As the newest hot news stories hit the screens as Baba Ramdev dismisses
Rahul Gandhi as of being even a slight competition to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, it is quiet widely known fact that it is not so. The Vice President of the AICC, and the seemingly future leader of the congress party itself, Rahul Gandhi is not a person who someone should be underestimating. However, recent comments from Modi confirms the level of excessive confidence that his party and he is apparently sharing. With his latest taunts of "burqa of secularism" clearly points to it.
Unfortunately, there lies the undeniable fact of how the congress party has achieved nothing in the Uttar Pradesh elections despite spending years trying, all they could manage was to win 6 more seats than they did in 2007. This stands uncomfortably as a smudge on the image of Rahul Gandhi.
But the person himself, always dressed in the pristine white kurtas, with the earnest looking glasses, is nothing but the future promise to not only the congress party, but also to the country. Even though his efforts in UP didn't bear fruit as much as he would've liked, he indeed was successful in attracting the eyes, when he visited the Dalit huts and ate food from there.
He had infact succeeded, though in smaller proportions, to get the public attention which they dearly needed in the state where previously, the existance of the party was nearly nonexistent. He also succeeded to reasonable measures to attract public attention with his recent "padayatra" organized in the state. But as it turned out the bulk of the attention he attracted didn't seem to have converted into votes.
Despite his efforts, Rahul Gandhi still stands out as an outsider to the common people of the state of Uttar Pradesh. To them, he's just the outsider barging in occasionally just to collect their votes. This could probably be the reason of the less than impressive result the Congress party got from the recent elections in the state.
The fact of him being an outsider stand heavily on the failure of the party when it gets to be compared to the charisma of leaders like Narendra Modi or Nitish Kumar of the NDA. It is also a troubling fact for the Congress party, that the local Congress leadership in the state is so inefficient that they manage to ruin any positive effects Rahul Gandhi was able to build up and develop through his yatras and campaigns.
With the combined effort from local as well as the national leadership, the Congress and Rahul Gandhi hopefully will succeed in UP. His success in the national arena is something to be anticipated. The great leader as he is, he just can't be blindly ruled out as a not enough competent competition for political giants like Narendra Modi. It's a game of wits and selflessness, not just strength and dumb luck. And when the time is right, the rich political ancestry he has will be a helping factor in his future growth in the politics.
