By Harihar Swarup
In 2015, the toughest challenge for Sonia Gandhi is to hold her party together and she has begun acting firmly towards that direction. She may not be Indira Gandhi but she has inherited some of the qualities of her late mother-in-law. In August 1977, less than six months after Indira Gandhi and her party were routed in the anti-Emergency backlash, she mounted an elephant and waded through waist-deep water to reach Belchi, a Dalit village in Bihar, where dalits were mercilessly butchered. This small step changed the course of history. In 2015, Sonia Gandhi, demonstrating almost similar grit, took up the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act and farmers’ issues. In due course, she will take up other economic and social issues. Let us see if the history repeats itself.
During the decade-long UPA rule, Sonia Gandhi structured her politics around populist programmes such as the MGNREGS, targeting rural voters who have traditionally sided with the Congress. In 2014, her welfare policies found no buyers in an aspirational India, captivated by Modi magic. Modi’s land reforms bill has now offered her renewed hope of consolidating the party’s base in rural India.
The Belchi trip not only sent out the message that Indira Gandhi was not going to get bogged down by the enormity of defeat but also become stepping stone for her journey back to power. Nearly four decades later, Sonia is trying to rewrite the script on her own.
On March 20, just before leaving for Darbiji, a non-descript village 35 kms north of Kota in Rajasthan, to meet farmers, who had lost their crop to hailstorm a week ago, she made a phone call to Karnataka Chief Minister, Siddaramaiah. She instructed him to handover the probe into mysterious death of IAS officer D K Ravi to the CBI. She did not consult a single senior Congress leader before taking that decision. In a span of eight days, it was third significant political decision she had taken without an elaborate consultation.
On March 12, her office ordered all Congress MPs and CWC members to assemble at Congress headquarters at 24, Akbar Road at 9-30 a.m. She then led a street march to 3,Motilal Nehru Marg, residence of Manmohan Singh. It was to pledge support to the former Prime Minister, who just a day ago, had been summoned as an accused by a special court in the coal block allocation scam case. (Supreme Court has since given relief to Dr Singh as it stayed a trail court order summoning him as an accused in coal scam case and also restrained the special court from proceeding with the matter). Five days later, she led a march to Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Sonia then undertook a whirlwind tour of three states – Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. She met farmers, dubbed the land bill changes as anti-people, anti-farmer, demanded compensation for crop destruction from unseasonal rains and accused Modi government of safeguarding corporate interest.
Indira Gandhi’s daughter-in-law faces even more difficult situation. The drubbing in 1977 was nothing compared to the worst-ever performance of the Congress in 2014, having been reduced to 44 seats in the Lok Sabha. The future of the congress depends on how the current government functions. Since Rahul Gandi has not yet come up to expectations, Sonia is the only hope for the Congress.
That is, perhaps, the reason that loyalists of the dynasty are not yet ready to give up, drawing inspiration from how Sonia led the party to victory in 2004, within six months of taking charge, as the congress president. Like 2015, the party was in disarray in 1998 with factional feuds threatening a vertical split in the party. She did not only act as glue for the party but made allies of former foes such as Sharad Pawar, who had left the congress, questioning her foreign origin.
In the 17 years since she took over, there has not being a single split in the party until recently when G K Vasan parted ways in Tamil Nadu. Senior leader Kamal Nath says: “When NDA 1 was in power Atal Behari Vajpayee was more popular than what Narendra Modi is today. Yet Sonia not only consolidated the party but also led it to a miraculous victory.”
Senior congress leaders have also enjoyed a comfort level with Sonia, partly because she has taken the line of least resistance with them. Conscious as she was of her foreign origin, her decision making was marked by caution and pragmatism, her role essentially being to keep the Congress flock together and to maintain its left of centre moorings. Today she is a bridge between the old and the young congress as also a bridge between congress and other opposition parties with the possibility of her playing the role of guide and friend to the opposition unity in the months to come. It was she who could lead a march of 14 parties to Rashtrapati Bhavan against the land bill. (IPA Service)