New Delhi: Jyotiraditya Scindia ’s crossing over to BJP has further spiced up the ‘old vs young’ debate in Congress . His exit is being cited as an example that many more young leaders could emulate if their senior colleagues continue to ‘not make way’ for the former. Since ‘making way’ and taking ‘voluntary retirement’ have never been in the dictionary of dog-eat-dog world of politics, a closer look shows that in reality it’s a test of ‘the trained staying capacity’ of the entrenched leaders and the ‘unskilled pursuit of ambitions’ by the younger lot, who mostly made an easy entry into the leadership role by riding on their family surnames or Rahul Gandhi taking a liking to them.The exit of Scindia is only the latest in a series of such younger leaders either leaving the party or sulking publicly: Ashok Tanwar, Alpesh Thakur, Mausam Noor, Ashok Chowdhury, Navjot Singh Sidhu, Pradyot Deb Barman, Sanjay Nirupam and Milind Deora. The most successful of the ‘Team Rahul’ is Rajasthan deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot, who makes no secret of his unhappiness and impatience with chief minister Ashok Gehlot.To get the larger picture, one may have to understand Sun Tzu’s insightful advice in his iconic ‘The Art of War’: “To know your Enemy, you must become your enemy”.These young leaders have neither grasped ‘The Art of War’ nor have the skills to be their enemies, i.e. match the senior Congress leaders’ political software. And that is no surprise given that most of these youngsters were catapulted straight into the leadership role as wildcard entries unlike the seniors, who started their stint from NSUIIYC and came up the hard way.The current lot of senior leaders fought party rivals and outmanoeuvred their then seniors to wrest positions and emerge as Gandhi family loyalists. Whenever they found the going tough within Congress, including when the Rahul camp tried to paint them as “deadwood”, they neither quit nor sulked but reworked their consolidation plots.Scindia quit within 10 months of losing a Lok Sabha battle by complaining that the Kamal Nath-Digvijaya Singh duo didn’t yield space to him. In contrast, Nath endured setbacks to chief ministerial ambitions for about 30 years before finally wresting the post. Nobody offered PCC leadership and the chief minister’s post to Digvijaya Singh on a platter. He secured them by forcing internal contest (against Dilip Singh Bhuria and Shyama Charan Shukla) and later consolidated his position by outmanoeuvring ‘guru’ Arjun Singh, Madhavrao Scindia and Shukla brothers. When Rahul Gandhi dropped Singh from the Congress Working Committee, he didn’t sulk but went on a political parikrama of Narmada to re-emerge and reignite Congress in Madhya Pradesh.Similarly, by skillfully establishing connections with the then Gandhis and deftly cutting through the likes of Madhav Singh Solanki and Amarsinh Chaudhary, Ahmed Patel consolidated his position within the party. Ghulam Nabi Azad outmatched his one-time mentor Mufti Mohammad Sayeed to establish himself as a marathon player. Ashok Gehlot did it by outmaneuvering the mighty Shiv Charan Mathur and Haridev Joshi. Captain Amarinder Singh fought and consolidated against many old warhorses before being entertained by Gandhis.Sharad Pawar outclassed all of the then Maharashtra Congress veterans to make himself the ‘Maratha warrior’. If Virbhadra Singh used his appeal and skills to become the party ‘high command’ in Himachal Pradesh, Anand Sharma survived the former’s opposition only because he fire-fenced himself in Delhi. BS Hooda outsmarted both Bhajan Lal and Birendra Singh in Haryana Congress to emerge as a stalwart.The root of the differences between the entrenched leaders and the edgy youngsters is that the former emerged from the Indira-Sanjay school and never gave up but the latter followed the Rahul Gandhi’s methods of quitting and sulking, even after inheriting the leadership. Incidentally, Congress’ tormentor, Prime Minister Modi, established his leadership by first outmatching his inhouse competitors before defeating the grand old party.