6 august 2018

Rahul Gandhi is young only as far as political leaders go. The

36-year-old Sachin Bansal, who was declared the 86th richest

person in India in November 2015, came of age 11 years ago when

he co-founded Flipkart along with Binny Bansal, also 36 now.

Sundar Pichai, the 46-year-old Chennai-born CEO of Google, was

selected to head the world’s foremost internet search company

in August 2015. The 36-year-old Nishant Rao, former managing

director of LinkedIn India, founded India’s first voice-based call

centre in the late 90s. And Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the chief of

PayTM, is only 45. In politics, it’s a different kind of biological

system of leadership, and the eternal youth of Rahul Gandhi still

inspires his party. Maybe for India’s oldest party, what matters

most is genealogy. So, above all, it was a speech delivered by the

great grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru. And the media meme on

Rahul’s adulthood reinforces this image.

Rahul’s recycled speech lacked any substantive issue to

confront the Prime Minister with in 2019. His chances of

mounting a strong challenge to Modi have only grown ‘dimmer

and dimmer’, as a BJP MP wrote a while ago. This was perhaps

why Rahul Gandhi resorted to rehashed accusations against Modi

on the Rafale aircraft deal, charges that he has been repeating since

the Gujarat polls with little or nothing to substantiate them.

Since this might be the Lok Sabha’s last session before the

next General Election, the Congress was expected to unveil its

poll agenda during the debate. Instead, Rahul Gandhi appears

to have adopted the tactic of demonising Modi. He accused the

Government of large-scale cost inflation in the purchase of

French Rafale fighters for the Air Force over an earlier deal

negotiated by the UPA Government; he alleged that there was

no secrecy pact between the governments of India and France,

as Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had claimed; and he

charged the Centre with cronyism in the awarding of offset con-

tracts—the local supply part—under the deal.

It’s always difficult for an incumbent government to disclose

all aspects of a defence deal, especially one that involves weap-

onry. In making the accusations, the Congress chief ignored the

fact that the real issue was defence planning, not the terms of the

Rafale purchase. Experts in the sector say that Rahul Gandhi’s

claim of a disproportionately high price being paid for the aircraft

is false. For one, the UPA had not finalised a price for the aircraft in

its time, and this deal comes a decade later. For another, the price

of a weapons-ready fighter jet—as the NDA has ordered—would

be far higher than that for a bare-bone aircraft.

The Defence Minister, in response to Rahul Gandhi’s charge

that she had lied to Parliament and his claim that French Presi-

dent Emmanuel Macron had flatly denied a secrecy clause in

conversations with him, cited Macron’s statement in a TV inter-

view on the matter: “You have these commercial agreements and

we have competitors and obviously we cannot let them know

the details of the deal.” Sitharaman told Parliament on July 20th:

“This was an agreement signed between the two governments

on January 25, 2008. The Agreement of Secrecy was signed by

then Defence Minister AK Antony.” To hold Rahul Gandhi to

account for what he said, the ruling party also moved a motion

C OvER

STORy

THE HISTORY OF politics, it’s

unlikely that anybody has ‘come

of age’ as frequently—and as

ceremoniously—as Rahul Gandhi,

the 48-year-old Congress president

and the party’s official prime

minister-in-waiting. The latest

rite of his coming-of-age was on

July 20th, when he gave what was

described by his admirers as a

“stirring” speech in Parliament

during the debate on the

No-Confidence motion against

the Narendra Modi Government.

IN

the hug

in the house