. Why did he not want to tell the people of India that under him such violence and brazen annihilation of human rights would not be tolerated? Is it not the real kind of grit, demeanor and strength we solicit from a man contending to be the future Prime Minister? This was exactly what Narendra Modi and his bigoted stature of leadership stood opposed to. Why then would Rahul not see how important it was for him to come clean on these issues?
These concerns, in fact, were almost willfully sidestepped by him like someone literally told him that they won’t win him any votes or that they are forbidden to be addressed for some God forsaken reason. How is law and order which is the basic pillar of any democracy not an important issue to be talked about? And if Rahul truly believes that his vote bank could be at stake if he picked up on these issues, he did rather lose such an election.
While Rahul himself chose to obliterate these topics from his bulleted campaign agenda it was certainly the job of the press to have done that. It’s almost unbelievable how in the past ten days every interviewer including the bona fide of them all, Ravish Kumar of NDTV, who got a full 28 minuter, perhaps the lengthiest of slots bagged so far, failed to raise these question as well. Be it about the mob lynchings, about the compromised situation of law and order in the country, about healthcare and education, about the tormenting situation of the minorities who constantly find themselves under some form of attack, about the highly petitioned police reforms, about Najeeb’s grieving mother and those unanswered questions about her missing child, about the trampling of University spaces by the Sangh or about the zero game plan of the Congress to revive the succumbing environmental health of the nation.
To question and then to counter question until we knew where Rahul stood on these issues was extremely important and could indeed have presented us certain defining moments of his level of conviction. But sadly, every journalist so far has posed the same set of questions which did not deviate a mote from Rahul’s campaign jargon.
It’s utterly disappointing how it’s not just the journos anymore but we as a collective nation have set the bar so low that Rahul could now very well be eulogized for just doing interviews helter-skelter. It’s time journalists pulled their socks up and improved their catechize to let the country have an opportunity to hear what they haven’t heard before and what they are yearning to here. And Rahul no doubt carries a benign heart, speaks with a clean tongue and has lots of love to give. But it’s time he revealed those deeper layers of his mind. A mind that in all probability is going to occupy the top chair sooner or later.