Rahul Gandhi's statement in an interview to Dainik Bhaskar that he is willing to take up "whatever responsibility the organisation... will give to me in the future" has led everybody to jump to the conclusion that he will formally be anointed the Congress party's prime ministerial candidate. Few people have stopped to ask themselves: when there is zero chance of Rahul becoming PM in 2014, why would the Congress make a fool if its mascot? It's like putting a dunce cap on your nominee and pretending it is the captain's winning headgear.
There is nothing Rahul gains beyond emphasising his prime ministerial ambitions when he is not going to get the chance this time. In fact, no title or announcement is going to enhance his status as Congress' pre-eminent power after Sonia Gandhi for he is already the de facto nominee for PM. So the best we can expect when the party meets on 17 January is a clearer statement of his position as the party's lead campaigner in the Lok Sabha polls, and the one who will henceforth take the final call on party level changes and selection of candidates.
From all elements of strategy that have become visible, three Congress goals are clear - and none of these goals need Rahul to be projected as the prime ministerial candidate.
First, the overarching goal of the Congress strategy is to stop Narendra Modi from becoming PM in May. This means bringing the BJP's tally down to below 180, at which point obtaining allies may get tougher under Modi. The Congress' best-case scenario is to get the BJP down to around 160-170 where it may be possible to inflict a rudderless third front nominee as PM. It could also reignite the BJP's internal warfare since Modi's detractors will now claim he could not deliver.
Rahul Gandhi with Sonia Gandhi. Reuters.
In a third front scenario, a weakened Nitish Kumar may fit the Congress bill, or even Arvind Kejriwal - though the second alternative is difficult to envisage: why would Kejriwal want such a prolonged association with the Congress, unless the idea is to precipitate both a Delhi and national election towards the end of the year.
The second-best option may be to force the BJP to opt for someone other than Modi as PM - but even in this case it is impossible to visualise a scenario where Modi will allow a complete political rival to become PM when the cadres have rooted for him. But there's no gainsaying that the main prong of the Congress strategy is ABM - anybody but Modi. If Modi wants a Congress-mukt Bharat, Rahul wants a Modi-mukt government in May.
The second element in Congress strategy is to position Rahul as the untainted and selfless candidate for 2016 or even 2019 - assuming the anti-Modi plan does not work and AAP fails to stop the BJP from gaining 200 seats. Rahul has time on his side to wait even till 2019. So the best thing right now is to make Rahul the undisputed leader and start building him up for the future.
In recent weeks, Rahul has begun distancing himself from the record of the Manmohan Singh government - as his speech at Ficci indicated. Even though it is well known that he was the one dancing around tribals and environmental issues, Jayanthi Natarajan was asked to take the rap for project delays. Rahul himself appeared quite concerned about delays in project clearances.
The third - and possibly unarticulated - goal is to stamp the party in his own image by dumping much of the old faces. Here, he will be helped by the party's expected poor performance in the Lok Sabha polls. Most observers are struggling to figure out how the Congress will cross 100 seats in the general elections, and Rahul's secret hope will be that all the old fogies will fall by the wayside in the BJP-AAP slugfest - leaving him with a clean slate for taking the party where he wants after May.
The only problem with this three-pronged strategy is that Rahul's short-term goals may destroy his long-term ones. If AAP stops Modi in his tracks, it will become a bigger threat to the Congress itself after 2014 - as it has already positioned itself to the Left of centre and also stolen the "aam aadmi" brandname from the Congress. In this scenario, the Congress will have to move more to the centre or centre-right. It means having to erase its positioning in UPA-1 and 2 as messiah of the people. This repositioning is possible, but only if the BJP obliges by vacating this space.
The other possibility is that AAP and regional parties will fail to stop Modi - which is still the most likely scenario - in which event a truncated, emaciated sub-100 Congress party will be jostling for opposition space with AAP, BSP, and the Left, among others.
Moreover, there are two other scenarios that the Congress may not have thought about in trying to stop Modi. If it props up a third front with regional and Left party support, it will leave the BJP occupying the entire opposition space. So who will benefit if the third front crumbles under the weight of its own contradictions in 2016? It will leave thre field clear for Modi two years later.
In propping AAP, which is not a natural ally of regional parties that are as corrupt as the national parties, the Congress may have given the BJP more ally options. While three relatively clean parties - Trinamool, BJD and JD(U) - may not have a problem working with AAP, it is not easy visualising the rest - NCP, BSP, DMK-AIADMK, and many other regional parties working confortably with AAP. AAP may well choose to support a coalition from outside, but this will leave it jostling with the Congress for supporter-cum-opposition space. Some of the parties currently against the BJP may thus choose to give it tacit or direct support in "national interest." The BJP may be less inimical to their regional interests.
If the Congress party were to think counter-intuitively, it should actually wish for a Modi government with around 180 seats. Given the economic mess it is leaving behind, this BJP/Modi-led coalition will find it tough to take the hard economic decisions that are needed to avoid a serious tumble in country ratings.
Most probably the Congress may be worried about this scenario: what if Modi actually emerges as the Manmohan Singh of 1991 in 2014? Given his business-friendly image, one cannot rule that out.
The Congress actually has choices that could do wrong anything. That's one more reason not to saddle Rahul Gandhi with another self-defeating title of PM-in-waiting. He has been waiting 10 years for it anyway. Waiting another two or even five years can't hurt.
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