It might seem like dark days for the Congress these days but the party need not despair. The son is finally rising.
The newly revamped and snazzy Congress website is all about Rahul, Rahul and more Rahul Gandhi. Sonia Gandhi might still be the party's chief but the virtual baton has been passed on to her son. S Prasannarajan writes in India Today that Rahul's attempt to remake the Congress "represents the pledge of the son to redeem the party withering away in the shadow of the mother." The new website certainly reflects that.
"The home page is about Rahul every inch of the way the way, carrying his speeches, quotes and nine photographs while Sonia finds no mention," writes Sanjay K Jha in The Telegraph. There's Rahul talking to FICCI. There's Rahul addressing a press conference. There's Rahul opining about the Lok Pal bill. And there's Shri Gandhi sharing in the "In Focus" section a poignant story about his secular dream.
Screenshot from the new Congress site
"I met a boy at the relief camp in Shamli. He was crying. When I asked him why he was crying, he said he was afraid…No person of any community, caste or region should ever be scared in India. This is a secular country".
The usual holy trinity – Nehru, Indira and Rajiv – are tucked away in the "Our Inspiration" corner. Sonia however has to be searched for. She's under "Organisation" as if listing the board of directors of some NGO. Most surprisingly for a party as propelled by dynasty power as the Congress, the largest pictures on the front page are not of any of its usual icons other than the Mahatma at his spinning wheel. Apart from him it's all smiling children in a classroom, jubilant college graduates tossing their caps in the air and cheering women at a Congress rally. Mahatma is spinning his khadi but the Congress is trying to spin a different story about a more modern party – one that embraces hope, merit and empowerment.
But the Congress' new website also acknowledges the twin threats posed by both the BJP and the Aam Aadmi Party to the Congress even its spokespersons try to exude a blasé confidence.
The Congress rattled by Modi's vikaas for all mantra has expanded on it. So according to the website it's the party with a "Voice FOR ALL", "Empowerment FOR ALL" and "Opportunity FOR ALL."
The impact of the Aam Aadmi Party's grassroots success is also clear. Jha writes "The previous website didn't have the donation facility, which may have been inspired by the success of the Aam Aadmi Party, which has generated sizeable funds online. The Congress website allows donations through cheques and takes care to mention that these are exempt from income tax."
In an odd twist the main slide show on the Congress website has fewer pictures of the party's leadership.
In contrast the Aam Aadmi Party squeezes in four pictures of Arvind Kejriwal in three slides. The only slide that does not have his picture has his name.
The BJP has its Rajnath Singh-LK.Advani-Atal Behari Vajpayee troika front and centre on its main slide show alongside its platform planks of Good Governance, Cultural Nationalism, Development, Antyodaya and Security.
The BJP might have a roadmap to the nation's future but the navigation is hopelessly tangled on its website. Security leads nowhere. Development leads to a page that's all about Cultural Nationalism. Antyodaya is a dead end. Narendra Modi is coyly played down on the front page so that in the virtual BJP it's as if the great Advani-Modi power struggle never happened. There's just a link to Modi's website and a picture of Modi hugging Rajanth Singh as they invite voters to Join Mission 272+.
The Congress website is clean and well-organized, with big images. It's actually a far more professional, 21st century website than the old clunker which was just a laundry basket for speeches by Sonia Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. The Congress has a far tougher task for its website designers than the Aam Aadmi Party. It has to brag about its long history without being dragged down by it. The Aam Aadmi Party having little to no history at all has a barebones front page – images, latest news, and ways to become involved with it.
The Congress has to defend its record, tout the new land acquisition law and claim to be committed to eliminating corruption. But it has decided to look ahead instead of cluttering its front page with a who's who of the Independence Movement. Those worthies are all enshrined in Our Inspiration. But "our inspiration" is no longer front and centre on the website.
The Congress is trying to reinvent itself to be a party that's more about vision and policy than a First Family. The website matches that makeover. That might be in keeping with Rahul Gandhi's self-image these days as the party's conscience.
But as MJ Akbar points out in The Times of India, the problem with Rahul's "blue blood warrior against sleaze" persona is he keeps reversing decisions made by his own party. But it's a hard act to sell the electorate after ten years in power, marked by scams aplenty writes Akbar. "One can almost hear that old Urdu proverb being repeated across the northern states: Nau sau chuhe khaake billi Haj pe chali (After eating 990 mice, the cat is going on Haj.)"
A clean web interface is sadly nowhere close to a clean party.
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