Admitted. Rahul Gandhi seems to be a soft target. He has no hold over police, ED, and other agencies like Team Modi-Shah does. But it has to be said, here and now: when thousands of students agitating against irregularities in government employment exams are met with police lathis and water cannons in Ranchi, who really runs Jharkhand? Not Narendra Modi, not Amit Shah. It is the Congress which supports Hemant Soren’s coalition government and thereby enjoys Cabinet portfolios. It was not that long ago when police and proxy-police unleashed brutality on students at Jantar Mantar. Then Rahul Gandhi asked for resignations: if Amit Shah ordered pellet guns to be fired, he was culpable; otherwise his ignorance defined incompetence. It is an implacable standard and also a perfectly fair one, if Gandhi intends to apply the same standard across the board. The same strategy of Go Man Go should be applied by Congress in Jharkhand. Who takes political responsibility for the state police behaving brutally? If it was sanctioned by the Chief Minister, how is he not responsible? Is not knowing about it the administration’s failure? If the law and order reaction was out of proportion, shouldn’t political partners in that government hold it accountable? And if that government will not back down and protect corruption, then why should Congress continue to give its support? These are not trick questions. They are questions Gandhi himself has tried the public to ask of power.
The risk for the Congress is that it has to answer these questions on its own, and soon, while it is BJP that is doing the asking now. Gandhi falls back on Instagram to extend solidarity with Jharkhand students angered by venality in the state education system and calling for a CBI probe. Where is the ‘either act or else’ ultimatum? This is not even standard political crap since Rahul has spent most of the last decade trying to articulate that he considers a great moral distinction exists between Congress and BJP. There are three unambiguous themes he has chosen to define his political identity: joblessness; examination fraud, and diminishing credibility of institutions. Loss of credibility is an occupational hazard in politics. During UPA-II rule, when Lucknow students asked Rahul why the Congress-led government isn’t controlling inflation, he responded, “Manmohan Singh heads a coalition and there are compulsions of a coalition”. Fair enough. Coalition governments do not have a choice since there are disparate interests and constituencies, different partners with red lines. However, Rahul will now have to explain whether coalition compulsions count only when the Congress is in power, but not when it is in the Opposition. If police brutality isn’t acceptable, then it’s not acceptable anywhere. And students who have a democratic right to protest will exercise that not just against the Modi government, but also Soren or Mamata Banerjee, or whoever else is in power.
Rahul has been saying the same thing over and over again about being with those who challenge power, listening to youth, protecting democratic structures of our country, and holding governments accountable. Jharkhand allows him a chance to prove he is serious. Since the Congress party commands enough political leverage over Hemant Soren, why isn’t that being used? That question lands. It lands that way, because this is precisely the bar Gandhi has set himself. His politics has long been predicated on the idea that democracy is clearly not only about elections, it is also about institutions and accountability dissent which must be practiced as a right to question authority. Hence, the student agitation in Jharkhand is not a pesky local problem that can be off-shored to some state Congress unit. It is the political exam that must pass his philosophy. Both BJP and Congress must understand that treating the emerging youth movements as a new battleground is dangerous; the young men and women protesting recruitment examinations at centres where thousands compete for jobs in basic service sectors such as the police, armed forces and railways, are angry not just about jobs and exams, but about fairness and the credibility of institutions that decide if they even get a shot at building their future. If both parties try to ride their anger just by continuing to root for the government facing the protests, they will be seen as opportunists. In Jharkhand now, the Congress looks less a partner than a party running both sides of the street. Rahul Gandhi could still walk into the Ranchi Secretariat and tell his senior ally, in plain terms: walk the talk or we walk out. Anything less than that is not principle deferred for tactical reasons but a principle abandoned, while condemning the lathi in public but continuing to keep holding the hand that wields it.