Vivek Kaul
In an interview to the Tehekla magazine in September 2005, Rahul Gandhi, now the Vice President of the Congress party, is said to have remarked that “I could have been prime minister at the age of twenty-five if I wanted to.”
The statement created an uproar. The Congress party immediately jumped to the defence of its princling. Abhishek Manu Singhvi, the then Congress spokesperson, specifically mentioned that Rahul had not said ‘I could have been prime minister at the age of twenty-five if I wanted to’.
Tehakla initially stood by its story but backed down later. “This seems to be a clear case of misunderstanding. Mr Gandhi thought he was having a casual chat whereas our reporter took it to be a proper interview,” the weekly said in a statement.(The ‘edited’ casual chat can still be read on Tehelka’s website).
On another occasion Gandhi remarked “Please do not take it as any kind of arrogance, but having seen enough prime ministers in the family…it is not such a big deal. In fact, I often wonder why should you need a post to serve the nation.” (Source: Decoding Rahul Gandhi, Aarthi Ramachandran).
Gandhi’s obsession on clarifying that he is not in the race, seems to have continued. “Asking me whether you want to be prime minister is a wrong question,” he recently told journalists. In fact he even went onto add that he did not want to get married because marriage leads to children and a lust for power. “I feel we should all be detached from power. Only then we can contribute to the society better. You people ask me about my marriage plans. Sometimes, I think, if I marry and have children, I would want my children to take my position,” he said.
The spin doctors of the Congress party have been working overtime to portray this statement of their princling as a great sacrifice. But being married has got no link with running political fiefdoms and lusting for power. As Swaminathan Anklesaria Aiyar writes in a recent column in The Times of India “Mayawati and Jayalalithaa are both unmarried and without kids, and they run fiefdoms no less feudal than the Congress. Absence of children has never meant decentralisation.” This argument also works for Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal, Naveen Patnaik in Orissa and Narendra Modi in Gujarat, who also run political fiefdoms despite having no children. So the lust for power or politicians running political fiefdoms, has got nothing to do with being married or not.
Also the question is that what can Rahul Gandhi get done as a Prime Minister that he cannot get done being outside the government (assuming that the Congress led UPA continues to be in power)? As Tavleen Singh writes in a recent column in The Indian Express “Rahul already has more power than almost any politician in India other than his mother. So why should he want something he already has?”
Other than wanting to be detached from power, Rahul Gandhi also wants to empower middle-level leaders. “Today, I see how MPs feel without power and it is the same story in all the parties, be it the Congress or the BJP. I want to empower the 720-odd MPs in Parliament. I want to give voice to the middle tier, empower the middle-level leaders,” he said.
While he can’t do anything about the BJP, what is he doing about the Congress? Not much seems to be the answer. The upper ranks of the Congress party seem to be filled with sons/daughters of Congress leaders. In fact, Rahul’s boys, a term I use for the relatively younger leaders in the Congress party supposed to be close to the princling, are all sons of Congress leaders. As Aiyar writes “After talking for years about promoting youth in politics, you have indeed promoted many newcomers to important ministerial positions. They are young by Indian standards, but many have greying hair. The list in New Delhi includes Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sachin Pilot, Milind Deora and Jitin Prasad.”
Nothing seems to have been done about the Congress tradition of the so called “high command” appointing the Chief Minister, in case the party happens to win a state election or even otherwise. This trend was most recently visible in Uttarakhand where the majority of the MLAs wanted Harish Rawat as the Chief Minister, but had to make do with the high command’s choice of Vijay Bahaguna ( who interestingly is the son of the late H N Bahuguna, who was with the Congress party for most of his life). The high command also appointed Prithiviraj Chavan (whose father and mother were both Congress MPs), a political lightweight who was not a member of the state assembly, as the Chief Minister of Maharashtra when they wanted to replace the scam tainted Ashok Chavan (son of SB Chavan, another Congress leader).
The points made above are not exactly rocket science. And I am sure Rahul Gandhi understands them as well as the others. As Tavleen Singh writes in The Indian Express “Rahul Gandhi knows this as well as anyone else in politics, and if he wants to change things, then this is terrific. But why does he not get on with it? Why does he not begin by ensuring that next time the Congress party wins elections in some state, the high command is not given the task of choosing the chief minister? Why does he not ensure that next time a parliamentary constituency reports a vacancy, it does not get handed down to an heir?”
Singh in her column writes that as a responsible political pundit she has been mulling over what Rahul Gandhi said, and she remains “puzzled” and “mystified” by it.
This writer believes that there is an answer to what Singh refers to as a mystery and a puzzle. Allow me to explain. The writer Ramachandra Guha told me in an interview late last year that “I think this dynasty (Gandhi) is now on its last legs. Its charisma is fading with every generation.”
This is something that Shekhar Gupta also pointed out in The Indian Express “Ask any Congress leader who contests elections (unlike its star cast of chronic Rajya Sabhaists) and they will admit to you, albeit in whispers and fearfully glancing left and right, that the days when the Gandhi family could win them their seats are over. In the elections, now, it is every man for himself.”
This has been proven in Uttar Pradesh elections and the Bihar elections before that where the Congress party was routed. Rahul Gandhi was closely involved with both the elections. Given this the ability of Rahul Gandhi or for that matter his mother Sonia, to get in the votes for the party, is very limited. They are not in the same league as Jawahar Lal Nehru, Indira Gandhi or even Rajiv Gandhi, before them. Gupta explains it best when he writes “their ability to win seats beyond the Amethi-Rae Bareli enclave has diminished to insignificance.”
It would be foolish to believe that Rahul or Sonia do not understand this. Hence, they need the Scindias and the Deoras and the Pilots and the Prasads, of the world to continue winning elections. The smaller princlings within the party who can continue bringing in the votes from all across the country. The Congress party may be a shadow of what it was in the past, but it continues to remain India’s largest party. And for it to hold onto what it has, it needs to continue with the feudal structure that totally encapsulates it, with the Gandhis at the top.
In fact when the party has tried to get rid of its feudal structure it has had disastrous results. Take the case of Andhra Pradesh. After the death of Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, his son Jagan Mohan, wanted to become the Chief Minister. And that was not allowed. Jagan Mohan left to form his own party and is expected to widely damage the electoral prospects of the Congress party in a state which sends 42 members to the Lok Sabha.
On the flip side, even though the Gandhis are no longer the vote winners they once were, they are still very important to the idea of Congress. As Gupta put it in his column “I asked a senior (and always elected) Congress leader, then why was the Gandhi family still so important and had total sway over the party. He said, surely they cannot help anybody win elections, but they keep the party together. Their word is law and the party needs that discipline. Illustration: the moment Sonia or Rahul says something, everybody nods and falls in line. If Narasimha Rao or Sitaram Kesri said something, everybody broke out in rebellion and rashes.” So even though the Gandhis may not bring in the votes, they do help keep the Congress flock together.
Given this is in nobody’s interest, neither the Congress party, nor Rahul Gandhi (or for that matter his mother Sonia) to disturb the status quo. The Congress needs the Gandhis to survive as a party, and the Gandhis need the seats in the Parliament and the state assemblies to continue to be relevant.
In October 2008, while addressing girl students at a resort near Jim Corbett National Park, Rahul Gandhi referred to “politics” as a closed system in India. “If I had not come from my family, I wouldn’t be here. You can enter the system either through family or friends or money. Without family, friends or money, you cannot enter the system. My father was in politics. My grandmother and great grandfather were in politics. So, it was easy for me to enter politics. This is a problem. I am a symptom of this problem. I want to change it.”
More such statements will be made in the days to come. Meanwhile, the symptom and the problem will continue to co-exist.
The article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on March 12, 2013
(Vivek Kaul is a writer. He tweets @kaul_vivek)
Rajiv Gandhi
Fear is the key: What Sushma, Rajiv and i-pill have in common
Vivek Kaul
It’s around midnight as I write this and I am just back from a late dinner with a friend. Before we started to have dinner my friend insisted that I use a hand sanitiser. While I have nothing against people pretending to be clean all the time, but the smell of a hand sanitiser really puts me off and can even make me sneeze.
Given that I refused to use it.
“How can you not use a hand sanitiser before eating?” she asked.
“Well I have washed my hands,” I replied.
“But that’s not enough,” she insisted.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because a hand sanitiser kills all the germs.”
“What germs?” I asked, ripping into the tandoori chicken.
“Ah. End of conversation. Guess cleanliness isn’t really your thing!” she exclaimed at my ingratitude.
The idea of using hand sanitisers has caught on(especially with women) after the recent global swine flue scare. But does it really help? As brand management expert Martin Lindstrom writes in his latest book Brandwashed – Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy “Neither swine flu nor SARS can be prevented by the use of antibacterial cleansing gels. Both viruses are spread via tiny droplets in the air that are sneezed or coughed by people who are already infected. ”
In fact as Lindstrom told me in an interview “What’s ironic is that none of those products…actually do any better job than soap and water.”
That being the case why are women so in love with hand sanitisers? As Lindstrom puts it in Brandwashed “The idea of an unseen, potentially fatal contagion has driven us into nothing short of an antibacterial mania.”
And companies making hand sanitisers have simply captured this mania as a profitable money making proposition. As Lindstrom told me “The companies have done a extraordinary job in building their brands on the back of the fear created by those global viruses – indicating that we’ll be safe using these brands…The ironic side of the story however is that the life expectancy in Japan is decreasing for the first time in history – why – because the country simply has become too clean – the Japanese have weakened their immune system as a result of overuse of hand sanitising products.”
What this little story tells us is that fear of something happening (or not happening for that matter) is a great selling strategy and you can’t argue with a woman who has made up her mind.
As Lindstrom put it “we’re all hardwired to be seduced by fear – fear is the number one soft button in our brain – it is a survival instinct. Fear is used by most insurance companies and even Colgate who claimed in one ad that they could remove the risk of cancer by the usage of their toothpaste,” said Lindstrom.
The fact that fear is a great selling strategy makes companies build it directly into their advertisements. The advertisement of i-pill, an emergency contraceptive pill, shows a mother telling her daughter “Kyun risk le rahi hai?” when the daughter calls and hints that she has had unprotected sex.
Or take the case of Saffola oil which has run a highly successful campaign over the years on the fear of a heart attack. It used to run an advertisement for years showing a man being wheeled into the operation theatre, with the sound of the ambulance siren in the background (Let me concede I also use Saffola oil for cooking).Fair and Lovely, which claims to be a skin lightening cream, has run on a plank of the fear of rejection for a “dark” girl. This despite protests from several quarters. The advertisement of the health drink Complan is built around the fear that those not having Complan will not grow as tall as those having it.
Almost every insurance company uses fear as a selling strategy. This can vary from the fear of death, to the fear of not having enough money to meet hospital bills, to the fear of not having enough money for the son’s or the daughter’s education or not having enough money for the daughter’s wedding and so on.
As Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason university in the US, writes in the book, Discover your Inner Economist “Often , buying insurance is about investing in a story about who we are and what we care about; insurance salesmen have long recognised this fact and built their pitches around it.”
Having given these examples, let me concede that some of these advertisements do push consumers towards buying the right product. But most of these advertisements are misleading. As the Business Standard recently reported “Whether it’s Complan or Horlicks, they claim to make a child taller and smarter. But their promises are not based on any scientific data….Abu Hasem Khan Choudhury, minister of state for health and family welfare informed the Lok Sabha in a written reply on November 30 that the food regulator had begun prosecution proceedings against manufacturers of 19 leading brands and issued show cause notices to 19 others for making false claims regarding the nutritional value of the product in advertising and on the label.”
As the story further pointed out “ For instance, Complan, a leading drink brand, claims it makes children grow twice faster. Horlicks promises to make children “taller, stronger and sharper”. Kellogg’s Special K claims people who eat low fat food in their breakfast tend to be thinner than those who do not, without providing any scientific study to back this claim. Products like Saffola oil, Rajdhani Besan and Britannia Vita Marie biscuits have been booked for making false claims of being “heart-friendly” and “reducing cholesterol”.”
All these products play on the fears and insecurities of consumers. If my kid doesn’t drink Complan/Horlicks he won’t grow tall. If I don’t eat Kellog’s Special K I will become fat. And if I don’t have Saffola oil I will have a heart attack.
Lindstrom summarises this phenomenon very well in a paragraph in his book Buyology – How Everything We Believe About Why We Buy is Wrong “That if we don’t buy their product, we”ll somehow be missing out. That we’ll become more and more imperfect; that we’ll have dandruff or bad skin or dull hair or be overweight or have a lousy fashion sense. That if we don’t use this shaving cream, women will walk by us without a glance…That if we don’t wear this brand of lingerie no man will ever marry us.”
Politicians are looking to do exactly the same thing when they practise the politics of fear. The recent debate on FDI in big retail had Sushma Swaraj saying things like “Will Wal-Mart care about the poor farmer’s sister’s wedding? Will Wal-Mart send his children to school? Will Wal-Mart notice his tears and hunger?”
She also said that “The remaining 70 percent of the goods sold in these supermarkets will be procured from China. Factories will open in China, traders will prosper in China while darkness will befall 12 crore people in India.” This is scaremongering of a kind similar to that indulged in by companies to sell their products.
Arun Jaitley, the leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha, also indulged in the same when he said that “India will become a nation of sales boys and girls.”
And before I am labelled to be a Congi by the internet Hindus let me clarify that politicians from across the political spectrum have practised this strategy at various points of time.
“When a big tree falls, the ground shakes,” said Rajiv Gandh after his mother Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards.
A section of the Indian National Congress (back then known as the Congress-I) whipped up mass frenzy against the Sikhs after the assassination. In the pogrom that followed Sikhs were killed all across northern and eastern India. And the Congress Party got 415 seats out of the 540 seats in the Lok Sabha, a feat not achieved even by Jawaharlal Nehru, the biggest leader that the party has ever had.
Kanshi Ram, had formed the the Dalit Soshit Samaj Sangharsh Samiti or DS4, before forming the BSP. The rallying cry for DS4 was”Thakur, Brahmin, Bania Chhod, Baki Sab Hain DS4.” This worked so well that when Ram decided to form the BSP he came up with a similar sounding but a more subtle slogan. “Tilak Tarazu aur Talwaar, inko maaro joote chaar.”
The late Bal Thackeray was a master of this craft first putting fear of Tamils in the minds of the Marathi Manoos and then Muslims as times changed. His nephew Raj, who left to form his own party the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, took this strategy further and has put the fear of Bhaiyyas and Biharis in the minds of the Marathi Manoos.
Varun Gandhi made front page headlines when in a speech he said “Ye panja nahi hai, ye kamal ka haath hai. Ye kat** ke galey ko kaat dega chunaav ke baad.” Then there are also examples of parties like DMK, which have been built on creating the fear of the loss of culture and language.
When politicians try to create fear in the minds of the citizens their aim is similar to that of companies trying to create fear in the minds of consumers. Fear “is what our brains remember…”writes Martin Lindstrom in his book Buyology. Fear creates what Lindstrom calls “somatic markers” or brain shortcuts that link the brand sold to what needs to be done to take care of the fear: “Want you kid to grow tall? Get him to drink Complan!”
“Want a healthy life without a heart attack? Eat Saffola oil.”
Or in a political context “Don’t want the Chinese take away Indian jobs or sell goods in India? Vote for the Bhartiya Janata Party.”
“Want freedom from the oppression of upper castes? Vote for the Bahujan Samaj Party.”
“Want to revenge the assassination of Indira Gandhi? Kill Sikhs but don’t forget to vote for the Congress.”
While it is not as simple as that, but that is what it essentially means. Fear also gives rise to anxieties and insecurities of people and helps politicians come up with a war cry and make themselves easily heard. As Bill Bonner and Lila Rajiva write in Mobs, Messiahs and Markets “Men are ready to die for the group and kill anyone who resists its will.”
The war cry before the Babrji Masjid was destroyed was “Ek dhakka aur do, Babri Masjid tod do!”.
As Lindstrom writes in Brandwashed in the context of marketers “So whether it’s germs or disease or some feared version of a future self, marketers are amazingly adept at identifying a fear out of the zeitgeist (a German word which means the spirit of the times, italics are mine), activating it, amplifying it and preying on it in it in ways that hit us at the deepest subconscious level.”
Politicians do the same thing. They identify the prevailing fear, like Wal-Mart will get in all low cost Chinese goods (as if Indian companies are not) and destroy the kiranawallas. And then they activate it and amplify it by talking about it in their speeches. And if the comments on this piece that I wrote a couple of days back are anything to go by, they have been successful at it.
And so was Rajiv Gandhi!
The article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on December 7, 2012.
(Vivek Kaul is a writer. He can be reached at [email protected])
How Cong ‘chamchagiri’ made Sonia India’s No 1 politician
Vivek Kaul
The closest English word for the desi word chamchagiri is sycophancy. But sycophancy doesn’t have the same depth as chamchagiri does. Sycophancy doesn’t make my tongue twirl in the same way as chamchagiri.
So let me take this opportunity to explain chamchagiri in some more detail through a song from the late Jaspal Bhatti’s superhit television serial Flop Show. For those who don’t know or don’t remember, each episode of the serial highlighted corruption from a different facet of life.
One particular episode dealt with the travails of a PhD candidate and his attempts to get a PhD. The PhD candidate (played brilliantly by Vivek Shaque who died a few years back in a plastic surgery gone wrong) carriers out various household chores including buying vegetables for his guide (played by Bhatti) in the hope of getting his PhD.
Towards the end of every episode Flop Show had a parody of a hit Hindi film song. This particular episode had a spoof of the song jo tumko ho pasand wohi baat kahenge, tum din ko agar raat kaho raat kahenge.
The lines of the parody were different and went like this:
Jo tumko ho pasand wohi baat kahenge,
beaker ko agar jar kaho to jar kahenge.
(You can listen to the complete parody here)
This is the level of commitment required of a chamcha, something that the word sycophant simply does not convey.
Now before you start to wonder, dear reader, as to why have I gone into so much detail in trying to define or rather differentiate between chamchas and sycophants, allow me to explain.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise to you if I tell you that most Indian political parties are full of leaders who are essentially chamchas who have risen to the top or full of leaders who have become chamchas after being brought in at the top.
Some of the cadre based parties like the Left Parties and Bhartiya Janta Party (to some extent) are exceptions to this.
But India’s number one party when it comes to chamchas is the Congress. Most recently the chamchagiri was in full show when top leaders of the party like P Chidambaram, Veerapa Moily, Jayanthy Natarajan, Kapil Sibal, Manish Tewari and Rashid Alvi (all lawyers to boot) spoke out to vociferously defend the shenanigans of Robert Vadra, son-in-law of Sonia Gandhi, their supreme leader.
But Congress was not always a party of chamchas and chamchagiri. At least not till 1969. Historian and writer Ramachandra Guha explains this in an essay titled A Short History of Congress Chamchagiri which is a part of his recently released book Patriots and Partisans.
“Most Indians are too young to know this, but the truth is that until about 1969 the Congress was more or less a democratic party,” writes Guha.
Sometime before Jawahar Lal Nehru died, Indira Gandhi had been planning to settle in Great Britain. After Nehru died in May 1964, she was invited to join the cabinet as the minister of information and broadcasting by Lal Bahadur Shastri who took over as the next prime minister.
“When Shastri died in January 1966, Mrs Gandhi was, to her own surprise, catapulted into the post of the prime minister. There were other and better candidates for the job, but the Congress bosses (notably K Kamraj) thought that they could more easily control a lady they thought to be a gungi gudiya (dumb doll),” writes Guha.
But instead of being a gungi gudia she turned out to be a control freak who split the party in 1969 and what was a essentially a decentralised and democratic party till that point of time became an extension of the whims, fancies and insecurities of a single individual.
Thus started an era of chamchas and chamchagiri in the Congress. Dev Kant Baruah who was the President of the Congress Party between 1975 and 1977 went to the extent of saying “Indira is India and India is Indira“. What was loyalty to the party earlier became loyalty to the individual and the family.
Also Indira Gandhi had total control over the system effectively overriding democracy and imposing emergency on June 26, 1975.
A famous cartoon made by Abu showed President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed in his bath during the emergency signing ordinances and saying “if there are any more ordinances just ask them to wait.” Other than this, Indira Gandhi also took to firing both chief ministers and governments at will.
While she was building her own career, Mrs Gandhi’s two sons Sanjay and Rajiv were trying out their own careers as well. As Guha writes “The elder boy, Rajiv, after having followed his mother in having failed to complete a degree, took a pilot’s license and joined Indian Airlines. The younger boy, Sanjay, prudently chose not to go to university at all. He apprenticed at Rolls Royce(in Great Britain), where his lack of discipline provoked a flood of anguished correspondence between his mother and the Indian high commission.”
Sanjay Gandhi came back to India with the idea of manufacturing what he called the people’s car. “Despite the gift of cheap land (from a sycophantic chief minister of Haryana) and soft loans from public sector banks, the project failed to deliver on its promises. Another of Sanjay’s chamchas Khushwant Singh, then the editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India, claimed that his factory would roll out 50,000 cars a year,” writes Guha. But nothing of that sort happened.
Sanjay Gandhi got out of cars and gradually got into politics effectively becoming number two to his mother Indira. Rajiv Gandhi on the other hand wasn’t interested in politics. “His greatest professional ambition was to graduate from flying Avros on the Delhi-Lucknow run to flying Boeings between Calcutta and Bombay. By June 1980 he had been flying for twelve years, but his record did not yet merit the promotion he so ardently desired,” Guha points out.
In June 1980 Sanjay Gandhi died in an plane crash and Rajiv had to enter politics to support his mother. And in politics he was luckier than he was as a pilot. As Guha writes “He was rather luckier in politics. Once he had answered Mummy’s call, and changed his career, the rewards were swift. Within five years of joining the Congress he had become prime minister of India.”
And the Congress party had effectively become a family run concern. As Guha writes in the essay Verdicts on Nehru “Mrs Gandhi converted the Indian National Congress into a family business. She first bought in her son Sanjay, and after his death, his brother Rajiv. In each case, it was made clear that the son would succeed Mrs Gandhi as head of Congress and head of government.”
Once Indira Gandhi had placed her family at the helm of the Congress it was time for other parties across the country to follow suit. “Indira Gandhi’s embrace of the dynastic principle for the Congress served as a ready model for other parties to emulate…The DMK was once the proud party of Dravidian nationalism and social reform; it is now the private property of M Karunanidhi and his children…Likewise, for all his professed commitment to Maharashtrian pride and Hindu nationalism Shiv Sena leader, Bal Thackeray could look no further than his son. The Samajwadi Party and Rashtriya Janta Dal claimed to stand for ‘social justice’, but the leadership of Mulayam’s party passed onto his son and in Lalu’s party to his wife,” writes Guha.
There are other examples as well. Sharad Pawar is grooming his daughter to take over the reins of his party. Dr Farooq Abdullah passed on the leadership of his family party the National Conference to his son Omar. And this is deeply inimical to the practise of democracy in India, feels Guha.
He gives the example of once travelling through Tamil Nadu a few years back. “I was met at every turn by ever-larger cut-outs of the chief minister’s son and heir apparent – cut-outs of MK Stalin smiling, Stalin writing, Staling speaking into a cell phone. The only other place where I have felt so stifled by a single face was in Syria of Bashar Assad.”
And all this has happened because Lal Bahadur Shashtri died rather suddenly and Indira Gandhi was catapulted into a position of immense power. So the question is what would have happened if the Shastri had lived for another five years?
“Had Shastri lived, Indira Gandhi may or may not have migrated to London. But even had she stayed in India, it is highly unlikely that she would have become prime minister. And it is certain that her son would have never have occupied or aspired to that office…Sanjay Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi would almost certainly still be alive, and in private life. The former would be a (failed) entrepreneur, the latter a recently retired airline pilot with a passion for photography. Finally, had Shastri lived longer, Sonia Gandhi would still be a devoted and loving housewife, and Rahul Gandhi perhaps a middle-level manager in a private sector company,” writes Guha.
In short, the world that we live in would have been a very different and probably a better place. But as the great Mirza Ghalib, who had a couplet for almost every situation in life, once said “hui muddat ke ghalib mar gaya par yaad aata hai wo har ek baat par kehna ke yun hota to kya hota?”
The article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on November 27,2012.
(Vivek Kaul is a writer. He can be reached at [email protected])
Rahul: Reluctant politician who was once afraid of the dark
When Rahul Gandhi was young he was afraid of the dark. He felt that darkness held ghosts and bad things. His grandmother Indira Gandhi helped him overcome that fear. As Aarthi Ramachandran writes in Decoding Rahul Gandhi “Speaking to young children at the opening of a science fair at a Delhi school in November 201 he(i.e. Rahul) told them how he was scared of darkness when he was young as he felt it held “ghosts” and “bad things”. Then, he said, one day his grandmother had asked him why he didn’t go and see himself what was inside the darkness. So, he had walked into the garden in the dark and he had kept walking and then realised suddenly that ‘there was nothing there in the darkness to be scared of’.” And thus Rahul overcame the fear of darkness and ghosts.
The life of Rahul Gandhi has largely been a mystery for India and Indians. Where was he educated? Where did he work before joining politic full time? What are his views on various things? What does he think about the current state of the Indian economy? What does he think of the government which his mother Sonia runs through the remote control? Does he have a girl friend? When does he plan to marry? Why hasn’t he given any interviews to the media since 2005?
These are questions both personal and professional that Indians would love to have answers for. Aarthi Ramachandran answers some of these questions in her new book Decoding Rahul Gandhi.
After the assassination of Indira Gandhi, both Rahul and his sister Priyanka were largely taught at home. Ramachandran quotes out of Sonia Gandhi’s book Rajiv: ““The day of my mother-in-law’s assassination was the last day Rahul and Priyanka ever attended school…For the next five years the children remained at home, studying with tutors, virtually imprisoned. The only space outside our four walls where they could step without cordon of security was our garden,” Sonia wrote.”
Rahul is a year and a half older to his sister Priyanka and was a student of the St Columba’s school before the assassination of his grandmother. But both Rahul and Priyanka ended up in the same class despite their age difference. “Rahul’s education was disrupted due to that incident (Indira Gandhi’s assassination) and he dropped a year of school, possibly the same year that Indira died. Rajiv was asked how both Rahul and Priyanka were in the same class during an interview in 1988. “Only one year separates them. And with all the shifting, they came to be in the same class. But that has one advantage: they can be taught each subject by the same tutor. Now, we can’t possibly keep separate tutors for each of them, that would be too expensive,” he quipped – both children were being home tutored,” writes Ramachandran.
Rahul joined Delhi’s St Stephens College in 1989 to study history. He got admission under the sports quota. And there was a lot of controversy surrounding his admission. As Ramachandran points out “When Rahul entered Delhi’s prestigious St. Stephen’s College in 1989 after finishing his schooling, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) claimed his admission, under the sports quota for his skills in rifle shooting, was invalid. The allegation appeared to be that with 61 per cent marks in his school-leaving examinations, Rahul was not academically bright enough to enter the college. The BJP’s Delhi chief at that time, Madam Lal Khurana, claimed that Rahul’s certificates in shooting were fake.” The National Rifle Association came to Rahul’s rescue issuing a statement in his favour about his ability as a rifle shooter. During Rahul’s time at Stephens 20-25 special protection group (SPG) guards would be all over the college with sling bags which supposedly had guns.
After a year at Stephens, Rahul left for Harvard. There is very little clarity on the period he was at Harvard or the subjects he studied there. “It has been widely reported in the Indian media and some foreign publications that Rahul took courses in economics at Harvard,” writes Ramachandran. “Neither Rahul nor Harvard officials have confirmed this. Rahul did not respond to questions about this course of study and the time period he was at Harvard….Harvard too said it could not disclose details about Rahul Gandhi’s time at Harvard.”
Though Harvard did confirm that Rahul was a student without getting into the specifics of the time period or the courses he attended. In May 1991 Rahul’s father, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated. This compelled him to take a transfer to Rollins College in Florida and from here graduated with a BA in 1994. The website of the college lists him as alumnus who graduated in International Relations.
After this, Rahul went to get an MPhil in developmental studies from the Cambridge University, in the United Kingdom. There has been some controversy surrounding this as well. “In the run up to the 2009 general elections…The New Indian Express alleged that Rahul had not only got the name of his course wrong but also the year. The paper said he had attended the course only in 2004-05. It produced a certificate from the university as evidence of its claim. Rahul…sent a notice to the newspaper….With the notice was a letter issued by Cambridge University…in which its vice chancellor…clarified that Rahul was a student at Trinity College from October 1994 to July 1995. She also said that he was awarded MPhil in developmental studies in 1995,” writes Ramachandran.
What comes across here is a reluctance on part of Rahul to be open about his educational qualifications. As the author explains “Rahul’s unwillingness to be open about his educational background is similar to Gandhi family’s secrecy over Sonia Gandhi’s illness. Sonia and her family have been resolute in their silence on her medical condition despite speculation…that she is suffering from some kind of cancer…It can be argued that her health is a matter of public interest given that she is the de factor head of the Congress-led coalition government…In the same way Rahul Gandhi’s educational qualifications are of the importance to the public at large as he is perceived to be a future prime ministerial candidate of the Congress and is a Member of Parliament.”
After Cambridge, Rahul Gandhi worked for three years with consulting firm Monitor in London. Strategy guru Michael Porter was one of the co-founders of the firm. Rahul was with Monitor from June 1996 to early March 1999. As Ramachandran writes “According to sources, who have known Rahul from his time at Monitor, there were no problems with his performance at the firm. He worked there under an assumed name and his colleagues did not know of his real identity, said a Monitor employee who was at the firm around the same time as Rahul. ‘His looks gave it away to those of us who knew who he could be,’ the source said.” But beyond this nothing is known about his key result areas or the sectors Rahul specialised in during his time at Monitor.
After quitting Monitor, Rahul came back to India to help his mother Sonia with the 1999 general election campaign. Once the elections were over Rahul disappeared from the political firmament. “There is no exact information about any other job Rahul might have taken up in the intervening years after he left Monitor in March 1999 and returned to India for good in late 2002,” writes Ramachandran.
During the time Rahul spent at London the media also discovered his girl friend Veronique (though they kept calling her Juanita). He was spotted with her watching an India-England cricket match at Edgbaston and holidaying with her in the Andamans at the end of 1999, and again in Kerala and Lakshdweep in 2003, for a year end family vacation.
Rahul finally cleared the mystery himself in an interview to Vrinda Gopinath of the The Indian Express during the run up to the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. As Ramachandran writes “’My girlfriend’s name is Veronique not Juanita…she is Spainish and not Venezuelan or Columbian. She is an architect not a waitress, thought I wouldn’t have had a problem with that. She is also my best friend,’ he told her…After he won from Amethi, he held a rare informal interaction with journalists in his constituency. They asked about his girlfriend’s nationality to which he replied she had been living in Venezuela for a long time although her parents were Spanish. He also said that he was not planning on getting married anytime soon.” Nothing has been heard of Veronique since 2004.
His years in consulting seem to have had a great impact on Rahul and since coming back to India in late 2002, Rahul has been trying to apply The Toyota Way on the functioning of the Congress party. The Toyota way is a series of best practices used by the Toyota Motor Company of Japan. As Ramachandran explains “The Toyota Way spoke of making decisions slowly by consensus, thoroughly considering all options and then implementing decisions rapidly…The consensus process, though time-consuming, helps broaden the search for solutions and once a decision is made, the stage is set for rapid implementation.”
Such strategic ideas are being used for the revamp and promotion of internal democracy within the Indian Youth Congress and the National Students Union of India. Processes are being built to ensure ending the role of family connections in appointments and promotions in the two organisations.
But the big question on everybody’s lips has been when will Rahul Gandhi join the government? In a controversial interview to the Tehalka magazine in September 2005, Rahul Gandhi is reported to have said that he could have become the Prime Minister at twenty-five. Abhishek Manu Singhvi the then Congress spokesperson later specifically mentioned that Rahul wanted to state that he had not said ‘I could have been prime minister at the age of twenty-five if I wanted to’. Rahul hasn’t given any interview since then.
On another occasion Rahul said that “Please do not take it as any kind of arrogance, but having seen enough prime ministers in the family…it is not such a big deal. In fact, I often wonder why should you need a post to serve the nation”.
Rumors of Rahul Gandhi joining the cabinet in the next reshuffle have been doing the rounds lately. But as and when that happens Rahul Gandhi will have to let go of what seems like an unwillingness to be open.
People will analyse what he says. He may still not give interviews but as a minister he will surely have to make speeches, address meetings etc. His decisions will be closely watched. And the files he signs on will be open to RTI filings. In short, the mystery surrounding him will come down.
Things as they are currently will have to change. As Ramachandran puts it “In situations where he is required to speak, whether it is the Parliament or his elections speeches, he is uncomfortable. He is only now beginning to find his public speaking voice. For the most part, however, he has tended to avoid speaking in the public or to the press on issues. He comes across as a politician who is reluctant to share his views on issues of national importance or worse as someone who does not have views at all.”
The article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on Ocotber 19,2012.
http://www.firstpost.com/india/rahul-reluctant-politician-who-was-once-afraid-of-the-dark-495947.html
(Vivek Kaul is a writer. He can be reached at [email protected])
Will Vadragate turn out to be Sonia’s Bofors?
Vivek Kaul
“Roti tawa par, janta party hawa main” was one of the slogans going around in the Lok Sabha elections that happened after the assassination of Indira Gandhi. Riding on the honest image of Rajiv Gandhi (Indira’s son and a former Indian Airlines pilot) and a sympathy wave due to the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her bodyguards, the Congress party won more than 400 seats in the lower house of Indian parliament.
This was an unprecedented majority for the Congress party, something it had not managed to achieve even under the leadership of Jawahar Lal Nehru, Rajiv’s grandfather and India’s first Prime Minister. Neither had it managed such a huge mandate from the people of India under the leadership of Indira Gandhi.
But Rajiv would soon squander away these gains. As Aarthi Ramachandran writes in Decoding Rahul Gandhi “The Rajiv Gandhi government was bogged down by allegations of kickbacks to the tune of Rs 64 crore paid to middlemen in the purchase of Swedish Bofors guns. The government’s ‘stonewalling’ of demands to bring guilty to book in the Bofors case and other corruption scandals destroyed Rajiv’s image as Mr Clean. Ramchandra Guha in India After Gandhi says the ‘stonewalling prompted speculation that the middlemen were somehow linked to the prime minister himself’.”
The impact of this on the Congress party was huge. It lost the 1989 election to an alliance of Janata Dal and the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP). Rajiv Gandhi had to become the leader of the opposition. A party which had more than three fourths of the seats in the Lok Sabha was thrown out of power.
It is often said that ‘perception is reality’. Rajiv Gandhi losing the 1989 Lok Sabha election because people ‘thought’ he was involved in the Bofors scandal and may have received a part of the kickbacks. And this perception was formed after his government stonewalled all attempts of bringing the guilty to book.
A similar situation seems to be now brewing up in the Robert Vadra-DLF case. A string of lawyer ministers from the Congress have jumped into the ring in order to defend Robert Vadra and would like the world at large to believe that there is no truth in accusations being hurled at Vadra (and indirectly Sonia Gandhi) by Arvind Kejriwal and his associates.
Let us sample some of the statements that have been made by these lawyer ministers. Kapil Sibal, one the country’s top practicing lawyers before he became a full time politician and currently the Minister of Human Resource Development and Minister of Communications and Information Technology recently came to the defence of Vadra. “Allegations are happening 24×7. It is a daily phenomena just like 24×7 television news channels,” he said.
On television Vadra has been defended by Jayanthi Natrajan who other than being the Union Minister for Environment and Forests also happens to be a lawyer having got her law degree from the Madras Law College. Vadra has also been defended by Manish Tewari, a Congress spokesperson, and a lawyer. Tewari felt that prima facie the charges made by Kejriwal and company were found to be ‘untruth, innuendos and lies’.
HR Bhardwaj, currently the governor of Karnataka, and a former law minister also came to the indirect defence of Robert Vadra. “Many allegations were levelled against the Gandhi family even in the past. Indira Gandhi was also attacked. But she had a towering personality and fought back. Morarji Bhai (late Prime Minister Morarji Desai) made so many cases against her but they fell like nine pins,” he told reporters,” he recently told the media. And I thought governors were meant to be above politics and political parties.
Rashid Alvi, one of the spokespersons of the Congress Party on one occasion brushed aside the accusations hurdled at Vadra by Arvind Kejriwal and company as a “part of a well-planned conspiracy not against an individual but against the Congress and its leadership.”
On another occasion on live television he dubbed Kejriwal’s accusation as a publicity stunt and questioned the veracity of the documents put out by Kejriwal by saying “who will decide that the documents shown by Kejriwal are genuine or fake.”The website of the Parliament of India lists his profession as an advocate in the Supreme Court.
P Chidambaram, the Union Finance Minister who also happens to be a lawyer said “All I can say is at this moment these allegations pertain to transactions between two private persons or entities…. The individual (Vadra, son-in-law of Sonia Gandhi) has disclosed all these transactions in his income tax and other returns, and perhaps in the returns of the company.”
Veerapa Moily, another Lawyer and who is the Union Minister for Corporate Affairs as well as Power, jumped to Vadra’s defence by saying “ I have already verified these allegations and no wrongdoings have been found in any of the six Robert Vadra-owned companies.”
What is surprising is that so many Congress lawyers have jumped to the defence of a “supposedly” private individual, Robert Vadra, and ruled out any wrong doing on the part of Sonia Gandhi’s son in law. The only thing that this ‘stonewalling’ has done is that it has built the perception among people that something must be wrong otherwise why are so many lawyer ministers and Congressmen jumping to Vadra’s defence.
In some cases the defence has looked very shaky. Let’s look at Alvi’s insinuation that the documents might be fake. And this comes from a man whose profession is listed as a Supreme Court lawyer. It is very easy to download balance sheets of even unlisted companies these days. This writer spent the whole of last week doing that by logging on to www.mca.gov.in and paying a Rs 50 charge for every Vadra company for which details were needed. So all one needs to know is the name of the company and it’s possible to get the details of that company. And in Vadra’s case it was pretty well known that he operated through Sky Light Hospitality Private Ltd a company in which he owned 99.8%.
Also Alvi should remember that Kejriwal is being advised by Shanti and Prashant Bhushan, two of the best lawyers in the country. Shanti Bhushan was even the law minister of the country at a certain point of time. Other than this Kejriwal himself must understand a thing or two about balance sheets having been an Indian Revenue Service officer till a few years back. He is also an IIT Kharagpur passout from the pre coaching schools era and that definitely means he is smart. And more than anything else why would anyone who is raising a serious banner of revolt against the incumbent government choose to do so on “fake” documents?
P Chidambaram wanted us to believe that the dealings were between a private company and a private individual. If that is the case why are so many lawyer ministers coming to the defence of Vadra?
Veerapa Moily jumped to Vadra’s defence by saying that there was nothing wrong in any of Vadra’s six companies. If he had read through the memorandum of association of Vadra’s Sky Light Hospitality carefully enough he would have realised that the company claims that it will carry out business as hotels, restaurants, lodges, ice-cream merchants, sweet meat merchants, milk manufactures, bakers, wine and spirit merchants etc.
But instead of doing all that Sky Light Hospitality primarily seems to be in the business of real estate having accumulated a slew of properties on the basis of a so called Rs 50 crore advance it got from a plot of land from DLF. As has been repeatedly pointed out Firstpost and other places in the media the dealings between DLF and Vadra appear murky. (You can read about it completely here, here and here). Sky Light Hospitality owns a 50% stake in Saket Courtyard Hospitality Ltd through which it runs one hotel in Saket, New Delhi, in parternship with DLF.
Vadra’s Sky Light Hospitality bought 3.5acres of land sometime in 2008-2009 (period between April 1, 2008 and March 31, 2009) at Rs 15.38 crore. In the same period DLF bought this land from Vadra for Rs 58 crore. The question is how did the value of the land go up nearly 3.7 times in such a short period of time?
Against this sale DLF gave Vadra an advance of Rs 50 crore. An advance is typically given for the short term and needs to be returned within a year. But this advance was sitting on Vadra’s balance sheet even as on March 31, 2011. So the advance given by DLF to Vadra was with Vadra for a period of greater than two years. This doesn’t sound like an advance at all. It seems more like an interest free loan being passed off as an advance.
DLF also said in its 6 October statement that “we wish to categorically state that DLF has given no unsecured loans to Mr Vadra or any of his companies.” The balance-sheet (dated 31 March 2010) of Real Earth Estates Pvt Ltd, another company owned by Vadra, shows a clear entry of Rs 5 crore as a loan from DLF.
Vadra used all these loans from Vadra to go on a property buying spree. Estimates made now suggest that the value of this property now runs into hundreds of crores. He also benefitted from parking this largely interest free money in fixed deposits and earning an interest from them.
Congress Party’s over defence of Vadra has not helped it at all. It has built the perception among people that there must be some hanky panky involved in the entire business. That being the case no other response could have been expected from a party that doesn’t really stand for anything except the Nehru-Gandhi family. Kejriwal has hit the Congress party where it hurts the most.
As Ramachandran writes “the Nehru-Gandhi family remained relevant within the Congress. In fact, it became more powerful as it was only the centre around which the entire Congress edifice could hold together. It was now an amalgam of pressure groups which were interested in power, and their one-way ticket to it was through proximity to the Nehru-Gandhi family.”
And it’s in times like these Congress leaders have to go through their agni parkiskha and show their loyalty to the Nehru Gandhi family. That’s precisely what they are doing. Their reactions are a clear case of Catch 22. They are dammed if they try to come to the defence of Vadra and they are dammed if they don’t. However, in the process Vadragate may turn out to be Sonia Gandhi’s Bofors.
The article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on October 16, 2012. http://www.firstpost.com/india/will-vadragate-turn-out-to-be-sonias-bofors-492019.html
(Vivek Kaul is a writer. He can be reached at [email protected])