When Rahul Gandhi was awarded with an opportunity to speak at the university of Berkeley , I thought he would use it as a platform to show the audience in the state but importantly back here in India that he has come a long way from his old self, but it was not to be after all he got back to his old antiques. He was asked to speak on ‘Reflections on the path forward –India at 70’, but all he did was sing the same songs that he has been humming for what now seems like an age , his speech left a lot to be desired, the freshness in his speeches that once differentiated him from the old guard has vanished, he has become just another opposition member, the boy born with a Gandhian silver spoon isn’t ready to take charge.
After listening to Rahul Gandhi, it was evident that Mr. Gandhi had done his homework on BJP & Modi, but made a terrible mistake. While his jibe about dynasty hogged all the limelight, and the fact that it was a close-ended session where questions weren’t taken was discussed too, the biggest mistake of his speech somehow escaped public discussion. That fact that he had no solutions for India.
He did nothing to suggest that he can be a worthy replacement to the existing guard, a leader is not someone who asks valid questions, rather it is someone who can come up with the required solutions to the asked questions, and he did nothing to suggest that he has the solutions to the very questions he has asked of the NDA government, he has failed to establish himself as a leader of his own party let alone the country.
Rahul accused the NDA government of creating a environment of tension in the country, he further added that innocent liberal journalists are being killed in India, citizens are being lynched, Muslims are being killed on the suspicion of eating beef, for all his talks it became pretty clear that he had already strayed away from the topic of discussion & was using the stage to propagate his political vendetta, even while doing so he was only partially successful at most for all his claims were not proven , thus undermining the credibility of his arguments against the government.
The message that was conveyed by Rahul and what the people actually understood back in India were poles apart, he wanted to present himself as an alternative to NaMo, but to no avail as he himself conceded that Modi is a far better communicator than himself, its not to say that a good speaker is also a good leader but the converse of it does hold good, post Manmohan Singh Indians would never go back to support a person who can’t even put his ideas forward with conviction. The image of a country is defined by the kind of leaders it elects, so putting a guy who is totally unequipped & unprepared for the role is the last thing that the Indians would want to do.
When Rahul Gandhi said that he was ready to take up executive responsibility if the party wanted him to, I could not help but smirk, for he has been projected as the next big thing in Indian politics for the greater part of the last decade or so but still he has not taken up a post of responsibility of any telling consequence. This makes us wonder if the senior leaders themselves have lost all faith in his ability to carry the INC forward, for he has time and again blown his opportunities & has failed to add anything of any substance to the party while being in the power or in the opposition alike. He added that he needed the old brigade by his side to succeed against the NDA, that their experience is very valuable to him and the congress party, the irony in these words are for everyone to see, for he was projected as the face of the youth, but in time as his stature amongst the people has stagnated his years have piled up on him, I am amazed that he is still called a young leader, for he is definitely not a leader and his youth has already deserted him.
The very ideology on which Rahul’s political career was built has fallen flat on its face and Rahul Gandhi himself acknowledged the fact in Berkeley.
He topped it off by accepting the fact that politics of dynasty is practised in India & in no ways did he try to distance himself from this disgusting practice, rather he tried to justify his stance, if this is not called a self inflicted wound then I don’t know what is, this statement in itself is disgusting and the fact that he tried to justify his position gives us an idea about his moral ground.
Berkeley can be viewed as a missed opportunity for RaGa, a platform where he could have resurrected his rapidly falling career, this could have been his water shed moment in the states but it will be forever remembered as a so near yet so far occasion, for every valid question he asked, he managed to screw it up with a stupid statement of his own but still as they say …..All hail the Prince!
