Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the 'failings' of his government have been Rahul Gandhi's singular focus-at home and overseas. Predictably, the recent five-day tour of Europe was yet another not-to-be-missed opportunity, with the Congress president making the most of his public interactions to scale up the 2019 Lok Sabha battle.
Throughout the tour, Rahul outlined his party's electoral strategy. He said the Congress would corner the BJP government on two brewing issues-social unrest and economic disparity.
He pointed specifically to the violence against Dalits, tribals and the minorities, and demonetisation and a flawed implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), which had ruined the unorganised sector and millions of small traders.
There was political posturing, retelling of history and media bashing too-"Modi prostrated in front of China"; "ISIS has its roots in social and economic exclusion"; "the RSS is akin to the Muslim Brotherhood"; "the Indian press avoids writing about corruption in the Rafale deal".
In one interaction, asked how India could catch up with China's growth, Rahul suggested India and China may not be pursuing the same objective. "China may be growing at 11 per cent, India at 9 per cent. But in India, anyone can say anything they want. I would like to give three points for that-freedom of speech," he said.
Rahul picked on PM Modi over rising joblessness, but failed to offer his own vision to resolve the crisis
Yet, he used China's prosperity to attack Modi on unemployment, with the oft-repeated data-China creates 50,000 jobs a day against 450 by India. But he himself had no vision to offer for solving the crisis, barring the broad "strengthening the agrarian economy and MSME sector will create jobs".
The Congress's strategy is to build a narrative of corruption, anti-people policies and culture of intolerance around Modi and the BJP and attempt to unite the anti-BJP parties.
For this, a research team headed by Rajeev Gowda and a data analytics team headed by Praveen Chakravarty are analysing feedback from the ground. The findings are shared with the communication and social media wings.
With a funds crisis looming, Rahul has reappointed Sonia Gandhi's former political secretary Ahmed Patel as party treasurer.
Patel is known for his close ties with India Inc. And along with Ghulam Nabi Azad and Ashok Gehlot, he will play a key role in keeping communication lines open with potential allies.
The suit boot ki sarkar comment still hurts. It exposed the Modi government
A major move last month was the formation of the core, manifesto and publicity committees for the Lok Sabha elections. Appointments to these have been done with an eye to pacifying disgruntled Congress leaders and striking a regional balance.
So a few leaders who had fallen off the radar have found place. But Rahul's core team for 2019 will revolve around Patel, Azad, Gehlot, P. Chidambaram, Randeep Surjewala, Jairam Ramesh, Sam Pitroda, K. Raju and K.C. Venugopal.
The new-found confidence to project himself as an alternative to Modi is visible and Rahul has rightly credited the BJP for it. The BJP's strong rebuttals to Rahul's statements have only boosted his position.
"The suit boot ki sarkar comment still hurts. It exposed the Modi government. No surprise then that Rahul has emerged as the most acceptable leader," says Patel, referring to the narrowing popularity gap between Modi and Rahul in the July 2018 india today Mood of the Nation poll.