Why Rahul Gandhi should refuse to be Congress PM candidate?

Ten days from now, on January 17, Congress may tell India Rahul Gandhi is the party's prime ministerial candidate. If that happens, it would be a wrong call for Gandhi.

Gandhi's ascension would be shorn of political advantages Nehru-Gandhis used to take for granted. Congress is very much the non-favourite in 2014; pundits after all are speculating about Aam Aadmi Party, not Congress, spoiling BJP's party. Gandhi himself has been shown up as an ineffective electoral brawler. He seems to have neither Narendra Modi's ability to fire up crowds nor Arvind Kejriwal's knack of talking to them as if he is one of them. Bloopers get magnified in 24x7 media/social media environment, and Gandhi seems tragicomically blooper-prone.

All these weaknesses sharpen the negative perception about his dynastic privileges. Gandhi seems right now to personify the strongest argument against family inheritance in politics.

For these reasons, trying to be an inspirational vote-getter for Congress should not be Gandhi's goal now. What should he do? Say no to PM candidature. More important, say his first job is to radically reform the process of electing a PM candidate, and all Congress candidates.

Those 20-page forms and excel sheets bandied about by Gandhi's core team and, for a while, breathlessly reported by the media were of course not radical reform. But pundits will say the idea of another 'radical reform' is a lot of smoke. They would be wrong in their dismissal but unwittingly right in their choice of metaphor. Smoke is what signals the moment Vatican decides on a new pope. And Congress's vicepresident can learn a lot from the Vatican process. Let us try to explain.

Two broad points, first.

One, processes followed by religious organizations are often viewed as anachronisms or oddities. But the sacred often has useful lessons for the secular. Two, those who would like to snigger at references to Vatican in an analysis on Rahul Gandhi simply because of Sonia Gandhi's Italian origins and her Roman Catholic denomination should get a life - and consider themselves fundamentally unfit for the many-splendoured bazaar that's Indian politics.

Severely summarizing the Vatican process, picking the pope involves asking all those involved - cardinals, in this case - voting for anyone they want. Voting carries on till one candidate gets at least two-thirds of votes.

This means at every stage new favourites crop up, and those voting are free to - indeed they have to, in some cases - change their minds. The process is completely broad-based, anyone can emerge the winner, and a cabal is not seen as pre-choosing one or few for the final selection.

There are, of course, complications in this process. But, to use newsroom vocabulary, the headline wisdom is uncomplicated: the winner is chosen by the participation of and through freelygiven opinion of all stakeholders.

That's where Vatican is useful for Rahul Gandhi. He's tried to reform Congress organizational structures - to little effect. A few at the top, with the family on top of them, is still the Congress that matters in everything. It scarcely matters that the Youth Congress head of, say, a dusty district in UP has been elected by some new-fangled method. That Congressman has no say in anything, and is likely dispirited by Congress's current political standing.