BETWEEN THE POOR performance of the Singh government and Rahul's own weak appeal, the auguries for 2014 are grim. "Right now things look really bad," says Mani Shankar Aiyar, a senior Congress official. "The only thing that helps us is that things look just as bad for the BJP" -- the Bharatiya Janata Party, Congress's only rival as a national party. The BJP and its coalition partners are riven by internal feuds. But the BJP, unlike Congress, has a more or less coherent platform. During its last term in office, from 1998 to 2004, the party governed as the party of modernity and the middle class; its slogan was "India Shining." In a recent poll, A.B. Vajpayee, the prime minister who served during that period, edged out Indira as India's best prime minister ever (presumably among voters too young to remember Nehru). But the BJP government was undone by anger among the poor, who felt that their India was scarcely shining, and by the calamitous 2002 anti-Muslim riots in the western state of Gujarat, which offered a sickening reminder of the party's foundation in Hindu chauvinism.
The BJP's not-quite-undisputed leader today is Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, who embodies the party's commitment to business and the markets as well as its reckless courtship of Hindu resentment. Modi has turned Gujarat into India's most business-friendly state, recruiting leading multinationals and India's own cutting-edge firms. But Modi, who came up through the RSS, the BJP's strident Hindu nationalist wing, had just begun his tenure when the riots broke out, and he is widely blamed for allowing or encouraging the police to stand by as Hindu mobs ransacked Muslim neighborhoods and murdered an estimated 900 Muslims. Indeed, the United States has denied Modi a visa under a section of the immigration law that bans visits by any foreign government official who "directly carried out, at any time, particularly severe violations of religious freedom."
Modi appeals to the wish for a strong leader. Swapan Dasgupta, a newspaper columnist and one of the few members of Delhi's intellectual class who supports the BJP, describes Modi as "a blend of Putin and Lee Kuan Yew." Even that may be generous. Modi is viewed inside his party as a bully and authoritarian, and many figures who share his views will try to block his ambitions. Liberals find Modi terrifying. Ashis Nandy, a leading sociologist as well as a clinical psychologist, concluded after meeting with Modi in the late 1980s that he presented "a classic, clinical case of a fascist." Even if that's too alarmist, Modi may be prepared to cross, or slyly approach, some of India's most dangerous red lines. For this reason alone, secular and liberal-minded Indians will feel almost desperate for Rahul to stand against Modi. A face-off between the two would turn into a referendum not only on left-right approaches to the economy and poverty but on Indian identity itself.
Modi would be a formidable candidate. He is a riveting public speaker and has none of the second thoughts about power that afflict Rahul. He seems to view his potential rival with contempt. He has likened himself to an "ocean fish" prepared to "weather huge storms," and Rahul to a "small fish floating around in the comfort of aquariums." (Modi's father manned a railway-station tea cart.) One recent poll showed Modi first with 36 percent of voters and Rahul second with 22 percent. Of course, India doesn't have presidential elections; voters choose a party, not a leader. In many cases they will be voting for one of the regional parties that increasingly dominate Indian politics. Still, the BJP is likely, though not certain, to endorse Modi as its candidate for prime minister.
That, of course, will mean even more pressure on Rahul to serve as the party's standard-bearer. Many Congress officials believe -- and fervently pray -- that he'll ultimately submit. Others think not. "Rahul is not seeking to be prime minister," says Meenakshi Natarajan, who worked closely with him in the Youth Congress. "For him, it's much more important to transform the party than to gain power."
A great deal can happen between now and the late summer or early fall of next year, when elections are likely to be held. Congress has lost one state election after another and is likely to lose some more. This won't directly affect the national vote but will point to the party's ongoing enfeeblement. The economy is unlikely to turn around quickly enough to help the party's prospects, though more "pro-poor" schemes now being planned may lure impoverished voters back into the fold. Congress could rebound, but it could also lose catastrophically; Mehta, the former Outlook editor, predicts that it will win fewer than 100 seats in the 552-seat Lok Sabha, which would be a party-shaking calamity. The last time Congress endured such a disaster, it turned to Sonia for rescue. This time the party would have to engage in serious soul-searching. Some members may conclude that they are better off without the Gandhis. Rahul has said that he wants to make himself -- and his family -- unnecessary. That could happen sooner than he thinks.
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