Republic TV has reported that on his trip/ vacation to Europe, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi met with renowned Harvard professor and political consultant, Steve Jarding. Reportedly, Rahul Gandhi finalised a deal with Jarding to manage Congress’ poll strategy for 2019 general elections. It has also been learnt that this was a very secretive meeting and even the Congress media and publicity team was not taken in the loop. This is not for the first time that the Congress has desperately tried taking help from foreign sources and teams for its election campaign. Earlier, a Cambridge Analytica whistleblower had named Congress as one of its clients. Cambridge Analytica was involved in a massive data breach controversy. It turned out to be a humiliating moment for the Congress.
Bringing Steve Jarding on board for party’s campaign reflects upon Rahul Gandhi’s desperation to somehow turnaround things which currently seem to be going against him. A professor at the Harvard University since 2004, Jarding has been involved in management of political campaigns since the 1980s. He has been a part of several political campaigns in the US including US Senate, gubernatorial and presidential campaigns for various Democratic candidates. He is also believed to have held a post with the Democratic party at least once. Most recently, he is reported to have worked on the campaign for Hillary Clinton who went on to lose to Trump during the presidential polls. He is also said to have managed the political campaign of former Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Jarding is also not new to India. Last year, he had managed Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav’s poll campaign for a second term in Uttar Pradesh. However, it turned out to be a dramatic failure and the Akhilesh Yadav led party was reduced to rubble. SP ally Congress had a different poll strategist but suffered a similar fate in face of BJP’s landslide victory in the state of Uttar Pradesh.
The Congress must be hopeful that Jarding will finally bring the grand old party back on track. Ever since Rahul Gandhi came at the forefront, its fortunes have nosedived. However, it seems that the Congress president has once again got it wrong. Jarding’s ill fated campaign for Akhilesh Yadav in 2017 went on to show that western political strategists have no idea of how to carry out a political campaign in India. In fact, India’s political landscape is far more intricate than that of the US. How caste politics plays a big role in elections in India is well known. Moreover, we have seen how even the most seasoned of politicians are at times unable to decipher which way a particular ethnic group will vote. Therefore, it would be quite unfair to expect that Jarding will be able to understand these complexities of Indian politics in a short span of eight months. Apart from this, a major part of India’s population is still not on the internet which makes it all the more difficult for Jarding to devise a political campaign that reaches every voter. Most importantly, the product (Rahul Gandhi) that Jarding has been asked to sell is an unsellable product. Rahul Gandhi is an outright failure and has nothing to show for himself. No political consultant can lead someone like Rahul Gandhi to an electoral victory. We have already seen how managing the political campaign for Congress in 2017 Uttar Pradesh elections had turned out to be the mistake of his life for Prashant Kishor and one can accept similar results with Jarding as well. The Congress keeps trying new political consultants for election campaigns but it should realise that the fault lies not with the election strategists but with their party president.