Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. If there is one thing that Liz Truss\u2019s recent resignation as the British Prime Minister and Rahul Gandhi\u2019s short stint as Indian National Congress president indicate, it is the fact that top-level leadership \u2013 particularly one involving an official position of high responsibility \u2013 is not everyone\u2019s cup of tea.<\/p>\n
Just like her two closest predecessors, scandal-ridden Boris Johnson and Brexit-hit David Cameron, Truss must have realised rather early into her 45-day stay at 10 Downing Street that it is one thing to talk big, make tall promises and take major decisions but quite another to even be able to follow through, let alone bear the consequences of \u2013 or at least take responsibility for \u2013 all that.<\/p>\n
Rahul Gandhi, who had openly expressed his readiness to be India\u2019s prime minister in the months leading up to the 2019 general elections, refused to even continue as Congress president after his party\u2019s humiliatingly disastrous electoral results that year rendered it incapable of claiming the Leader of Opposition post in the Lok Sabha.<\/p>\n
Despite repeated exhortations from his party members since then, Rahul steadfastly refused to take back that mantle and chose instead to be the de facto leader of the party while his mother Sonia Gandhi \u2013 who had impressively held the Congress president\u2019s post for 18 years until he succeeded her in 2017 \u2013 returned to continue in an interim capacity until a consensus candidate was finalised.<\/p>\n
Despite its organisation being in a shambles and its electoral fortunes in freefall, it took three long years for the leadership of India\u2019s grand old party to snap out of its state of limbo and make a last-gasp attempt to at least become battle-ready for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The ongoing Bharat Jodo Yatra led by the Gandhi scion and the recently concluded Congress presidential election clearly seem like a two-pronged strategy to accomplish that mission.<\/p>\n
The Bharat Jodo Yatra is happening with much fanfare and extensive media coverage. It is even phonetically reminiscent of the \u2018Bharat Chhodo Andolan\u2019 (Quit India Movement) that had \u2013 under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi \u2013 heralded the end of British Raj in the early 1940s. But only time will tell whether it can achieve even a tiny fraction of that impact in terms of denting the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and wresting power from the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2024.<\/p>\n
As for the Congress presidential election, the party is finally going to see a non-Gandhi chief \u2013 after 24 years \u2013 in Mallikarjun Kharge. However, it is no secret that this 80-year-old warhorse from Karnataka is a long-time loyalist of the Gandhi family and that his victory over his opponent and party colleague Shashi Tharoor (who had projected himself as \u201cthe candidate for change\u201d) was a foregone conclusion long before the counting of the votes.<\/p>\n
As the big battle of 2024 approaches, Kharge will need to draw upon the experience of all his 50-plus years in politics as he faces the onerous task of changing his party\u2019s fortunes and taking on the BJP behemoth while keeping the Gandhi family pleased. Can he deliver the goods on all those fronts? The public is understandably sceptical, but he will somehow have to make that crown bestowed upon him fit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. If there is one thing that Liz Truss\u2019s recent resignation as the British Prime Minister and Rahul Gandhi\u2019s short stint as Indian National Congress president indicate, it is the fact that top-level leadership \u2013 particularly one involving an official position of high responsibility \u2013 is not everyone\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20891,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20890"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20895,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20890\/revisions\/20895"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}