The blurring line between celebrity and neta

“I want to crush my dreams to fulfil yours” was a statement that set me thinking.
Prima facie, a well-meaning statement. But why did it come across as inappropriate? This was said last week by Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi in his inaugural address to his party workers in Jaipur where he kick-started his campaign for 2014 and the upcoming Rajasthan assembly elections. The statement is still trending in the social networking sites. Any political party leader’s expected role is to serve the nation and its people.

Burdensome as it may sound, the politico is not expected to have any personal dreams since his only legitimate dream should be that of fulfilling the dreams of his electorate. Hence, the complete inappropriateness of the remark. When Martin Luther King said, “I have a dream…”, he was talking about a dream he had for America “as a nation that must rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed”. A speech that is the most acclaimed speech till date and leaves one gobsmacked even now.

One more reason for it being trolled for this long could be source credibility and promise mismatch. But there is another kind of mix up that we seem to be doing inadvertently. We are not sure if Rahul Gandhi is a leader or a celebrity.
Perhaps even he himself is not clear on the same. He has been anointed the leader, but all this while, it seems, he has believed he is a celebrity. 

Wikipedia defines a celebrity as a person who has a prominent profile and commands some degree of public fascination and influence in day-to-day news media. The term is often synonymous with wealth (commonly denoted as a person with fame and fortune), implied with great popular appeal, prominence in a particular field, and is easily recognised by the general public. Perfectly fits Rahul Gandhi, give or take a few words.

The same Wikipedia describes a leader as someone who influences and directs people in a way that wins their obedience, confidence, respect, and loyal cooperation in achieving a common objective.  Does Gandhi not come to mind without the Rahul in it?

Both a leader and a celebrity have followers. We like a celebrity for his/her body of work and talent. We follow him when he has consistently delivered on what was expected from him. We follow him to celebrate his success. On the other hand, we like a leader for his ideology, his philosophy and out of the box thinking to effect change. We follow him because we hope that there shall be a better future for us.

When a celebrity spouts leadership lessons it is bound to sound vacuous and horribly clichéd which is what happened with Rahul Gandhi when he addressed industry leaders at the CII Summit earlier this year.

The trouble with today’s electorate, especially the first-time voters is that a large majority may vote for a personality and not an ideology. This may not be a bad thing.

I wonder whether any political party anywhere in the world has won only because of its manifesto and philosophy alone without the personality of the leader-in-waiting influencing it in any way?  

This is true not just in India. The world is smitten with celebrities. It would be difficult to say whether it was his ideology that influenced Americans to bring Obama back to power or was it his personality? But, at least, he had an opportunity to present his ideology. It was his personality that connected his vision with the larger masses. In a way, it was his body of work that spoke for him and how he spoke about it through the Primaries and the ultimate face off, that made people like him follow him, and elect him twice in the hope of achieving a common goal.

So, it is not a bad thing, really, if people get influenced by personalities more than ideologies. If the times are such that today all of us follow a person depending on his/her celebrity status, then it is only expedient for political parties to realise that charisma does work in party cadres. Hence, they must field a candidate who has the pizzazz to do so. But never forget that a celebrity is liked by millions only because of the body of the work and talent. If a political leader has neither, he can at best be termed a ‘sell-a-pretty’.

It is time we started evaluating a leader as a true celebrity — one who has talent and has done great work to prove his celebrity status.  

(The writer is managing consultant of The Key Consumer Diagnostics Pvt Ltd, a Mumbai-based qualitative research company)