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
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