If there's one thing on which there exists across-the-board agreement about the Indian National Congress, it's the proposition that Sonia Gandhi has grown in her job as party president. If her installation in that post 10 years ago occurred amidst raucous sloganeering against the then incumbent, Sitaram Kesri, her continuation today is seen as natural, well-deserved and dignified by many of her detractors, as well as supporters.
The churlish and xenophobic demand that Gandhi should hold no major public position in India because of her "foreign origins" hasn't died down. But it has become muted--and irrelevant for a majority of Indians. Her decision to get Indian citizenship, live and work in her adopted homeland, is widely respected.
Gandhi's tenure at the party's helm has had ups and downs. The Congress won a remarkable victory in the 1998 assembly elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi, held immediately after the Pokharan-II nuclear blasts, which were supposed to give the Bharatiya Janata Party a decisive edge.
The victory rejuvenated the Congress. But it spent the next five years deluding itself that the people would get fed up with coalitions and return to the familiar "one-party dominance" system under the Congress.
It's only in July 2003, after the Congress lost the 2002 Gujarat assembly on top of the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, that it acknowledged that it must form broad-based coalitions to take on the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. These defeats also taught Gandhi not to trust old courtiers and sycophants.
In 2003, the Congress attempted a break with its middle class-obsessed, "soft-Hindutva", conservative, free-market orientation under P. V. Narasimha Rao. It coined the Left-of-Centre slogan, "Congress ka haath, garib ke saath"--although soon, "aam admi" replaced "garib". It promised food security and a National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.
Spring 2004 was Gandhi's finest moment. With single-minded determination, she built what became the United Progressive Alliance by reaching out to every secular party, including the DMK--whom Congressmen accused of colluding with the LTTE. She was thus able to break the back of the politics of "anti-Congressism", developed four decades ago. This proved a winning strategy.
Gandhi further enhanced her moral and political stature, when she renounced the prime ministership. She has since remained the pre-eminent figure in Indian politics. But she had to pay a price for keeping away from day-to-day governance by conceding autonomy to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's team, including arch-conservatives like Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Finance Minister P Chidambaram.
The UPA's neoliberal proclivity was contained to some extent by the National Common Minimum Programme, negotiated with the Left parties. Gandhi also legitimately tried to influence policy through the National Advisory Council, comprised of progressive intellectuals and administrators. But this became virtually defunct after she resigned as an MP on the "office of profit" issue. Her subsequent re-election hasn't led to its resuscitation.
On the credit side in Gandhi's record is her success in ending Hindutva's 6 years-long spell, creating hope for a just and plural society, and putting the Congress back into power after years in the wilderness. On the debit side are her reluctance to shape the party's economic and foreign policy stances, and her failure to break its dynasty-based organisational culture.
The UPA/Congress has since drifted in a neoliberal direction. Its policies have worsened the condition of a majority of the population. This will create a serious incumbency disadvantage in the next election. So radical course correction is overdue. But the UPA seems unwilling to go far enough--despite the economic adversities confronting India.
Inflation has breached the 5-percent mark. With rising global oil prices and domestic food prices, it could soon exceed 6 percent. The poor are bitterly complaining of the high prices of grains and vegetables. The decline of the dollar, and the stockmarket meltdown, are slowing down domestic investment and growth. All this calls for reflation through public investment in the infrastructure. But the UPA, a prisoner of monetarist dogma, has fought shy of this.
True, the UPA's budget did take some pro-people measures, like writing off Rs 60,000 crores in farmers' loans, and modestly increasing spending on an expanded NREGA. The loan waiver must be warmly welcomed as a moral acknowledgment of the gravity of the agrarian crisis, which has driven 150,000 farmers to suicide over the past decade.
However, the waiver is unlikely to become another "Garibi Hatao"--the "one big thing" that transforms the Congress's image and relationship to the masses. Its limitations are becoming obvious to Congress leaders themselves.
The waiver excludes the majority (58 percent) of farmers, who lack access to organised credit. The 2-hectare ceiling is far too low for the acutely distressed rainfed regions like Vidarbha, Telangana and Saurashtra, where the average holding is over 3 ha. The 25 percent write-off for higher-than-ceiling holdings shouldn't be made conditional upon the pre-payment of the rest of the loan. The amnesty must take account of crop cycles, which vary regionally.
Unless the UPA rectifies these flaws, it may end up creating more discontent among farmers. Already, in Vidarbha, an average of 7 farmers have committed suicide every day since the budget. Similarly, unless much more money, and political and administrative commitment, is put into the NREGA, it won't meet the target of annually creating 100 person-days of work for each rural poor household.
If the UPA to make a lasting contribution to reviving agriculture and combating mass poverty, it must make big investments in the infrastructure, irrigation, equitable water-sharing and prevention of land erosion. It must make growth inclusive and more labour-intensive. Above all, it must provide public services as a matter of right, including universal healthcare, safe drinking water, education, labour welfare and social security.
The UPA must identify itself with marginalised social strata, including Dalits and OBCs, especially the most backward among the latter. It must launch a affirmative action programme for Muslims in keeping with the Sachar Committee report. It isn't enough that Rahul Gandhi spends a night in a Dalit's village house, as he recently did in Uttar Pradesh. The Congress must establish a programme-based image as a staunchly pro-Dalit party.
On foreign and security policy, the UPA has built skewed relationships with the United States and Israel, while ignoring a broad-horizon global agenda with an emphasis on justice and peace in the conduct of international relations. India has become US-obsessed. It often fails to pull its weight where it can--e.g. on Burma and Tibet--, and take stands on ending Palestine's occupation, and stopping NATO's eastward expansion and the militarisation of space.
Sonia Gandhi has proved inarticulate on these matters because she's often "advised" to keep silent in view of her "origins". This must change if she wants the Congress/UPA to change policy course and cultivate a strongly plebeian social base different from its upper-caste middle class core following, supplemented by sundry layers.
Organisationally, Gandhi must stop promoting her son and instead revive moribund democratic structures, such as the Congress Parliamentary Board, district- and state-level committees, and policy forums which generate popular feedback on policies.
This is a big, wide-ranging agenda. Gandhi doesn't have much time to implement it.
Praful Bidwai, a fellow of the Transnational Institute, is a senior Indian journalist, political activist and widely published commentator. He is a co-author (with Achin Vanaik) of New Nukes: India, Pakistan and Global Nuclear Disarmament.
