With his formal elevation as Congress president, Rahul Gandhi now faces several challenges to lift his party from the doldrums.
FROM a bespectacled teenager who hugged his father and sobbed when his grandmother’s (Indira Gandhi) pyre was lit, to the shy young man who stood hesitantly in a line of Congress M.P.s in the Central Hall of Parliament in order to greet his mother Sonia Gandhi after she was elected leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party in 2004, clutching a single rose behind his back, Rahul Gandhi has traversed a long road but still remains an enigma. And this is what makes his elevation as Congress president interesting, notwithstanding the fact that his lacklustre leadership and failure to win any major election since he assumed an active role in the party have been dissected threadbare by his political opponents.
Rahul Gandhi took over as Congress president at the party headquarters in New Delhi on December 16 amid fanfare and celebrations by Congress workers, after Mullappally Ramachandran, president of the party’s central election authority, completed the formality of handing over the election certificate to him.
In speeches filled with nostalgia and emotion, Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi spoke on how they had faced the “politics of hate” without getting bogged down by it and promised to continue to fight for the “secular and democratic fabric of India”.
“The Congress will defend the voice of every single Indian and fight politics that crushes people,” Rahul Gandhi said, and accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of “setting the nation on fire”.
“The Congress took India to the 21st century, but the PM today is taking us back to the medieval times. We are now being compelled to imagine that businesses can be built without harmony; that only one man himself is the voice of reason; and that expertise, experience and knowledge can be cast aside for personal glory,” he said.
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How Not To Handle An Epidemic
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Tragedy on foot
As the COVID-19-induced lockdown cuts the ground beneath their feet in Tamil Nadu, thousands of migrant workers are trudging along the highway to the relative safety of their upcountry homes.
Sarpanchs as game changers
Odisha manages to keep COVID-19 well under control because of the strong participation of panchayati raj institutions and the community at the grass-roots level under the leadership of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.
Scapegoating China
As the COVID-19 death rate spikes and the economy tanks in the United States, Donald Trump and his advisers target China and the World Health Organisation with an eye to winning the forthcoming presidential election.
New worries
Kerala’s measured approach to the pandemic and lockdown has yielded results. But it still has to grapple with their huge economic impact on its economy, which it feels the Centre’s special financial relief package does little to alleviate.
No love lost for labour
Taking advantage of the lockdown and the inability of workers to organise protests, many State governments introduce sweeping changes to labour laws to the detriment of workers on the pretext of reviving production and boosting the economy.
Capital's Malthusian moment
In a world that needs substantial reorienting of production and distribution, Indian capital is resorting to a militant form of moribund neoliberalism to overcome its current crisis. In this pursuit of profit, it is ready and willing to throw into mortal peril millions whom it adjudicates as not worth their means—an admixture of social Darwinism born of capital’s avarice and brutalism spawned by Hindutva. .
Understanding migration
When governments and their plans are found to be blatantly wanting in addressing reverse migration, exercises such as the Ekta Parishad’s survey of migrant workers throughout India can be useful to work out creative long-lasting solutions.
Waiting for Jabalpur moment
The Supreme Court’s role in ensuring executive accountability during the ongoing lockdown leaves much to be desired. Standing in shining contrast is the record of some High Courts.
An empty package
The Modi regime, which has been unable to control the COVID-19 infection, restore economic activity and provide relief to millions exposed to starvation, trains its sights on Indian democracy, making use of the panic generated by fear and a lockdown that forecloses paths of resistance.
