“Desh mein sankat chhaya hai, magar saaheb ko videsh bhaya hai.” There is a crisis in the country, but the boss has taken a liking to foreign lands. These were the words that the Congress Party’s official handle tweeted late on Monday night, before calling it a day. On Tuesday morning, social media woke up to videos of Congress boss Rahul Gandhi partying at a pub in Kathmandu. The previous night’s tweet became, in hindsight, one of those supremely ironic faux-pas that make people the internet’s laughing stock. Comparisons were drawn to the infamous Pakistan Airforce tweet asking people to sleep tight, hours before India bombed Balakot from the air.
Many have questioned what is wrong with Rahul Gandhi’s videos from the pub in Kathmandu, and rightly so. If the videos have been looked at and are being judged through the prism of moral policing, it reflects a narrow and unaccepting mentality in certain quarters that seeks to constantly exceed its brief. In fact, how the impeccably-dressed Gandhi blended perfectly into the surroundings and seemed in his element, perhaps earned him a few brownie points with a section of the youth. It was a testament to how the leader, despite being in his fifties, continues to remain young at heart.
The manner in which the Congress Party reacted to the entire episode though, was bizarre. As has been the case of late, different voices within the party took different lines. The mixed messaging could have easily been avoided had the party proudly owned up to the fact that the Gandhi scion took a night off to party, and that there was nothing wrong about it, much like their spokesperson Tehseen Poonawala maintained. However, what came out of the party’s official press conference, raised more questions than answers. Randeep Surjewala proclaimed that Rahul was indeed in Nepal attending the marriage ceremony of a friend, and said that such ceremonies were part and parcel of “our culture and civilisation”. Whether the pub in Kathmandu was part of the marriage ceremony is anybody’s guess, but the culture and civilisation card being used as a fig-leaf indicated that certain sections of the Congress Party were as uncomfortable with the videos as its regressive critics.
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Unfortunately for the Congress Party, how its opponents managed to win the perception battle on a complete non-issue, raises serious questions about its communication strategy. The controversy did not end with the official press conference. In fact, it received further impetus. With Surjewala referring to the bride as a personal friend of Rahul Gandhi’s, her tweets taking a stance that was detrimental to India’s foreign security interests began circulating, prompting many to question the kind of company that Gandhi kept. Some users claimed one of the people in the videos was the ambassador of a non-friendly country, and the claim ran undisputed through the day until a media outlet ran a fact-check late at night. Meanwhile, another spokesperson called the video a good example of work-life balance. This prompted many, including senior journalists, to question where the work aspect in the balance was. It did not help that all of it came on a day when a senior Congress leader of Gujarat defected to the BJP, and the law and order situation in Congress-ruled Rajasthan made national headlines. To top it all, Union Minister Smriti Irani who defeated Gandhi from his erstwhile fortress of Amethi was touring his new constituency Wayanad and looking into the implementation of central government schemes there. As Barkha Dutt tweeted, Gandhi’s being away at a time when the party was imploding made it difficult to consider the entire episode a personal matter.
The argument about where Gandhi stands, both in terms of a politician and an administrator, when compared to his eighteen-hour workday adversaries, is bound to arise. Whether frequent non-official trips abroad are acceptable for a public representative, and defenses such as work-life balance seem out of touch in a developing country, are questions that will find a place in public discourse. These are not problems that the Congress Party can run away from. However, what it can shed is the lethargy, the chaos and the sanctimony in its communication.
At the time of writing this article, the Congress Party is yet to issue an official clarification about the person in the video who many alleged was an ambassador of a non-friendly country. Some leaders and friendly journalists have used the fact-check provided by a media outlet to clarify, but the party is yet to come out and state as much from an official platform. If the person was indeed not the ambassador in question, nothing stopped the party from simply saying so the moment the controversy erupted. Instead, the party chose to brush it under the carpet, allowing misinformation and conspiracy theories to spread. In the age of social media and 24×7 news, such a level of lethargy leads to disastrous optics and can be detrimental to any organisation, let alone a political party.
How the official stance differed drastically from the stance of many of its official and unofficial spokespersons, is an indication that the leadership is neither in control of its messaging nor in control of its soldiers. Whether it is the lack of initiative or the lack of authority matters little, what is clear is that the leadership is unable to run a tight and disciplined ship. Leaving the drawback of the official response aside, and without considering the infighting and the palace intrigues, what is surprising is that the grand old party is unable to speak in one voice on such a trivial matter. Clearly, there is no coordination in the messaging process, and those expected to speak on the behalf of the party have been left to fend for themselves.
The sanctimony, however, is the toughest obstacle the party faces. The idiom about people living in glass houses is particularly relevant when your glass house is more than a hundred and thirty years old, and the inhabitants are chronic stone-pelters. The denial that the Congress Party has lived in for the last eight years, has driven it to display unreal and petty levels of hatred towards the ruling dispensation. The latest controversy, and the tweet that preceded it, is a good example. At a time of global unrest when India has emerged as a spot of relative stability, and Prime Minister Modi is in the midst of an important Europe tour, the line of attack chosen by the party was completely unnecessary. This is a recurring theme for the party, which instead of choosing to attack the government on relevant issues that strike a chord, follows an all-encompassing and relentless line of attack without the slightest discernment. Not only does it fail to make a connect, but the party’s own closet that has collected skeletons for decades remains constantly open for public scrutiny, further driving people away from the Congress. In this case, their adversaries did not have to look into the past for instances of Congress leaders being oblivious to India and having a good time in foreign countries, since Rahul Gandhi stepped up in real-time.
The challenges that the party faces on the communication front are only a reflection of the challenges it faces in general. The only difference perhaps is that unlike the political circumstances that continue to undermine it on various fronts, most challenges on the communication front seem to be almost fully the party’s own doing.
Ajit Datta is an author and political commentator. He has authored the book, ‘Himanta Biswa Sarma: From Boy Wonder to CM’. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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