Rahul Gandhi better than Narendra Modi

Rahul Gandhi's speech and Q&A at Berkeley

• At UC Berkeley, on Sep 11, 2017, Rahul Gandhi critiqued the Government of India without resorting to insult or abuse.
• Rahul was so disarmingly candid that the BJP government in Lutyens Delhi panicked and held a press conference to hurl personal insults at him. 
• The final straw was the assassination of activist-rationalist-journalist Gauri Lankesh. It was  a planned murder by a trained shooter. Enough is enough. The gang in power must go.
• Rahul is better than Modi and for that matter 'anyone is better than Modi'.
• Rahul will lead the next government, given Modi's self-inflicted fatal injury of demonetisation that has pushed the economy into free fall, and given Modi's broken promises of job creation.
• Rahul Gandhi is more dignified than the crass and nasty Modi. 
• It is obvious to increasingly more voters that Modi's taunts and abuses were mistaken in 2014 for toughness and determination.
• Modi's reliance on clever acronyms makes clear his disdain for wisdom. 
• Demonetisation was not deliberated or calibrated, but an ill-advised move that Modi blindly jumped into.
• Former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan felt that demonetisation would hurt the economy in the short-run without long-run benefits and was not offered the usual two-year extension of tenure; Modi prefers his own decisiveness to expert advice.
• Calling Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi "pappu" or "shehzada" does not behove someone occupying the Prime Minister's position. It is learnt that Modi has appointed 20 IT professionals to attack Rahul Gandhi in synchronised fashion, which is an act done in frustration.
• The BJP rumour machine manufactures lies about Rahul (and he mentioned this at Berkeley). They say he is disinterested, he is reluctant, he would rather holiday abroad, that his sister is smarter, etc. The nastiest lies have been disproved in court, but unemployed trolls like Subramanian Swamy nevertheless continually recirculate them. To Rahul's credit, he does not get bogged down countering each and every bit of calumny.
• BJP leaders had no right to attack the Congress, especially Rahul Gandhi, because the "ancestors of BJP" were working in connivance with the British Whereas Rahul's ancestors were fighting for independence of India and were jailed for prolonged periods.
• Rahul is basically an introvert. This is a fact of life. Some humans are introverts. Despite being an introvert, he still manages to attempt a shake-up of India's oldest political party or to address massive election rallies.
• He's not a bully. At Berkeley, he honestly answered questions from the audience. Modi, on the other hand, doesn't even meet the press, disparaging the media with such vehemence that his troll machine takes the cue and substitutes abuse for argument. Heck, Modi doesn't even take questions from his own partymen, as Member of Parliament Nana Patole said a fortnight ago.
• Rahul will not hesitate to take aboard some strong hands when he forms a government. This is a clear contrast to Modi, an insecure man who can only head a Cabinet of duds. Even fellow traveler Arvind Panagariya had to leave.

A pessimist might say that even if Rahul as PM did absolutely nothing, he would still be better than Modi. The Delhi deputy chief minister who worries there will be no alternative to Modi in 2019 will be proved wrong. It is likely that Rahul's government will never plumb the depths of incompetence we currently see. 

Rahul Gandhi's speech even though well drafted but delivery and subsequent questions & answers were immaculate. He might not be a saint in the past, like any other politician in India, but there were neither untruths nor exacerbation. This reminds me of Rajiv Gandhi's press conference during his first visit to USA after becoming PM in 1980s which catapulted him to an invincible slot then. Kudos to Rahul Gandhi for taking up the onerous task of opposing the invincible Modi for 2019 general elections. While trouncing of UPA in 2014 was a historical necessity, defeat of Modi & BJP and saving India in 2019 is even more important than that.

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.