A picture, it is said, is worth a million words. The picture of children in Manipur flanking a smiling Rahul Gandhi at the outset of his Yatra-2 conveyed what his words could not.

In February 1983 when I had gone to cover the brutal, communal killings in Nellie, a town in Central Assam, a senior bureaucrat in Guwahati had told me, “Write your piece through the eyes of the children of Nellie.” I did.

I knew that those children in Nellie who had seen gruesome killings of parents and loved ones – and experienced the fear of impending death – would never forget what had happened, and it would scar their lives.

As I looked at Rahul’s pictures in Manipur, I realised that those children who surrounded him may not forget that “somebody important” had come from Delhi and held their hands when they were not sure what would happen to them or their families the next day.

Rahul’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra’s launch from Manipur was obviously propelled by the politics of the state. The Congress has criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for not visiting Manipur even once since a near civil war situation broke out there eight months ago – and wanted to hammer home this message. (Home Minister Amit Shah did visit the state once, but that is not the same.)

That the Northeast is important is to state the obvious. The importance of Manipur and indeed of Nagaland, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh – where the ripple effects of Manipur were most felt – which act like sentinels on India’s border in these parts, goes beyond the handful of Lok Sabha seats these states represent.

When a Naga elder says that “We fear the Northeast becoming a Hindu-dominant area, to the disadvantage of Christians”, his words express the apprehension about the polarisation in Manipur between the Hindu Meiteis based in the Manipur valley and the Christian Kukis in the hills having wider repercussions for the region.

It may make sense for the Congress to start the Rahul Yatra from the Northeast, to reach out to the aggrieved and the insecure. But its timing makes little sense otherwise. For it has engaged the already weakened organisational muscle of the Congress to plan / organise the Yatra than focus on getting ready for the elections, which are barely months away.

It can be argued that the Yatra will be like a long ongoing rally through 15 states and 100 Lok Sabha constituencies over the next two months. But the Yatra is becoming an irritant – not a facilitator – in the process of seat-sharing between the Congress and its allies.

For the Opposition to be effective, the INDIA alliance has to take on the BJP / NDA unitedly – the Congress can’t do it alone. Its efficacy will lie in its ability to work out one-on-one contests in as many Lok Sabha seats as possible. But the INDIA allies are miffed at the way in which the Congress has gone ahead with the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra without reference to them. They were neither consulted about the idea, its timing or the plan in the different states through which the Yatra will move, where regional parties have a presence.

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav has said he will not take part in it in UP. What Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee will do in West Bengal is still not known. The Yatra is therefore exacerbating the differences in the Opposition, not closing their ranks.

The regional parties are also unhappy with the choice of the word “Nyay (justice)” to describe the yatra this time. The concept of “social justice” (used in the context of Mandal or the empowerment of the OBCs) has been associated more with regional parties than with the Congress, and they feel it is appropriating what has been their issue. The OBCs have not been a Congress vote base, except in parts of the South in the past, but Rahul has been making a pitch for their support with the demand for a caste census (which incidentally did not work in the recent state elections).

The tweaking of the name of the Yatra to Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra from Bharat Nyay Yatra may have been part of this accommodation. Rahul has sought to link the Nyay in the name to fighting “the injustices” under the RSS and BJP.

What Rahul Yatra-2 also tells us is that the party is pitching more for the “future” (2029?) rather than the imminent electoral battles. There seem to be two Congresses within India’s grand old party today. There is a Congress that Rahul wants to shape according to his vision and over time, with his own team at the helm, which the others might view as novices or greenhorns or politically unsavvy. Then there is the group made up of the rest, who want the party to first win elections but are vitally affected by the decisions that Rahul makes.

The trouble is that Rahul’s decisions are highly personalised and often taken by him – like that of the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra – without consultation with the party at large.

(Neerja Chowdhury, Contributing Editor, The Indian Express, has covered the last 10 Lok Sabha elections. She is the author of How Prime Ministers Decide)