Open Letter to Rahul Gandhi

Dear Rahul,

Since you spoke about listening to different shades of opinions and seeing the way you reacted to the students at Bengaluru I felt this was a good time to send this letter to you. Chances are you won’t read this but at least I have made an attempt.

The only reason that prompted me to write this is that for whatever reason I see a new Rahul Gandhi, at least in some ways though not in all. So maybe there is hope for you yet.

Firstly, you are NOT your father, mother, grandmother, great grandfather – you are what you are – Rahul Gandhi. Accept that, imbibe that and focus on that.

Please try to learn from many other children of famous privileged families. A Ranbir Kapoor except for the towel scene has charted a course that was different from his father Rishi Kapoor. We see and hear Ranbir on/off the screen. Karishma and Kareena Kapoor rarely remind us of Randhir or Babita and at best Karishma’s eyes remind me of Babita. Saif Ali Khan thankfully doesn’t remind me of Sharmila or for that matter Soha Ali of Mansur Ali. In the cricketing world Mohinder Amarnath, Stuart Binny again dont ride verbally on their parents. Amaan & Ayaan Ali Khan or Anoushka Shankar in the music world did not become clones of their parent.

On the other hand let’s see Abhishek Bachchan. With all the talent and opportunity at his command apart from being very intelligent, all I remember is that his acting style resembles his father and anytime he talks the phrase “My father” finds prominence. An Amit Kumar who could croon as well as Kishore Kumar tried singing his father’s songs and came a cropper.

The lesson from all this for you is that you are NOT your father or mother or anybody else in your family. Stop harping on this theme. Your audience in India is young, impatient, never seen or read about your ancestors and couldn’t care less. They want to make it big with dreams, working on their own, independent and each of them may leverage their families to help them but don’t speak about them. Whether it is a poor village boy or the son of a biz tycoon they want to be recognised and heard for what they are and not what their parents were. Whether you like it or not the “I” factor prevails but not because they don’t believe in teamwork. They speak about themselves and showcase themselves. It is high time you did the same.

Please drop all this nonsense of what your family did, that is the past, history, forgotten. Please talk about your vision, your plans, your ideas and how you plan to achieve them. Please focus 100% on yourself and nothing else. It is you who is on test not your dead ancestors.

Also note that your genes are a mix of whatever they are globally, so you have your strengths, your weaknesses.  Always play on your strengths and not use your weakness just because that was strength with somebody else in the family. You have opportunity that stretches from Raj Path to Times Square. So seize it, if not the same thing becomes an albatross round your neck.  

Secondly, you are NOT Modi. So stop trying to be like him. He has spent his lifetime in the bylanes, gullies and the squalor of life and has an education that you can never ever get by staying overnight in some village hut. Face it, many of us including myself have not experienced it. So we must not do what we are not good at. Modi with his experience and oratory can play his audience like the pied piper. Whether you agree with what he says or not is irrelevant. But that you can’t play your audience like him is fact. Accept it and move on. I can’t sing but that doesn’t mean I can’t love music. So is with you. Don’t try to play the audience like Modi, you can’t win even if whatever you say maybe the gospel truth as per you.  Find your own audience connect, find your own style and work on that.

Thirdly you have a baggage of 10 years where you did not speak in parliament, did not speak anywhere and was invariably invisible. It is wonderful to note that your verbal constipation is now verbal diarrhoea. But please note that in the former case it is only you who would suffer. In the latter the audience suffers with the sound and smell. The secret is to plan your speeches with intent to position yourself as a leader, as a person who connects with the audience not with sycophants.  Most importantly position yourself to meet the aspirations of different sections of your voter base.  Currently you speak whatever you want to irrespective of the audience. For example you keep talking of suit boot in urban areas where the audience is comfortable with that dress and hence gets irritated. You next speak the same in a rural area where they aspire to become one and thus irritate them too. Please note that the urban audience doesn’t care about dress while the rural audience aspires for it, and you mock both.

Additionally today’s youth seize opportunities with both hands and run with it. They are not afraid of failure. They have dreams that are big and are not afraid to chase them. So they don’t exactly respect and adore someone who has had a million opportunities and never seized any of them. In the last decade you could have been whatever you wanted – a Chief Minister, a Cabinet Minister, Leader of the opposition, President of the party and even the Prime Minister itself. Yet you shunned them all and that to most is running away from dreams, responsibilities and opportunities. Please for a minute don’t think that people interpret it as some high minded sacrifice. That is what your advisors will tell you to make a fool out of you as long as they enjoy proximity power with you.  So you have a lot of catching up to do.

You may find that your advisors and even media will not agree with this. But have you also noticed that none in the media when they write in support of you dare criticise you scathingly? They will use the news about people laughing at you to criticise you or give you sage advice that any teenager could have given you.

Fourthly you need to remember that the next elections are in 2019 not tomorrow. After a decade of silence and getting castigated as a budhhu, you need to focus on your image. So while it is perfectly logical and acceptable to criticise the government it is not a 24x7 job. Also mouthing philosophical dreams and aspirations are not the option either. Please focus on what subjects and topics excite you.  Learn them so well that you are considered a master.  Then talk about those subjects, your vision, your plans and in every speech you give, showcase the positives, showcase the optimism and showcase what you can do to bring change. Learn from even your most bitter enemies and even from the terrorist. If you don’t, you can’t fight them let alone win. Modi kept talking of specific issues with specific ideas, plans and actions even though his speeches also had rhetoric. So the audience whether educated, uneducated, poor, rich, urban, rural listen to specifics and appreciate it and by implication & consequence appreciate the rhetoric. You on the other hand focus completely on the rhetoric. I am yet to hear you espousing one single idea with clarity and then seeing it through. Today’s youth want optimism, hope and excitement and while the swachh bharat may have been started by the Modi govt, you look silly criticising it. Embrace the program and make your chief ministers demonstrate how it should be done, the media will give it wide publicity and you can showcase how you are better at achieving success in such programs than the Modi govt. That can showcase you as a leader more than anything else you may say.

Fifthly, while you may not remember, just like your father you did start talking sense when you first entered politics when you spoke about the education system, the reservation system, the need for merit to get focus etc.  While your father was drowned by the older senior vested interests in the party as PM, they have drowned you well in advance.

Finally you need to get a new set of advisors, speech writers and researchers who can argue with you, disagree with you, debate with you, discuss with you and finally after the pot is sufficiently churned you  get the cream. Your current set of these folks are probably yes men who just want  to make you feel good, make mommy feel good, make all those hangers on feel good and give enough masala to the media who anyway will lap it up. For a minute here don’t think I am saying that media is partisan and supporting you.  At best they are muted in their criticism but give sufficient publicity to your quotable quotes in a way that their audience actually laughs at you.  So change your team quickly and fast since you need to work from now for 2019. I have often said that if I were you I would simply shoot the whole lot of the advisors, strategists and speech writers. That’s what they deserve.

However difficult it may be or unpleasant, however loyal and capable they may be, however intelligent and accomplished they maybe, you need to kick butt strongly  and even if required throw out lock, stock and barrel some senior leaders in your party who are a drag on your image, your party and your work itself. Here again learn from Modi. Some ready names that come to my mind are Mani Shankar Aiyar, Salman Khurshid, Kapil Sibal and such. Get rid of the absolute deadwood like Anand Sharma, Jitin Prasad and his ilk.  Instead focus on and depend upon leaders like Tharoor, Milind Deora & dare say even a Digvijay Singh. Demand and bring to the forefront the Scindias, Pilots and ask them to stop enjoying life and take over the top leadership, responsibility and if not drop them like a hot brick.

For a start however difficult and tough it may seem, take over as the opposition leader, take over as the party president and lead from the front. Show case that you are DIFFERENT. Don’t focus on a tit for tat with BJP and become a twit. Grow above this and focus on issues – supporting some, opposing some but always with focus on debate. Be involved 24x7 in politics but shed those old fashioned habits of playing 24x7 politics. Create a personal facebook and twitter handle and directly converse with people. Dont hide behind a cloak of the office which can be your official handle.

The so called veterans and old guard will instil fear in you to bring about all this change, ignore them and do what you believe is right and what the young Indian populations expects. It’s better to fail trying than to try failing.

Chances are like I said in the beginning; you will not read this but if you do, give it a thought with an open mind. It may just make the difference between success and failure.

With Sincere Regards

Ravindra