Nothing new in Rahul Gandhi-Raghuram Rajan dialogue!

-Virag Pachpore 

 

“Good leaders do not just happen; we need to deserve good leaders”. This dictum holds so true in case of Congress and Rahul Gandhi. After listening to the much-publicized video conversation between Rahul Gandhi and former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan, I was damn sure that the Congress would have to tread miles to deserve a good leader. First of all, it was told that the conversion would be of one-hour duration but it turned out to be just of 28 minutes, not even half-an-hour! Was it because of the dull, oft-repeated charges Rahul Gandhi levels against the Modi Government converted into questions? Or as it because, Raghuram Rajan found himself lost in answering the same question put with change of words and tones?

 

Most questions Rahul asked were confined to economy during the COVID-19, the rebuilding of economy, the growing unemployment and centralization of authority, moving backwards to authoritarian model, something that is gone wrong with global economy, infrastructure of hatred and division and of course, India needing a new vision. And the replies he received were all stereotyped. Raghuram Rajan endorsing almost what Rahul Gandhi said adding some explanations of his own. To a question on how to manage the fight against the virus and impact of virus on economy, the former RBI Governor said that India needed to conduct 2 million tests a day as against the present capacity. He suggested to going for mass testing as these are the ways to reduce the burden on infrastructure.

 

Now nobody has denied that, not even the Prime Minister and the Health Minister. They are well aware of their limitations. Yet they are taking every possible step to arrest the spread of the virus and provide succor to the stranded migrant labors, workers, and students in whatever way they can. As compared to the worldwide damage caused by this novel coronavirus pandemic, India is placed at a much better position with the optimum utilization of its resources and manpower, thanks to the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his colleagues in the government.

 

Various social organizations, NGOs, and individuals are also lending a helping hand to those who need it most. However, the Congress and its leader Rahul Gandhi is not seen on the forefront to fight the virus by whatever way they can. The other day, the Congress, Rahul Gandhi and P Chidambaram et el raised a hue and cry over the RBI declaration regarding ‘writing off’ loans to certain businessmen drubbing this step as ‘loans waived’ to the tune of Rs. 68,000 crore! What the nation can expect from those who fail to understand a simple difference between ‘writing off’ loans and ‘waiving loans’?

The next question that came from the ‘good leader’ was about crisis of centralization. There is too much centralization of power taking place and conversations are stopping. The typical answer to this was decentralization of power and empowering people through Panchayati Raj system introduced by Rahul’s father the late Rajiv Gandhi. The same Rajiv Gandhi who denied the delegation of power to a hapless Muslim widow reversing the Supreme Court order by using the brute majority of his party in the Lok Sabha. Rahul may have conveniently forgotten this but the country hasn’t.

 

His next salvo was about his pet topic. Infrastructure of Division and infrastructure of hatred. Infrastructure connects people and gives opportunity but if there is division and hatred that disconnects people. That’s also infrastructure, one of division and hatred, and that causes as big a problem, Rahul Gandhi said. The only option for Raghuram Rajan was to endorse what Rahul said adding that the this can be overcome by spreading social harmony. “We can’t afford to be a house divided”, he said. To help the poor in this crisis we need to find ways of getting both money and food through the public distribution system to as many people as we can.

 

Rahul Gandhi tried to highlight the alleged discriminatory approach in treating the poor and migrant workers and the way elites are being treated. These are two completely different ideas, tow completely different ‘Indias’. How do you merge these two ‘Indias’ into one? That was Rahul’s question. In his answer Raghuram Rajan termed it as an administrative challenge in reaching everywhere and making sure that the level of living is enhanced. But the greater challenge according to him was to bridge the gap between the lower middle class and the middle class by creating huge jobs, good quality jobs so that the people are not solely dependent on the ‘sarkari’ jobs.

 

For this tremendous expansion of economy was necessary. But there has been progressive decline in our rate of economic growth in last so many years when in fact we have so many young people entering the labor force. Well, no one would contest Rahul Gandhi vis-à-vis the current situation in the country due to coronavirus pandemic. But his oft-repeated diatribe and the same old criticism of Narendra Modi and his policies, without giving an alternative that would work successfully, makes him bite the dust every time he tries to score over Modi.

 

Instead of asking directions from Raghuram Rajan for Modi, Rahul Gandhi would have done well by jumping into the fray with his ‘huge’ manpower of the Congress party to serve the poor, stranded migrant workers and other needy people in the wake of this COVID-19 pandemic. But he chose to be in the position of an advisor. People no longer require advisors, they are aplenty available in India. What they need is leaders for whom the country is top priority. It is time Rahul learns his basic lessons from Modi lest he became irrelevant in the contemporary Indian political scenario.