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| Edited By: Neerja Chowdhury |Source: DNA |Updated: Nov 21, 2013, 01:44 PM IST
When Rahul Gandhi told the 150 Congress spokespersons, gathered at Delhi’s Jawahar Bhavan Monday morning, that building the party’s image will automatically boost the personal image of an individual, he was taking a line contradistinct from the one adopted by Narendra Modi.
The focus of the BJP has been totally on an individual — Modi, Modi and Modi. He is the pole of their campaign and its poll message.
If BJP chief Rajnath Singh’s words in the US on Sunday are anything to go by, Modi may well be anointed as the party’s prime ministerial candidate sooner rather than later.
By exhorting his party colleagues to “project the party”, Rahul Gandhi was also pointing to the possibility — without saying it in so many words — that the Congress may not project one individual as its prime ministerial candidate but be led into the polls by the collectivity called the Congress.
While Rahul Gandhi made no bones about the need to “tackle” the propaganda against the government, he also made a pitch for pursuing “positive politics”, unlike the negativity displayed on the other side, and advised youngsters to learn from the experience of “elders”. Again, he was drawing a contrast with the BJP, where senior leaders like LK Advani, who built the party, are being given the short shrift.
The Congress vice president, who is finally taking charge of the party —the two-day session to enable partymen to effectively use Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp is Rahul’s show — also gave an idea of what could be the theme song of the Congress in the forthcoming general elections. He urged partymen and women to take the message of the Food Security Bill and the “UPA’s growth story” to far corners of the country.
The Congress will naturally try and shift the public discourse away from corruption and the series of scams that have eroded its credibility, and showcase its social welfare agenda and rights-based framework that it has put into place in the last nine years, and will continue to do so, with its determination to get the Food Security Bill passed in the monsoon session of Parliament.
Having softened the JD(U) and the DMK so that they put their weight behind the bill, it has now stepped up efforts to bring Mulayam Singh Yadav on board and there is widespread speculation that the CBI is about to close the disproportionate wealth case against the SP chief and his two sons, Akhilesh and Prateek.
Interestingly, Rahul not only spoke about food security about also tagged along with it the “UPA’s growth story” . This showed that an understanding has been reached between Sonia Gandhi and Dr Manmohan Singh that both issues would be flagged and both leaders could now pursue their pet agendas.
However, the two-day workshop to prepare 150 Congress spokespersons on social media — five from each state have been specially selected for the job — comes late in the day, considering Narendra Modi has been at it for the last three years. Even the App called “Khidki” which was flagged off on Monday has apparently taken around four years to get off the ground, and it took the party brass almost a year to clear its name “Khidki”!
Late or otherwise, that the Congress is now getting around to the new media shows that it is aware that it has to target the urbanites, youth and netizens who were it mainstay in the 2004 and 2009 polls but who have drifted away from it in recent years.
At the height of the Anna movement two years ago, union minister Salman Khurshid had openly admitted the advantage that had accrued to Hazare and his team because of the effective way they had used the social media, something the Congress had not paid adequate attention to.
Another objective of the two-day workshop, with speakers like union ministers P Chidambaram, KV Thomas, Jairam Ramesh, Anand Sharma, Manish Tewari and Shashi Tharoor, was obviously to ensure that the national party will give the lead about the message of the day, and its state units would follow the lead, the two moving in sync. And that leaders do not speak in many voices which is happening at the moment, depriving the party of projecting one clear line.
There have been numerous instances of AICC general secretary Digvijay Singh saying something, which is clarified later by Janardan Dwivedi, or the words are just left hanging there, with people wondering whether it is the Congress’ official line or another example of the Congress dual track policy.
Ambika Soni had to distance the party from Shakeel Ahmed’s tweet that the 2002 Gujarat riots had led to the creation of the Indian Mujahideen, which drew huge flak from the BJP that the Congress was playing with the country’s security. The consolidation of Hindus on any issue is not going to help the Congress, only Modi.
This, and Rahul Gandhi’s measured words, and low key stance on Monday, raised another question, whether the Congress is getting second thoughts about its earlier strategy when it was targeting Modi on everything, in the process making him larger than life, and the central issue of the coming elections, thereby playing into his hands?
