What, really, is RaGa syndrome?

If there was a constituency of people who admired joys of necessary leisure and a life after work politician Rahul Gandhi would have that voteTwice that Irsquove seen him from a distance quietly winding down displaying zero lsquoVIPrsquo appearance with no armed guard indoors let alone disturbing anyone was at public placeslounges Stone House Grill in Delhi and Indigo in Mumbai This is when the Congressled alliancemdashUPAmdashwas in power Frankly I was quite impressedOf course therersquos no such voting bloc And electioneering in India is a complicated deal Rahulrsquos paternal family over five generations have known this Which makes him a lsquodynastrsquo And thatrsquos a legit descriptionBut as an allegationcharge it is usually directed against Rahul I notice by upperclass folk All of whom intend to pass on their own family legacies to their kidsmdashwhether business property or private practice if theyrsquore professionals barbers lawyers doctors etcPolitics of course is different Itrsquos a public profession In the sense that the public gets to directly decide if a legacy is wellearned Respect is not an inheritance Much like showbusinessAnd there actor Abhishek Bachchan for instance would be an equivalent to Rahul in Bollywoodmdashwho over two decades has been through his own phases of peak long valleys and quick surprisesIn the current most experimental phase of his career Abhishek told me recently ldquoAudiences foremost want to see how much effort an actor has put in for a rolerdquo He works on that This is probably true for politicians too in the age of new media that operates on the principle lsquoEarly to bed early to rise work hard and advertise advertise advertisersquo You just have to be seen to be working hardOf course people work hard too Especially when you consider ambitions of a post90s reforms lsquonew Indiarsquo from varied backgroundsmdashrightfully seeking a sayplace under the sun Politics is a fine route Itrsquos as much theirs for the takingIs inherent aggressionhunger towards it necessarily related to how much you have to gainlose though Maybe Yet privilege is simply what you make of itmdashnobody decides which family theyrsquoll be born into The father of the nation technically also belonged to the eliteIn the case of politician Rahul the key deliverable that is results in elections state and general have repeatedly been nothing to write home about Although political observer Prashant Kishor in an interview points out that for the brief period that he was officially the Congress president his electoral strikerate was the same as his mother Soniarsquos albeit over two decadesmdashwho in turn is credited with two UPA government formations at the CentreEven that strikerate was about 30 per cent way worse later Obviously abysmal for a party that dominated Indiarsquos politics for almost seven decades This is why you hear people with everready advice for the Congress everywheremdasheven if they may not vote for it themselves All these people I know are essentially democrats and perhaps sense a Congressshaped hole in the heart of Indiarsquos oppositional politicsEvery country in the world has a government The one with a proper opposition is called a democracy Among Indian parties at the moment Congress with 11 croreplus votes from the last general election still is closest to a national opposition Not that democracy equals elections alone By that yardstick even Iraq under Saddam Husseinrsquos Barsquoathist Party was a democracyI mean a genuine alternate acceptable voicemessage in the masspolitical space And what is that Those following politics more closely will weigh in bettermdashI canrsquot see any As a mediawatcher for instance I find state censorship the hugest concern Whatrsquos the political oppositional voice on it None There are many other contentious issues where people on their own have taken to the streets insteadOtherwise even while covering general elections unless you were down South you wouldrsquove altogether found energetic volunteerssupporters of one party on the ground This mass mobilisation isnrsquot a surprise when you consider Nalin Mehtarsquos stats in his book The New BJP wherein the BJP ldquogrew its membership almost fivefold between 2014 and 2019rdquo at 174 million signups ldquotwice the size of CCP Chinese Communist PartyrdquoKishor in another interview says the Congress hasnrsquot had a membership drive in 20 years while the BJP put in their second recruitment thrust after they won in 2019 Why blame merely Rahul and not the entire Congress topbrasspunditsstrategists then Because Indian politics observed from afar inevitably operates around personality cultsmdashfrom Nehru Indira down to Vajpayee ModiThe message neednrsquot be messianic But even if gently wellintentioned when it doesnrsquot reach people or more likely inspires no one what you are left with is simply Rahul the social media influencerThatrsquos how wersquove knownseen him from a distance mostly tweeting sensemdashconstantly battered for being stupid apparently over a lethal online attack through clips memes etc aimed at getting an individualparty more and more underconfident as a political opponentsrsquo strategyThis part of audience democracy is pure showbusiness nothing else Where respect plus fame merely work like a wavecontagionmdashnobody supports you until it becomes a popular thing to doMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper