Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi's dramatic intervention over the ordinance that seeks to enable convicted legislators to continue in office is marked by a severe contradiction. On the one hand, there is all-round public approval and appreciation of his stance; few would disagree with him when he says that the relevant piece of paper needs to be torn up. But the way he has intervened needs to be disapproved in equally strong terms. His comments came after the Congress party's core group and the Union Cabinet deliberated and decided in favour of the ordinance. Thus, they have undermined just about everybody important who had anything to do with the matter. The senior-most leaders in the Congress and the government, including the prime minister, who was on a foreign tour, have been acutely embarrassed and made to run for cover. The Congress has always been run in a top-down manner - more so since Indira Gandhi set the style and her progeny followed suit. Successive Congress-led governments have not been known to take their executive autonomy seriously, either. But whatever facade was being maintained so far has now been torn apart. With the latest outburst from Mr Gandhi, the leaders of the Congress and its government have been left to figure out how best they can eat their words without a total loss of face.
Mr Gandhi, as the Congress vice-president, is the party's second most important leader and, by all accounts, headed to lead any government that the Congress can lead in the immediate future. He, therefore, cannot be out of the loop when it comes to an important decision such as issuing an ordinance that challenges the Supreme Court direction and the position of some political parties. So why did he not oppose the move when it was internally deliberated? If the reality is that he was not kept in the loop, it speaks volumes about the way the Congress functions; it offers a clue to the enormous mismanagement in the functioning of the government in the past few years. It is plausible that the party leadership first went along with the decision with full knowledge of anybody who is somebody. But when public protest to it was instantaneous and total, it sought to beat a hasty retreat. These things do happen in politics, but executing the volte-face with quiet efficiency, if not grace, can save the day or limit the damage. Instead, the Congress has conducted itself with total ineptitude, thereby heaping scorn on the prime minister and the government leadership.
The serious issue that emerges is the light that the incident throws on Rahul Gandhi's leadership qualities and whether he is ready to take over not just the party but also the government if the need arises. The manner in which he barged into a meet-the-press programme and used the most slapdash language to make his point raises questions about his maturity. Rajiv Gandhi's initial period in power was famously described as a "babalog government". The misfortune of the country is that it seems headed for a most unfortunate choice - between one more such government and one led by Narendra Modi.
