Rahul Gandhi Must Avoid the Trump Trap and Strategic Mishits
Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi and PM Narendra Modi! (Images X.com)
The Indian economy is alive, not dead, because of the determination of the people that they will not default in paying their next EMI.
By MANISH ANAND
NEW DELHI, AUGUST 2, 2025 — In Henry IV, Part 1, Act 5, Scene 4, Falstaff says: “The better part of valour is discretion.” He had feigned to have died in a battlefield. That act saved life of Falstaff on the battlefield.
To escape barb of cowardice, Falstaff came out with a wisdom that has survived passing away of his author, William Shakespear in 1616, for over four centuries now. Worldly wisdom that caution is more important than reckless bravery is to the credit of Falstaff from Henry IV.
Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi has toiled hard to infuse life in his party in the last five years. The Congress had hit the rock bottom of winning a mere 44 Lok Sabha seats in 2014 general elections.
Since then, Gandhi has retrieved prestige to almost hit a century in strength in the Lok Sabha with 99 MPs, who constitute 18.27% of the total strength of the lower house of parliament. If the Congress had won 25 additional seats, the possibility of Prime Minister Narendra Modi unseated from power would have gained realistic proportions.
The people denied the Congress those additional 25 seats for two key challenges faced by the main Opposition outfit. Leadership void and credible alternative are two missing legs of the Opposition to run the whole hog to unseat Modi from power.
Gandhi directly is accountable for the leadership void. He is also directly responsible for the lack of credible alternative narrative from the Congress.
Even while an alpha-generation rises in India with parents stunned with their screen addictions, the general character of the Indian electorate is to seek credibility in leadership. Even a thief when he goes to vote weigh political leaders with ideals of Lord Ram.
Successful Opposition leaders such as Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Jyoti Basu, Mulayam Singh Yadav, M. Karunanidhi, Lalu Prasad Yadav, and many more were miser with words in their utterances in front of the Press. They spoke to their constituencies with relish.
In a span of 24-hour, Gandhi swung like a pendulum in his utterances on US President Donald Trump this week. First, he challenged Modi in the Lok Sabha to say that “Trump is a liar.” On another day, Gandhi jumped to agree to Trump rhetoric of “the dead Indian economy.”
In both instances, Gandhi betrays signs of extremity in views, which may appeal to virality of clips on social media platforms but fall short of impressing electorate who weighs leaders on scale of maturity, gravity, wisdom, and credibility to lead the people.
Gandhi errs in believing that Modi represents the Indian economy. Modi is rather a beneficiary of gains made by his two predecessors Manmohan Singh and Vajpayee, who built a grand architecture of the Indian economy. Singh and Vajpayee nourished the Indian economy midwifed by PV Narsimha Rao.
Except for Vajpayee, other two former Prime Ministers were Congressmen. On the watch of Gandhi, the Congress has finally accorded a place of respect to Rao on the high walls of the party’s new headquarters in the national capital.
Gandhi could have been wiser if he had heard Union Minister for Surface Transport Nitin Gadkari, who said in Nagpur recently that the “government has the ability to puncture a running vehicle.” That indeed has been done by Modi with his reckless demonetisation and erroneous GST rollout. Unlike Rao, Vajpayee, and Singh, who had benefited with the counsels of fine minds from the world of economy, Modi deprived their wisdom by priming sycophants.
Yet the Indian economy runs and sprints on the might of sweats shed by toiling Indians who work for extra hours to ensure a better future for their children and security for themselves. The Indian economy is alive, not dead, because of the determination of the people that they will not default in paying their next EMI. To agree to Trump, who has been found to have been a glib liar, that the Indian economy is dead is a gross misunderstanding of India by the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha.
(This is an opinion piece, and views expressed are those of the author only)
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