Rahul Gandhi’s Inability to Own Up to Defeats

ON OCTOBER 8, COUNTING DAY, JUST HOURS AFTER THE trends flipped in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for a historic third time in Haryana, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed crowds of jubilant workers at the party’s headquar­ters in New Delhi. Mocking the Congress leadership’s refusal to accept defeat, Modi compared the party to parasitic mites. Referring to the verdict of the first polls after the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), Modi said, “Congress has become nothing more than a political parasite (parjeevi) that feeds off and then gobbles its allies. It is keen on building a country where people loathe their own culture, revile their national institutions—the EC [Election Commission], the police, the judiciary—and tarnish the image of the very heritage that we, as one people, are proud of.” National Conference (NC) leaders, allies of Congress, openly expressed their distress at the latter not campaigning robustly in Jammu, thus severely restricting the electoral run rate of the duo. “You must remember that in the Lok Sabha elections, too, half of the seats won by Congress were only because of their allies,” Modi said.

A parasite is an organism attached to a body politic but acts destructively rather than productively. The outcome is that the parasite drains the energy of the host, or in the extreme case, causes its death, as the host is “devoured by its sponging guest”. It was not just J&K where Congress banked heavily on a parasitic relationship with a strong regional party to boost its fortunes, too weak to hold its own at the hustings. From Kashmir to Kanyakumari, where Rahul Gandhi opened his mohabbat ki dookan, the story has been much the same for Congress. In Tamil Nadu, the party has been out of power for decades, managing to get seats in the southernmost state solely by piggybacking either on the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) or, more recently, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). Con­gress, and Congress alone, was shocked when the 1967 election swept DMK to power. It has now been almost six decades since the party came anywhere near power in Chennai. In the 1967 then-Madras state Assembly and Lok Sabha polls, DMK, capitalis­ing on the popularity of filmstar-politician MG Ramachandran and the anti-Hindi sentiment, clocked 174 seats, well above the required 118. But Congress, in a state of denial it is yet to com­pletely shake off, nosedived from 139 seats to only 51. DMK also won all the 25 Lok Sabha seats it contested.

Congress’ plight is worse today in Uttar Pradesh (UP), politically the heftiest state. Just a day after the Haryana results, a disgusted Samajwadi Party (SP)—the regional I.N.D.I.A. partner of Congress—chose to unilaterally announce its candidates for six of the 10 upcoming Assembly by-elections, ignoring Congress’ seat-sharing proposal, triggering speculation that SP may not align with the party in the state in future. On SP chief Akhilesh Yadav’s watch, it won 37 of 80 Lok Sabha seats in this year’s General Election while BJP won only 33. Of the 17 it contested, Congress secured a paltry seven seats, its highest tally in the recent past.

From a heady tally of 388 seats once upon a time, Congress has seen its lowest tally at only two in the UP Assembly, too. ND Tiwari was the last Congress chief minister (June 1988- December 1989), after which the reign of regional giants SP (December 1989-June 1991) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) came to a peak, sealing the fate of Congress forever. It has been three-and-a-half decades since Congress held power in Lucknow. Despite the party being in power in UP till 1989, it was not until Yogi Adityanath, who took oath as chief minister on March 19, 2017, that a UP chief minister has completed a five-year term (except for Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati). In 2019, Congress had a 6.36 per cent vote share when it contested 67 seats. It man­aged to raise the tally to 9 per cent while contesting in 17 seats this year, but primarily due to its association with SP. Despite the bugle blaring over Priyanka Gandhi’s campaigning in UP with the ‘Ladki hoon, lad sakti hoon’, slogan and the ‘UP ke ladke’ catchphrase coined in the previous Assembly polls, Congress’ fortunes are linked to SP’s political prowess.

Again, in both Bihar and Jharkhand, Congress is dependent on regional giants Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Jharkhand Muk­ti Morcha (JMM), respectively. The 1990 elections saw the last respectable performance by Congress in Bihar, whenitwon71seats while the Janata Dal won the most, with 122. Jagannath Mishra, the last Congress chief minister in Bihar, could not even com­plete one of his three terms. Riding decisively on Mandal politics, Lalu Prasad and RJD (Tejashwi Yadav today) ousted Congress from power unceremoniously, forcing the once “grand old party” to hang on to the regional party’s coattails for survival.

A brutal blow in the recent past was Nitish Kumar walking out of the I.N.D.I.A. bloc to join hands with BJP. In the Lok Sabha polls that followed, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won 30 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar. BJP and the Janata Daul-United, or JD(U), clinched 12 seats each. Another ally, the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), or LJP(RV), won five seats. Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) also won the only seat it contested. However, RJD faced a hu­miliating defeat, winning only four seats and Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation, or CPI(ML)L, won three and two seats, respectively. Moreover, JD(U) emerged as the top ally of BJP at the Centre.

As if all these reverses in states where it has been reduced to a political parasite were not enough, wherever Congress took on BJP directly in elections, it got a bloody nose. In May 2023, Congress won in Karnataka decisively, dislodging BJP. It seemed to be on a roll. Opinion polls projected a win in four of five states heading to polls—Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, and Mizoram. Significant wins in these states were expected to boost Congress’ strength manifold in the Lok Sabha elections. In retrospect, it was a foretaste of Haryana. Congress only managed to win Telangana, even losing its sitting governments in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan.

In Haryana, one of the states where Congress was in direct contest with BJP, the party had accused the Election Commission (EC) of “data manipulation”, and called the results “totally unex­pected, completely surprising, counter-intuitive, and against the ground reality”, a telling commentary on the disconnect between its leadership and ordinary voters. In Mumbai, urging voters to ensure a bigger victory for BJP than the one in Haryana, Modi called Congress a “party of unalloyed hate”. If Modi’s zeal and his combative mood are any indication, the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) could well be a sitting duck against a predatory BJP on November 20.

After the 2024 Lok Sabha verdict, BJP’s inability to get a major­ity on its own allowed pundits to conclude that Modi had lost his political sheen and that his party would find the going tough in the months to come. They were determined to not let facts cloud their narrative. Facts such as that it was the first time in several decades that a prime minister had legitimately earned a third term; that the ruling party had noticeably increased its vote share; and crucially, that the main Opposition party Congress, which once revelled in a pan-India status, failed to touch three figures in seat count for the third consecutive Lok Sabha. The leitmotif in the narrative was that somehow Congress’ 99 seats were way higher than the 240 BJP—emerging as the single-larg­est party—raked in on its own under a Modi who had already served two terms as prime minister and when all conventional wisdom said anti-incumbency would weigh down both Modi and his party. Although BJP was short of a majority itself, NDA won 293 seats in all, well above the 272 required. Congress and SP, as part of the I.N.D.I.A. bloc, secured only 99 and 37 seats re­spectively and the alliance won 235 seats in all.

The overlooked fact was that BJP and NDA have won eight state elections and Congress, despite the airs of a main challenger, had just two results to its credit—a government in Telangana and a paltry six seats in Kashmir Valley thanks to its alliance with NC. These efforts have infected Congress with a chronic condition whose symptoms include arrogance, a divisive political agenda, and an overconsumption of ideas prescribed by ineffectual political strategists and ideologically bankrupt economists.

Rahul Gandhi was made to believe by this clique that he had ‘arrived’ in the mainstream political arena and that Modi would no longer be able to take his own onslaught for granted. Consequently, Rahul rearranged the political managers of his party. Those with experience and institutional memory were benched. Political lightweights became the first set of minders. The likes of Jairam Ramesh, Pawan Khera and Kaushik Basu became the A-listers of the Rahul Gandhi chorus. Also quick to sign up were social scientists like Yogendra Yadav and others of the same exhausted ideological ilk.

Following a drastic makeover, Rahul Gandhi—whose party did not want to include the demand for a caste census in the official resolution at the meeting of the anti-BJP alliance in Mumbai when Nitish had aggressively pushed for it—became the new poster boy of social justice. Nothing could be more ironic than this, especially given that the entire social justice move­ment, and the politics that raged around it, was a direct reaction to the refusal of successive Congress governments to accept the reservation policy. In August 1990, the VP Singh government announced that it would implement the recommendations of the BP Mandal Commission report on reservations, including a 27 per cent quota for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) nationwide in jobs. It was a decisive moment in independent India’s political history—Mandalisation would fuel a toxic cauldron of caste-based divisions in society in a never-before and irrevocable manner.

On September 6, 1990, Rajiv Gandhi, MP from Amethi, ripped apart the fundamentals of the report in Parliament, warning that it would corrode from within India’s united progress to prosperity and development. Accusing VP Singh of using the Mandal Com­mission report to “divide and rule” along caste lines, Gandhi, then leader of Opposition, punched holes in BP Mandal’s motives and flawed methodology in producing the report and blamed Singh of accepting it in haste without adequate homework on how “backward classes” among Socially and Economically Backward Classes (SEBCs) was changed to mean “backward castes”, or why Mandal rode roughshod over the views of other panel members in drawing his conclusions. But 34 years down the line, Rahul Gandhi is doing exactly what his father Rajiv had warned against in September 1990. Back then, the issue was one of giving a modi­cum of justice to socially and educationally backward groups; today it is part of a series of attempts to put the government on the mat and inflame political opinion.

Congress’ position on caste-based reservations, ideologically or in political praxis under the governments of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, had been steadfast. BR Ambedkar and Nehru had strikingly different views on this. In February this year, quoting Nehru during the Motion of Thanks, Modi said, “I do not like reservation in any form. Especially reservation in jobs. I am against any such step that promotes inefficiency and takes us towards mediocrity.” He maintained, “It shows that Congress has always been against reservation. Nehruji used to say that if SC/ST/OBC got quotas in jobs, then the standard of government work would fall.” None of this, however, stopped Rahul Gandhi’s incendiary rhetoric against a government that has done more than its fair share of furthering representation for disadvantaged groups.

CONGRESS’ LOK SABHA manifesto was focused on this social justice crusader image of Rahul Gandhi, including the caste census. But the image makeover was in the offing well before the manifesto, but­tressed by his Bharat Jodo Yatra. This Robin Hood syndrome was showcased when wealth-shaming became a centrepiece of Rahul’s remodelling, with repeated attacks on both industrial titans Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani. Sam Pitroda, once close to Rajiv Gandhi and still a member of the Gandhi family’s inner circle and Congress’ go-to man in the US, proposed an inheritance tax on Indians along the lines of what prevails in America. The concept of inheritance tax involves taxing the as­sets and properties that individuals inherit from their deceased ancestors. Pitroda cited the American example where the gov­ernment takes 55 per cent of the deceased’s wealth as inheritance tax while the remaining 45 per cent is distributed among the legal heirs or children. This, he implied, would fall seamlessly in line with Congress’ proposal for redistribution of wealth that Rahul Gandhi had earlier broached. Party leaders had quickly walked back on the suggestions the moment things became too hot to handle, with both loyalists and BJP loudly protesting.

In February last year, on US short seller Hindenburg’s report on the Adani Group, too, Rahul’s assertions were mostly unsubstan­tiated and mirrored the Left’s stance of demonising wealth and job creators. The charge of Modi’s ‘cronyism’ was equally misleading, clouding the fact that the Adani Group’s rise had taken place over nearly four decades. Within a week of the report coming out, the Adani Group lost much of its huge market capitalisation. The re­port almost derailed the government’s plans for a big investment drive in infrastructure through a massive infusion of funds and private-sector participation, leading many to view the attacks on corporate India as attacks on the nation itself.

Just two turbulent weeks later, Rahul Gandhi attempted to stoke hatred against domestic businesses through entrepre­neurship-bashing rhetoric. In a speech in Parliament, he tried to shame private companies engaged in building India’s infrastruc­ture and aiding its strategic interests in the neighbourhood and on distant shores. His wealth-demonising assertions recalled a dangerous moment from history, reminiscent of the 1960s when socialism ruled the roost in India and did incalculable damage to the economy.

If market volatility and anxiety began to fade in the weeks after the Hindenburg report, politics over the issue began to acquire a high pitch. It was not a coincidence that the Oppo­sition chose to disrupt Parliament during the Budget Session to highlight the “Adani issue”. There were demands for a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe. It is another matter that opposition parties that cried foul have all along wooed the group for investment in states as diverse as Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, and Kerala.

The key allegations made by the Opposition included that the Modi government was indulging in cronyism to favour the Adani Group and that the two—the group and the government—were synonymous. The other allegation was that public-sector entities like the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) had invested heavily in the group’s companies and that a crash in the stock prices of these companies was detrimental to the public interest. It is worth noting that LIC held around 8 per cent of its assets under man­agement (in September 2022) in Adani entities. There were no allegations of malfeasance when these stocks had stratospheric valuations but when they crashed, charges that LIC had been ‘arm-twisted’ into buying these stocks emerged thick and fast.

The fact that he has a handsome investment in the stock market, and mostly in PSUs and companies doing well on account of Modi’s Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme, did not deter Rahul Gandhi from scare-mongering. He declared to EC as­sets worth over ₹20 crore. Ninety per cent of his movable assets (valued at ₹9.24 crore) are in mutual funds and stocks, including shares in 25 listed companies like ITC, ICICI Bank, Bajaj Finance, and the Titan Company.

Incidentally, the market value of companies like Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) that were targeted by Rahul Gandhi skyrocketed thereafter. But like his friends, he insisted on not al­lowing facts to blur his fiction. His advisers appeared to believe that Rahul’s persona and his position on the Indian economy could well replicate the Oc­cupy Wall Street movement in India. That movement, follow­ing the 2008 financial crisis, was a reaction to bank failures and had declared war on corporate America. Implicit to it was the demonisation of wealth. The story in India was vastly dif­ferent, however, and bank books were healthy after many de­cades. Modi himself hailed the “remarkable” turnaround in the health of India’s banking sector after net profits crossed ₹3 lakh crore for the first time in FY24. By May, private sec­tor banks had reported a net profit of ₹1.78 lakh crore and state-owned lenders ₹1.41 lakh crore in the previous financial year. “In absolute terms, the private sector banks reported a big­ger net profit than PSBs [public sector banks]. In FY24, a total of 26 private sector banks reported a net profit of ₹1.78 lakh crore versus the 12 PSBs’ net profit of ₹1.41 lakh crore,” a report said.

Corporate bullying was a standard ploy in Rahul Gandhi’s playbook. And he took wealth-shaming to a ridiculous extent without bothering to rely on facts. From every podium, he claimed that government policies were custom-made just for two industrialists. While the media bought into this narrative, social media has, however, been unmasking Rahul’s frivolous claims on the economy, including manufacturing, infrastructure, and the MSME sector.

In one instance in the run-up to the Haryana polls, Rahul Gandhi addressed an election rally in Gohana on October 3 where he held up a box of sweets from renowned jalebi-makers Matu Ram Halwai and made a reference to setting up a jalebi factory. He claimed that small businesses like Matu Ram, despite being renowned, were hampered severely in going national, even international, employing thousands in a robust business, mainly thanks to Modi’s strangulating policies, includ­ing a taxing GST and mindless demonetisation. “If Matu Ram seeks a loan from a bank for his business, he may not get it because he is neither Adani nor Ambani,” Gandhi said. That led to trolling by BJP after it won the state elections for a third straight time, with party workers and leaders mailing boxes of jalebi addressed personally to Rahul Gandhi.

Rahul Gandhi’s meander­ings on the India growth story on Modi’s watch—labelled khatakhat economics—did not escape scathing retorts from the top ech­elons of the government either. In September, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said in an apparent dig at Congress and Rahul Gandhi, “Throughout the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, govern­ments neglected manufacturing… Now people want to find a fix… Peo­ple said we are incapable and should not attempt it… How can you be a major power in the world without strong manufacturing… It requires hard work, good policies… ‘Life is not khatakhat, life is hard work’….” He was addressing the Indian diaspora in Geneva and mocking Rahul’s use of the khatakhat phrase, something he had himself borrowed from Modi. The Congress leader had repeatedly used the phrase to signal how smoothly the money-squandering welfare schemes announced by his party would work on the ground. But the jalebi factory and khatakhat refer­ences backfired in no time.

Both Modi’s strategy and policies are in stark contrast to the khatakhat brand of politics and economics practised by Congress, which promotes reckless decision-making and programmes for electoral gains. The first 100 days of the third Modi government were a mix of forward-looking economic decisions and other administrative measures. But in none of these decisions did the government sacrifice India’s economic prospects at the altar of politics. When Modi was sworn in as prime minister for a third time on June 9, the plan for the next 100 days, conceived even before the results were out, had a number of elements with one common thread: speeding up economic growth. Less than a fortnight after the swearing-in, the government announced the approval of major infrastructure projects, including a mega port at Vadhavan in Maharashtra at a cost of ₹76,200 crore. The port will be among the top 10 in the world when completed. The government also approved infrastructure projects worth ₹3 lakh crore that included road connectivity to 25,000 villages. The project was under the fourth edition of the PM Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) and involved construction of 62,500km of roads with Central assistance of ₹49,000 crore.

Congress’ refusal to accept the Haryana verdict can be attributed to the trauma it is now grappling with in the face of Rahul Gandhi’s collapse as Modi’s main challenger less than four months after his emergence. There is proof that the personal appeal of Modi has remained intact in
Haryana as elsewhere

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Apart from these projects, the government has also approved the strengthening of India’s rural roads network with an invest­ment of ₹50,600 crore and included eight national high-speed road corridor projects spanning 936km. The government also announced the second edition of the PM Awas Yojana (Urban), with a government investment of ₹2.3 lakh crore over the next five years. In late August, the government announced 12 new industrial nodes and cities under the National Industrial Cor­ridor Development Programme (NICDP) at an estimated cost of ₹28,602 crore. At the same time, in the Union Budget, a ₹2 lakh crore package aimed at fostering employment and skill devel­opment opportunities for youth was announced. Internships to one crore youth in leading companies, along with financial support and a one-time assistance, were envisaged. The Ayush­man Bharat scheme now covers citizens aged 70 and above, ir­respective of incomes. On August 24, the government revamped the pension scheme for 23 lakh Central government employees and the new Unified Pension Scheme (UPS) to be launched on April 1, 2025. UPS provides an assured pension of 50 per cent of average basic pay drawn by a government employee over the last 12 months before retirement for those with a minimum service of 25 years.

The interesting thing about Rahul Gandhi’s khatakhat eco­nomics is its emphasis on distributing “benefits” to people with­out any consideration for expanding the economic output of the country, or the prerequisites for sustaining these “benefits” in the first place. A cursory glance at the party’s manifestos shows that the distributive side is detailed while the production side is, at best, dealt with in a cursory fashion. But this seems to have hit a speed breaker in Haryana where the “seven guarantees” offered to voters did not click. These promises included a hand­out of ₹2,000 per month for women, 500 units of free power, le­galising minimum support prices (MSPs) for crops, and so on. Other “guarantees” included the restoration of the Old Pension Scheme (OPS), providing LPG cylinders to households at ₹500 per refill, a caste census, and two lakh government jobs. In the end, voters thumbed their noses at these.

Rahul Gandhi’s remarks about Modinomics, ironically, came at a time when India is the world’s fifth-largest economy by GDP and the third-largest economy by purchasing power parity (PPP). A clutch of global research agencies maintains that with its rap­idly growing population comes “lucrative and diverse opportuni­ties for companies on a global scale”. India has attracted signifi­cant interest as a manufacturing hub, particularly for key sectors like automotive, engineering, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and consumer durables. And the Indian manufacturing sector is projected to be “one of the fastest-growing in the local economy.”

LITTLE WONDER THEN, given the jejune eco­nomic and political worldview of the Congress leadership and its advisers, ideas once in fashion on foreign shores are finding their manifestation in the party’s outlook on India. In his last address to the 17th Lok Sabha, Modi had launched an attack on the “cancel culture” pro­clivities of the Nehru-Gandhi family and Congress leadership. While the immediate reference was to the desperate relaunch of Rahul Gandhi through the Bharat Jodo Yatra, an obviously failed product among voter-consumers, Modi was taking a dig at the party’s first family snuffing out the legacy and political growth of all astute and experienced leaders over decades, in order to pro­mote the Nehru-Gandhi family alone. Also, the party leadership’s capture of all key national institutions over decades had led to a singular, family-centric narrative of the India growth story.

The Congress leadership’s refusal to accept the Haryana verdict can be attributed to the PTSD phase it is now grappling with in the face of Rahul Gandhi’s collapse as Modi’s main challenger less than four months after his contrived emergence. There is incontrovertible proof, meanwhile, that the personal appeal of Narendra Modi has remained intact in Haryana as elsewhere. That the welfare schemes aimed at farmers, youth and women had successfully reached their targets. And that non-Jat com­munities were rallying behind BJP, restive about a Jat-controlled government by Bhupinder Singh Hooda. Dalit communities, too, were disgruntled because their claims to certain seats were rejected and their tallest Congress leader in the state, Selja Kumari, was sidelined.

On October 8, the day Congress dispatched its team to EC to complain about EVMs—something it has routinely done every time it has lost an election since 2014—the knives were out in the party against both Hooda and Selja Kumari. Party leaders in Haryana were ranged in front of TV cameras, claim­ing that the election was sabotaged from within. Congress can­didate for the Ambala Cantt seat, Parvinder Pal Pari, said, “The party itself conspired to make me lose. Deepender Hooda made Chitra Sarwara [former Congress leader and independent can­didate from Ambala Cantt] contest against me to ensure my defeat…” Ajay Singh Yadav, chairman of the OBC division of AICC, said, “The four districts of South Haryana—Gurgaon, Mahendragarh, Rewari and Faridabad—have no representa­tion in the CWC, CEC and the HPCC. Ignoring these areas has proved fatal for the party…” And, Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) spokesperson Rakesh Tikait blamed Bhupinder Hooda’s stubbornness for Congress failing to win a majority.

These insider accusations about how the Congress leader­ship snatched defeat from the jaws of victory stood against the larger canvas of the Bhupinder Hooda-Selja Kumari feud, with an arrogant Hooda marginalising Selja Kumari in both campaigning and seat distribution. It sent out a clear signal to Dalit and non-Jat communities that Jats would monopolise the Haryana government if Congress returned to power and that the party’s first family in the state, the Hoodas, would call all the shots. Hooda Sr has fully controlled the Haryana Congress for the past two decades, sidelining both Selja Kumari and Randeep Singh Surjewala. Hooda was accused of keeping the strobe lights solely on himself, backing rebels and independents in several seats to stymie official candidates viewed as belonging to the Selja Kumari camp or owing allegiance to Surjewala. He also shot down a possible alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) that Congress was considering. Granted, that would only have taken the Congress tally up to 40 from the 37 it won. But the blame for the party losing a staggering 53 seats should be laid at the door of Congress’ own leadership, topped by Hooda Sr. So powerful, indeed, was he in the Haryana Congress that the so-called high command was forced to give in. In 2016, Hooda was blamed for the shock defeat of RK Anand—a 10 Janpath loyalist and Congress’ official candidate—in the Rajya Sabha elections in Haryana. In 2022, the high command made Udai Bhan, an ardent Hooda loyalist, the state Congress president, replacing Selja Kumari. Hooda was himself the Congress Legislative Party (CLP) chief, making his control absolute.

In Rahul Gandhi’s hallucinatory world, denial and its enablers alone prevail. In the real world they remain incapable of charting a winning course for the Nehru-Gandhi scion to take on Narendra Modi and the might of the BJP organisation. Congress may indeed believe it is on a roll, as Gandhi’s cheerleaders claim, but Haryana has proved that the party is rolling downhill, brake­less, and with no one at the steering wheel.

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PR Ramesh