Rahul Gandhi's plain speak at Berkeley

Rahul Gandhi’s candour and aggression at Berkeley unsettled the BJP and pepped up the Congress. The 47-year-old Congress scion himself the foremost dynast in Indian polity and his party lost the 2014 Lok Sabha elections primarily because of the stigma of corruption. It was a scenario that Rahul Gandhi seemed to speak in a mature way, not running away from the realities of India and the Congress.

• BJP leaders cracked jokes about his going to Berkeley but it kicked up a political storm back home.
• He attacked the Modi government and said he was ready to become Congress president and the prime minister candidate for the Lok Sabha elections in 2019. 
• He was also upfront on dynastic politics.
• He condemned the anti-Sikh riots unequivocally.
• What can destroy our momentum is the opposite energy: hatred, anger and violence and the politics of polarisation which has raised its ugly head in India today ... Rahul said.
• Rahul attacked the PM for taking ad hoc decisions in a reckless and dangerous manner. Demonetisation, a completely self-inflicted wound, caused approximately 2% loss in India’s GDP,” he said.
• He said 30,000 new youngsters were joining the job market every day, and, the government was creating only 500 jobs a day. He said the economic decline was worrying and had led to an upsurge of anger. He ripped into the hastily-applied GST.
• Rahul accused Modi of running a propaganda machinery to sully his image. There’s a BJP machine, a thousand guys with computers, to abuse me, tell you I am reluctant, I am stupid... It is a tremendous machine. All day they spread abuse about me, and the operation is run by the gentleman who is running our country, he said.
• As he took on Modi, it was clear that he is the main opponent of the prime minister. He admitted to Modi’s skills. He is a very good communicator, probably better than me - he said.
• The onslaught rattled the BJP, which launched its top guns to mount a counter attack. Union Minister Smriti Irani called Rahul a failed dynast. People occupying the top constitutional posts, President Ram Nath Kovind, Vice President Venkaiah Naidu and the Prime Minister, they all come from humble backgrounds.
• BJP president Amit Shah said failed leaders were running off to the US to lecture as no one listened to them back home. 
• The joke in BJP circles is that Rahul is the saffron party’s biggest asset. BJP often reacts in a disproportionate manner. Every time he has attacked Modi or the BJP the BJP goes after him. And Irani, who lost to Rahul in Amethi in 2014, is his prime attacker.
• The one time that the BJP had really got rattled was when Rahul called the BJP government “Suit Boot Ki Sarkar”. The title seems to have damaged Modi’s image and BJP lost Delhi assembly elections in 2015. Ever since, Modi has been trying to project his government as being on the side of the underprivileged.
• Despite winning the UP elections and forming the government in Bihar, BJP has been troubled by price rise, failure of demonetisation, the economic downturn, low employment opportunities. And in the aftermath of journalist Gauri Lankesh’s murder, the social media wave has turned against the BJP.
• Coincidentally, a day after Rahul’s speech, BJP's ABVP lost to the Congress’s NSUI, in the Delhi University Students’ Union elections, after being in power for four years.
• By expressing willingness to lead the Congress party, Rahul has energised the party with no room for leadership ambiguity. Rahul’s willingness to be prime ministerial candidate is likely to have a positive impact on the assembly polls in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh later this year, and Karnataka next year.
• Rahul spoke with unusual candour on dynastic politics. Most parties in India have that problem. That is how India runs. Don’t get after me because that is how the entire country is running. By the way, Mr Ambani’s kids were running the business and that was also going on in Infosys.
• Once Rahul takes over next month, several Congress leaders who were comfortable working with Sonia will have some tough time.
• Rahul admitted the party had lost touch with the ground reality as it became arrogant, leading to its loss in the Lok Sabha elections 2014. He showed remarkable candour in giving an insight into what is wrong with the Congress and what has to be done.
• Rahul's template for the party as it takes on the BJP in the assembly elections as well as the Lok Sabha polls is (1) Murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh (2) RBI report confirms failure of demonetisation (3) Failure to get its OBC constitutional bill passed in its original form (4) GDP growth at three-year low of 5.7% (5) Worrying unemployment trends (6) Problems in GST implementation (7) SC overruling government’s objections to privacy as constitutional right (8) Failure to defeat Ahmed Patel in Gujarat RS polls (9) Kashmir crisis

For the first time, the BJP has to deploy its best to defend the prime minister. The spokespersons came prepared to take on the government, as a good opposition party should do. In response to Rahul's confession that dynasty is a reality in India, and cited examples, Irani's comment that he came from a failed dynasty, sounded cheap. A dynasty that has held a political party together for more than 70 years and country united and democracy intact, can hardly be called “failed”. A dynasty that had three generations in the office of prime minister, and made three others prime minister, cannot be called “failed”.  It can hardly be said that Rahul was telling lies. BJP only has to look inwards, and it will find that dynasty is indeed true in the Indian context. BJP too has numerous dynasts in itself. Congress party has been made almost irrelevant but there is scope for a spectacular revival, which makes the BJP take serious note. While Congress scams during UPA I & II, the losses are quantifiable and they never meddled with lives of poor & peasants, Modi's reckless adventures inflicted incalculable injuries to all people of India especially to poor & peasants and losses are unquantifiable. In the process, constitution was undermined, cabinet & parliament ciphered, citizen's rights trampled, rule of the law destroyed, judiciary weakened, institutions made irrelevant and India's democracy is indeed perilous.