This is not about the surname that the
country is obsessed with currently. This is about the surname the country has
been used to for almost a century.
This is about Rahul Gandhi.
Rahul Gandhi? Yes!
Stories abound about sports persons,
nations, corporate czars who rose like a phoenix from the ashes. But, sadly, we
don’t talk about politicians that way.
Politics is actually a cruel field. It is
ruthless.
If you fail in an examination, you can
write the same the next year. If you miss being selected in a sports team, you
might still have a chance the next year. If you miss a promotion in a
particular year, you might get a chance the next year.
But, in politics? Once you lose, you are
out for FIVE years. FIVE long years!
Imagine being RG.
You are the scion of the oldest party of
the country.
Right from 2011, your party is losing
elections, state after state. Your family’s stranglehold and writ which ran
over the party is losing its grip.
You are seen as the political novice who
has mistakenly entered politics.
You mess up massively an interview with one
of India’s leading Television personalities.
Your party loses the Lok Sabha
elections. You get as many seats across
the country as what your dad had won in one state (Under Rajeev Gandhi,
Congress won 83 of the 85 seats on 1984 in UP).
You become a Social media darling for the
wrong reasons, there are more trolls and memes about you than that of all the
politicians put together.
Any ordinary mortal would have quit if any
one of the above happened. But for RG to
take all these blows and still survive is epic.
He has taken all these blows on his chin,
never lamented the fact that he was being unfairly targeted.
And, is slowly but surely clawing back into
public consciousness, in a positive way.
What works for him is that he in amiable,
approachable and he is playing the Avis line “we try harder” smartly.
The Gujarat state assembly elections were
the first glimpse of the new RG.
His campaign lacked the shrillness, the
acidity, the diatribe of the opposition. His was a smooth grass root level campaigning.
He did not have mega rallies. Instead there were street level discussions,
where the voters felt there was someone to listen to them.
While Congress lost Gujarat again, Rahul
won. He demonstrated that he could take on the opposition in its den, do enough
to scare it.
The last few election results (though bye
–elections) have shown that his narrative is winning support.
As the ruling dispensation gets trapped in
its own creations of Padmaavat and PNB, it opens the doors for the phoenix to
rise.
But, RG has proven that he has the rare
skills to succeed - Never giving up, tenacity, resilience.
And, oodles of patience.
While only the voters will decide the
winner of elections, 2019 and beyond, RG is
slowly carving out the space for himself and his party.
To be the King!
