Narendra Modi cannot afford to sit on his laurels as the margin of votes declined despite his party’s victory in Gujarat elections, recently. Rahul Gandhi needs ha a daunting task ahead of him. Navodita analyses the two different styles of leadership with a to-do list for both the leaders, in the weekly column. A Different Truths exclusive.
Ahead of the state elections in eight states, it’s time to regalvanise popular support for both Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi as powerful political leaders in their own right. Here’s a look at how their leadership has worked to pick up threads after the Gujarat elections last year and what needs working on for them to provide better leadership to each of their parties and coalitions ahead of 2019 as the Mahayagya.
As far as Rahul Gandhi is concerned, it seems the political karyakartas (rank and file) and leaders within the party are begging him to reinvent the party. They believe his politics has become sharper and his tweets smarter. They do feel more confident about him as their leader and believe that he did give Narendra Modi a run for his money although Modi walked away with the final victory. The anti-incumbency factor together with BJP’s complacency and arrogance put the ruling party on its back foot. All the notable communities in the state (the Patidars under Hardik Patel’s leadership, the Other Backward Classes under Alpesh Thakore, and Dalits galvanised by Jignesh Mewani) vocally took stands against the BJP. There were farmers suffering from an agrarian crisis, youth facing rising unemployment, and traders and businessmen agitated by demonetization and GST all coming in to voice their dissent. What more could the opposition have wished for?
Daunting Task for Rahul
However, Rahul’s to-do list is tougher and longer than that of Modi. After the Gujarat elections, one thing is sure – Rahul is hailed as the party’s sole survivor. They refuse to accept that much of the vote in Gujarat for the Congress was a result of a negative vote against the BJP. The party that has been reduced to the ruling just Karnataka, Punjab, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Puducherry still lacks a positive agenda that tells people what it can or will do if voted to power. Its one-point programme for the moment is an anti-Modi plank, which may not work for too long. To begin with, Congress needs to work on developing its grassroots cadre of committed workers. Most of the old Congress leaders are hangers-on or spongers, who 
simply wait to get a party ticket, make a fast buck when in tenure and lose the next election which does not mean much to them as they have used one tenure to adequately fill their personal coffers. They thus view their party membership as a means to turn low investments into high returns. Politics is a vocation for the Congress workers while for the BJP it’s a passion and a means of service to the people.
It is high time that the Congress party leaders – both old and new stop basking in the splendor of the past. Glorifying the Congress bringing up its 133-year old past with participation in the Indian national movement is like India saying it is better than the US or China simply because it had a Golden Age under the Guptas. Rahul knows he needs to start from the scratch projecting new leadership and that is why in Gujarat election his support to new faces like Hardik Patel, Jignesh Mewani, and Alpesh Thakore is a part and parcel of his long-term strategy of building the party support anew and garnering support even from independent candidates. The party may put up a good show in Karnataka or even retain the state in the elections in May this year.
Modi Halting his Reform Agenda
The BJP, on the other hand, underestimates the significance of its reduced margin in Modi’s home state. The depleted support for the BJP throws up obvious warning signals for the party, and enough has already been said about it. It remains to be seen how Modi will revamp the party in order to prevent the Gujarat-style dent in the vote. The big question is will Modi go ahead with his reform agenda which may have the potential to rub in the voter on the wrong side. Demonetisation effects already led to long discomforting queues yet he got away with it, along with his subsequent successes in UP and Uttar Pradesh state elections in a big way. In Gujarat, he got away with the wrath of the traders whose 
businesses were disrupted post-GST. It should not be that the BJP mistakes should translate into the Congress’ gain. It seems Modi is going to put a full-stop to the reform agendas just yet. He may wait and watch how his three other big reforms are going to unfold for the Indian economy- privatization of Air India, recapitalization of banks suffering from bad loans, and the new bankruptcy law. Yet he may answer farmers’ woes, unemployment, and rising prices through sops that may be announced in February budget.
Modi also needs to rein in the fringe groups stoking hatred towards minorities. Modi definitely can’t rest on his laurels and hope to win elections that are coming up in states and to the Lok Sabha, while Rahul definitely needs to find new faces of leadership in various states and at the national level.
©Navodita Pande
Photos from the Internet
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