Rahul Gandhi is a transformed man. Long preoccupied with the distant future of the Congress, he is now just as concerned with its immediate prospects.
In the last fortnight or so, Rahul has had a series of meetings for the party's manifesto committee with a host of senior party leaders and Cabinet ministers in attendance. He has met more journalists in the last 15 days than he has in nine years of his political career, albeit for pen-down, off-the-record meetings in small groups.
On December 27, he will meet the finance minister, the home minister and chief ministers of Congress-ruled states in New Delhi to discuss price rise and the appointment of Lokayuktas in the states. In short, he is both expressing and asserting himself within and outside the party.
Rahul has realised that his promotion within the party does not mean victories outside. The roadblock in his way is not a vice-president's post or being declared the party's prime ministerial candidate. The hurdle is the party's image sullied by Government inaction and amplified by the buzz created by the Congress's opponents like bjp and more recently, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Sources close to Rahul indicate that while he is ready to take the plunge, this time around he knows simply winning another walkover within the party will not help. The realisation has dawned rather late in the day.
Perhaps, even too late for the Congress to make another bid at power in 2014. But party leaders are hoping it will at least arrest the speed of the slide. Sources admit that Rahul has pushed the Congress into changing gears so that it is able to put up a good fight. For public consumption, the Congress has dusted its battle gear and launched into a bid for upa III, post 2014. Off the record, it is, at best, a damage control exercise aimed at curtailing the Congress's losses.
The paradigm shift comes from an awakening forced by the recent Assembly election results that rudely jolted the Congress in Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. As Congress President Sonia Gandhi appeared before the press at 24 Akbar Road, Rahul in tow, on the evening of December 8, minutes after the Congress had been whitewashed in the four states, she said the party would declare its prime ministerial candidate at the "appropriate time".
When Rahul spoke, he promised to change the Congress "in ways you cannot imagine". Though not unimaginable, because many of those processes have already been implemented by bjp and aap, changes have kicked in within the Congress.
While old-timers like Janardan Dwivedi describe Rahul as the de facto prime ministerial candidate from the party, or "our future leader", the younger lot has begun demanding that the declaration be made. Speaking from the party forum, Lok Sabha MP Priya Dutt pointed out there is consensus in the party that Rahul should now be projected as the prime ministerial candidate. "I hope this is done (at the Congress's January 17, 2014 convention). It is not just the wish of the young leaders in the party but everyone in the Congress," she said.
It was a cameo by Dutt at the party's briefing but sources in the party say expect more youngsters in the Congress to start speaking out. "Our party never declares the prime ministerial candidate but times have changed. Now there are a lot of youngsters out there on social media networks who want a clear face projected from the party.
It cannot be left to presumption anymore," says a young Congress secretary and Lok Sabha MP. Rahul, meanwhile, has told the party that while he is ready for the declaration, the meet should focus on the Congress's counter-offensive and poll strategy rather than announcing him as the prime ministerial candidate.
The clean-up has already started and the Congress top brass is getting younger. The new Chhattisgarh Congress chief, Bhupesh Baghel, who replaced Union minister Charan Das Mahant, is 52 years old. Delhi's new party chief Arvinder Singh Lovely is 45. "Going by the current state of politics, they are very young," says a Cabinet minister. Baghel is also a known critic of former Chhattisgarh chief minister Ajit Jogi. In the run-up to the Assembly elections, the Congress wasted more time and effort in appeasing a disgruntled Jogi than in taking on the Raman Singh-led bjp government.
Rahul is willing to give a longer rope to the younger lot. But hurdles remain. Union ministers Jyotiraditya Scindia, 42, and Sachin Pilot, 36, are frontrunners for the post of president of the Congress party state units in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan respectively but the decision is pending. In Haryana, the name of Lok Sabha MP Ashok Tanwar, 37, has been doing the rounds for a few months but there is resistance from different groups within the party.
While Rahul has been pushing for Tanwar, under whom he began transforming the Indian Youth Congress, Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and his known baiter, Union minister Kumari Selja, have both lodged protests with the Congress president.
"The jolt from the Assembly election results was a necessary one. It will help him push some key decisions that were pending due to objections from the old guard," says a party secretary. Over time, Rahul handpicked 20 young secretaries and attached them to key general secretaries to learn the ropes. He has given strong indications that this group will play an important role in the party after the 2014 results.
Sources in the know say while Rahul has been keen to push the party's transformation, he wants to make it smooth, without upsetting too many people, some of whom have been his mother's lieutenants for years. "There is no old guard versus new guard. The fact is the Congress needs both the experience of the seniors and the energy of the young leaders," says party General Secretary Shakeel Ahmad.
As part of the Congress strategy, the party has thrown open its manifesto for suggestions from the people, an idea that aap implemented-with remarkable success-in the Delhi elections. On December 23, Rahul held consultations with leaders and representatives from the minority communities for drafting the Congress's manifesto for 2014. "Until we don't open up processes, until we don't encourage leadership, problems will not be solved,â� he told a gathering of nearly 200 people from different civil society groups focused on minority issues.
"The main way to empower marginalised sections of society is to improve their access to quality education," he added. He also shared with them details of his visit to relief camps at Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh on December 22. "The Congress believes in peaceful revolution," he said, stressing the need to rehabilitate the riot-affected and re-establish peace in the area. Senior Congress leaders including ministers Jairam Ramesh, Salman Khurshid, K. Rahman Khan and Oscar Fernandes also attended the interaction.
The first round of a series of such interactions was held on December 13. Rahul had met representatives of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes. For that, he had roped in senior leaders Mukul Wasnik, P. Chidambaram, Kumari Selja, M. Veerappa Moily and Kishore Chandra Deo. Encouraged by the performance of the Chhattisgarh Congress in the tribal belts of Sarguja and Bastar, the party decided to pursue SCs, STs and OBCs.
In Delhi, of the eight Assembly seats it won, seven were bagged by minority candidates. Rahul is said to have told his people to step on the gas on wooing such groups. On December 22, Rahul's aide and MP Deepender Hoooda organised a visit by a delegation of Jat leaders to thank Sonia for backing the demand of reservation for Jats.
Since the Assembly results were declared, Rahul has briefed the press a number of times. He has tried to take ownership-both of the successes and the failures. His latest address at the ficci annual general meeting on December 21 spoke not just of systemic changes but solutions to specific problems. "The biggest problem is absolute arbitrary powers at all levels of the system. In India, there are a lot of arbitrary powers.
The environment minister or the chief minister can take any decision he wants," Rahul said. This was barely a few hours after the President had accepted the resignation of Jayanthi Natarajan as environment and forests minister. Under Natarajan, the ministry had sat on clearances for projects worth a few thousand crores.
The Lokpal Bill, which was passed on December 18 by Parliament after 46 years of dilly-dallying, was only one part of a larger anti-corruption framework that the Congress wanted to provide, Rahul said while addressing the press on December 14. He fought hard to wrest credit back from aap for catalysing the process. "To say we are doing this because of political pressure is not right," Rahul said. "The single biggest step against corruption was the Right to Information Act. We did it when we were doing just fine," he added.
Rahul's proactive approach after the December 8 results has surprised many within the party. While Congressmen argued at leisure for a long time on whether he was "reluctant or reticent", the party remained torn between who is the leader: Rahul Gandhi or Sonia Gandhi. "The problem was he would move two steps forward in a particular direction and then change his mind.
Or at least we never got to know what was on his mind," says a secretary who once worked closely with him. The Congress is a party nurtured on the belief that not taking a decision is also a decision. But electoral results from Bihar to Uttar Pradesh to more recent ones show indecision has affected the party worse than opportunistic allies. Those who are thrilled at the flurry of activity, are also secretly hoping it doesn't fizzle out, as it has in the past. This is the only chance they've got.
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