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| The mud is flying | | Sonia wields power without any responsibility | | POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
NEW DELHI, June 25: The Congress president and chairperson of the ruling UPA (United Progressive Alliance) has emerged as a highly important political force.One day, Rae Bareli. The next, Chakan da Bagh (Jammu region), flagging off only the second intra-Kashmir bus link since India and Pakistan began their snail-like peace process.
Sonia Gandhi's frenzied shift of gears from domestic to foreign policy, begs the question. Is the view from 10 Janpath clouded by the challenge of staying in government, all the while knowing that what's good for India may not necessarily win brownie points in India? Is Sonia afraid that decisions taken to boost India's economy through liberalisation and attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in infrastructure projects in the metros and surrounding areas, leave its vast agricultural poor and key voter base, out of the circle?
Does that explain the chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance's ever sharper directives to her chosen nominee, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, against the fuel price hike and for improving the lot of the farmer, distancing herself from all that is politically unpalatable?
There is less than a year left for polls to the key Hindi heartland State of Uttar Pradesh (UP) and everything else she has done so far and will do in the coming months, begins to fall into place. But if the mother of all battles that will mark either the end or the beginning of the Congress party is nigh, surely a call to arms is the need of the hour.The bugles have already been sounded by canny wrestler-turned-politician Mulayam Singh Yadav, adept at fighting in the trenches. The Chief Minister of UP and head of Congress's rival Samajwadi Party has cleverly turned all Sonia's charges against him on giving step-motherly treatment to her Rae Bareli constituents on its head by saying the Central government gives the State less power than other States linked to the Northern Grid.
Sonia's recent tour of her constituency saw her fire the opening salvo in what is clearly going to be a very ugly, no-holds barred scrap for the northern State. The mud is flying. Why then is Rahul Gandhi being made to wait in the wings? The badly depleted party rank and file who have found new homes under a multitude of other banners as the Congress voter base splinters along caste and religious lines, can only be persuaded to return if a leader is brought in who is seen as above these divisions.
As Sonia herself has shown, by her incredible victory in the Rae Bareli by-election, the Gandhi moniker sweeps aside all caste-class-religious distinctions in rural India. In a State such as UP, the party is desperately in need of a charismatic leader, however untested or untried. The time is right for Rahul's induction. Just as much as the Congress is in search of an issue to whip the electorate into line, it is also in search of a leader.
Instead, Sonia's hesitation to allow the young man a slightly wider canvas than his recent role as campaign manager indicates her war council wants her to wait.It is unwilling to let her attach Rahul's name to what could be the first setback to the party in the event that Mulayam's SP which weaned away the Muslims, once staunch Congress supporters, puts up the expected fight. Or what is equally likely, the voter swings the other way to the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party, the political standard for the Dalits and backward classes, who also feel betrayed by the Congress. The BSP trailed second in the last State election. The Congress was a no show.
As is obvious from the number of small Muslim parties that are mushrooming in the heartland, there is unease among the minorities who make up the crucial swing factor in as many as 30 per cent of the seats. But neither they nor the Dalits or even the upper castes are being wooed. In fact, by allowing Human Resources Minister Arjun Singh to play the highly explosive reservations card, Sonia showed she was willing to play the caste game. But it pleases only a section of the voter base. Instead she must capitalise on the all inclusive feeling that the SP has abandoned the people's cause for an elitist agenda set by high-flying Mulayam adviser Amar Singh.
If anything, Mulayam Singh has made enormous political capital over the perceived persecution of the first family of Mumbai's film world, the Bachchans. Amitabh, in particular, has an almost iconic status among the masses. But Sonia's real problem may lie in the fact that she is unwilling to tackle the Left parties without whom her Congress-led government would become a minority.
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