THE QUANDARY OF QUARRY AND HUNTER IN BIHAR

Rahul Gandhi seems to be fronting the opposition's charge in Bihar, not Tejashwi Yadav. And the Election Commission is looming as the larger target, not Nitish Kumar

- RADHIKA RAMASESHAN

O a national leader with no determinate voter base, caste fealty, or proven experience in governance, the states are low-hanging fruits ready to be plucked, eaten, and savored with an aftertaste of power. More so if a state falls in the Hindi heartland that still claims to offer the country its highest number of prime ministers.

Rahul Gandhi fits the template. But in all fairness, he realised that just being a legatee from a premier political clan is not enough to reach for even a low-hanging fruit. Success is hard to get to in present-day politics, marked by a fluid social order in the wake of movements to empower the Other Backward Classes and Dalits, communal conflicts and, importantly, the emergence of a system that seems to increasingly make space for individuals with no pedigree to rise to the highest office through hard work and a smidgen of luck.

Luck has not been on Rahul's side so far. Going against the Congress's grain and its traditional aversion to cohabit with smaller parties, he has had to compromise and forge alliances with entities and leaders who might have counted for nothing in the party's glorious decades. Rahul's campaigns in the recent past have been exceptionally aggressive towards the ruling BJP and its constituents, even if they have not yielded tangible outcomes.