Rahul Gandhi hugs Prime Minister Manmohan Singh before delivering his first speech as Congress Vice-President while his mother and Congress President Sonia Gandhi looks on during the party leadership conclave in Jaipur, yesterday.
Jaipur: Saying that the party and the country were his life, newly-appointed Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi yesterday called for a “complete transformation” of the party system and creating more national level leaders “who can run the country”.
“The Congress party is my life, the people of India are my life, and I will fight for the people of India and my party, I will fight with everything I have,” Gandhi, 42, said in his first speech at the All India Congress Committee session here after being made officially the No.2 in the party. He also said a “young and impatient India” is demanding a greater voice and role in decision making and more accountability.
In a speech that touched on the ills of a centralised system of government and on the anger and alienation of the youth, who constitute the mass of the country, Rahul Gandhi, speaking in Hindi and English alternatively, said the party “does not focus on leadership development”.
The party needs to create 40-50 leaders “who can run the country, not just a state” and also create a similar set of leaders at the state level who can be made chief minister. Outlining the need for the 127-year-old Congress party to develop leadership and give prominence to grassroots workers, Gandhi also asked the party to respect the youth demand for a greater role in decision-making.
Gandhi, who heads Congress coordination panel, is expected to lead the party in the 2014 general elections. A chorus of voices from the party is demanding he be declared the prime ministerial candidate. He said the youth was angry and feeling alienated with the existing system. “Until we start to respect and empower people, we cannot change anything in this country... all are closed systems, designed for mediocrity, mediocrity dominates,” he said.
“The job of the Congress is to create leaders for the country,” he said, adding that “no other party has so much depth”. Gandhi said his new responsibility was a big one and told party workers that he will treat all of them equally, will learn from their experiences but will only play a judge. “It is a big responsibility. I will work for everybody from today but I will play the judge and not the lawyer,” he said. He said the time has come to question the “centralised, unaccountable system and decision making must shift from Delhi to the panchayats”.
“Why do a handful of people control the entire political space,” he asked, adding that “people with little understanding were sitting at high positions”. In a moving speech that won a standing ovation, Gandhi recalled how his mother Sonia Gandhi came to his room and cried on Saturday night after the party named him the new vice president.
“Why did she cry?... she understands that the power many people seek is poison... She can see it because of what it does to the people, and the people around, and most important, she is not attached to it (power),” said Gandhi. “We should not chase power for the attributes of power, we should only use it to empower the voiceless,” he added, amid thundering applause of over 1,500 delegates inside the 1,300-capacity Birla Auditorium. Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh, praising how Rahul Gandhi made the Chintan Shivir into a youth-oriented one, said: “What we are seeing in Jaipur is the Congress’ Obama moment”.
The Congress yesterday appealed to the country’s secular forces to join its ideological battle against the divisive forces and condemned the opposition’s “obscurantist philosophies”.
The Jaipur Declaration, adopted by the All India Congress Committee here, “calls on all secular and progressive forces of the country to unite in this ideological battle against those who polarise and divide our society”.
“The Congress rejects the outdated ideologies and obscurantist philosophies of the opposition parties and recommits itself to the principles of economic growth and social justice which have come to define the inclusive growth model of the Congress-led UPA government,” said the declaration. The Congress will set up a legal cell for redressal of women’s grievances, and will reserve 30 percent positions at all levels for them, said the declaration.IANS
