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New Delhi, Feb. 3: The contrast in the styles of communication of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul has been vividly manifested in the election campaign this time, compelling even Congress leaders to debate how the son has emerged as an aggressive fighter so different from his mother.
While Rahul prefers direct attack on political rivals, Sonia opts for implicit, metaphorical references.
Rahul is not shy of getting personal, Sonia avoids personal criticism and raises issues with restraint.
Both mother and son toured Uttarakhand and dealt with the subject of corruption and the last-minute change of chief minister by the BJP. While Sonia said there was widespread corruption in the state and the change of chief minister wouldn’t change the reality, Rahul said: “Khanduri majboori hai, kyonki choron ko chhupana zaroori hai (Khanduri is a compulsion because the thieves have to be covered up).”
Same theme, but the articulation distinguishes the subdued mother from the combative son.
Rahul has deployed his aggression to great effect in Uttar Pradesh, almost establishing his party as the main opposition despite its pathetic organisational plight.
While his ceaseless campaign in the state has stirred the electoral cauldron, his bluntness has generated curiosity among every section of the society.
Rahul’s oft-repeated barb — Mayawati’s magical elephant eats money — has doubtless become the defining theme of the state’s electoral discourse.
At a rally in Bundelkhand, he said: “Children were dying of encephalitis. The Centre sent money for medicine. Kushwaha gobbled it up. The Centre sent tractors for farmers, Naseem Siddiqui gave them to his sons. For the poor, thousands of crores were sent, thieves took them away. For how long will you be ruled by thieves?”
The Nehru-Gandhi family is not known for such brusqueness. But Rahul has been making personal attacks on Babu Singh Kushwaha, the main accused in the rural health mission scam, and Siddiqui, Mayawati’s right-hand man.
He said at another rally: “Kushwaha paisa harap liya, BJP Kushwaha ko lapak liya. BJP pehle Ram ko bechta tha, ab Kushwaha ko khareed liya (Kushwaha stole the money, BJP stole Kushwaha. BJP earlier used to sell Lord Ram, now they have bought Kushwaha).”
Rahul often recites this story at public meetings. “Once I saw an airstrip being prepared at a place along with a well-laid-out road to a hospital which was being painted from outside. I went inside to find no doctor, no patient. I asked the staff what was happening. He said, ‘Sir, Mayawatiji will land in a helicopter, see the hospital from outside and leave. My job will be saved’. This is how UP is being run. For how long will you allow this? You will have to change UP, now or after five years. Only we can develop UP to a model state.”
He interacts with the audience regularly. He will ask: “How many people here had to pay a bribe, raise your hands.”
Or, referring to the rural employment scheme, ask: “MNREGA is successful in other states, are you getting jobs here? Where is the money going?”
Pat comes the reply: “Elephant eats them up.”
He will ask again: “Money doesn’t fall from heaven. Whose money is the elephant eating?”
The answer comes in a chorus: “Humara paisa.”
Rahul hasn’t spared the Samajwadi Party, too, which may end up as the Congress’s alliance partner. He repeatedly reminds people how criminals ran police stations during Mulayam Singh’s rule and how his son Akhilesh studied in English medium despite his father’s tirade against the “foreign language.”
Sonia neither gets so incisive, nor personal, though the Congress chief on Wednesday attacked Mayawati for dismissing her ministers on election eve.
“The present chief minister dismissed 21 of her ministers on election eve. She was not able to see their corruption in the past five years. I want to ask whether taking resignations made her government clean,” Sonia said in Gonda, kicking off her election campaign in Uttar Pradesh.
“Is this not cheating the people... not an attempt to cheat the people?” she asked.
Rahul, however, has even gone to the extent of accusing L.K. Advani of going on a rath yatra only to search criminals and the corrupt to be included in his party.
Veteran Congress leaders explain that while Rahul’s belligerence is primarily because of his age, the fact that he has consciously developed himself as a pro-poor, radical reformer helps him naturally deploy aggressive tactics.
One leader said: “Unlike Rajiv or Sonia Gandhi, his interaction with the masses has been deep and widespread. He has a personal experience of the wretched poverty our vast population lives in and has studied their problems. This has given him a sense of purpose and confidence, too.”
Sonia, a rank outsider during her early days in politics, had to not only fight Atal Bihari Vajpayee but also struggle to earn acceptability among Indians.
Congress leaders believe she could not have afforded to be aggressive and the best option was to use humility and sobriety, which are anyway the hallmarks of an Indian daughter-in-law.
After the Congress came to power in 2004, she had an additional burden of speaking as the custodian of the central government.
Sonia would use such general adages like “andher nagri/chaupat raja” to describe bad governance and nervously wriggle out of the controversy after unwittingly using harsh words like “maut ka saudagar” (merchant of death) for Narendra Modi.
But Rahul sticks to his guns. When his “begging” remark for distress migration from Uttar Pradesh kicked up a row, he repeated it a hundred times. He calls a thief a thief one day, grows beard, pulls up his sleeves and returns to upgrade him to a dacoit.
That’s Rahul in 2011-12.
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