NEW DELHI:A week after Congress president Sonia Gandhi led a march of her party MPs to Manmohan Singh’s residence to show their solidarity with the former prime minister, one thing has not escaped anyone’s notice. After a long while, it is Sonia all over again, in the eye of national politics.
The renewed interest in her is an index of her return to centrestage, with a cause to champion the farmers’ distress.
Attention has been getting slowly riveted on her and the way she is galvanizing the party, almost with a new spring in her step, in the last fortnight—now in the fields of Rajasthan and Haryana. Ramlila Maidan of Delhi, by the end of the month or early April, may be the next stop.
The equally conspicuous absence of party vice-president and heir apparent Rahul Gandhi, and his lacklustre presence prior to that, only makes this new Sonia phase stand out in stark relief. Indeed, there are indications that the much-awaited AICC session originally expected in April—which was universally taken to be the time and place for Rahul’s formal coronation as party chief—may not happen any time soon. The subtext is clear: the party leadership is not changing, at least in the immediate term.
A top Kerala leader, instrumental in propping Rahul up as the party’s vice-president, quipped on the go: “AICC, yes, some time later. Leadership change no, not any time soon. She’s leading… from the front.’’
The Congress was for months finding itself ridiculed for not being able to grab the leadership of the opposition space, to rally malcontents against the Narenda Modi government around itself, or even to put some energy into its own rank and file. And when the demoralised troops came a cropper in the Delhi assembly elections, where a strong anti-BJP wave was entirely scooped up by AAP, its retreat and decline seemed complete. The political obit writers took no time churning out their dire predictions.
All that wintry doom and gloom seems to have lifted in the Delhi spring. First the NDA government’s prestige law, the Land Bill, presented the Congress with the ideal opportunity to get back to some good old-fashioned “grassroots” politics with much resonance at a time when the farm sector was anyway in the throes of a crisis. First, there was urea scarcity due to the cessation of imports, then the marginal outlay for the sector in the general budget, and only marginal tinkering with MSPs (minimum support price) to farm-yields, and finally unseasonal late winter rains that laid waste to crops.
In short, it’s an issue where the government is finding it hard to mobilise opinion in favour of the bill. And the dissent space is brimming with life. Into this context Sonia Gandhi has walked in, or marched in, with a few high-profile interventions.
After a speech in Parliament came the real telegenic event: a dramatic 14-party march from Parliament to Rashtrapati Bhavan, with her being accorded the leadership position by figures from all opposition parties. The ease and naturalness with which she took to that role and shepherded the flock of opposition MPs showed a new confidence.
This was followed by visits to the ground. First stop was arid Rajasthan, where the unseasonal rains have destroyed almost 50 per cent of the standing crop. After meeting crisis-stricken villagers in Kota district during her day-long tour on Friday, she said: “This is the worst I have seen. I am pained after looking at the destruction. The Congress will raise the plight of farmers and request the state and central governments to provide relief.”
On Saturday, she touched base in neighbouring Haryana, a state where the party had been swept out of power in recent months but where issues of land touch a deep chord and the Land Bill has potential to create grounds for resentment and a reversal of attitudes. In Khandwa village of Bhiwani district, where she interacted with farmers who lined up with specimens of destroyed paddy and other crop—her saree draped over her head, a la Indira—she again made a pointed comment. “Farmers are our annadatas. Today, all of us are sad since our annadatas are aggrieved,” she said, making a direct appeal to the state and Centre to offer timely compensation to distressed farmers.
The BJP too has been using the recess in Budget Session to drum up support for its land bill, but in a rarity these days, the game at this stage seems to have been taken by the Congress, which has pounced on an issue close to its socialist past.
All of this was backed up a new vigour shown by party leaders in Parliament and outside on a variety of issues.
Mallikarjun Kharge, leader of the party in the Lok Sabha, made very forceful and widely televised speeches on the Rahul “snooping” controversy. A certain confidence showed through in the protest marches, and the way in which they batted down the BJP’s “mountain out of a molehill” counter. Jyotiraditya Scindia came in eloquently on the Masarat Alam row, holding the BJP to account for the freeing of the separatist leader. And young Deepender Hooda made a long and pointed intervention on the agrarian crisis, with real accounts of problems being faced by farmers in his state, Haryana.
The BJP has naturally noticed, and is perhaps a trifle bothered. Just hours before Sonia was to touch down at Jhalawar airport, CM Vasundhara Raje Scindia made a rushed, pre-emptive visit to farmers in that district. And party spokesman Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said on Saturday in Delhi: “The farmers’ distress should not be politicised.”
Sonia’s long semi-convalescence from ill health, the phase where Rahul had visibly taken the lead, driving the party agenda, changing functionaries. After the Delhi trouncing, the gloom was so intense that even a “Bring Priyanka” move was floated, without much avail.
Next time the party was in the news was when Rahul decided to go AWOL ahead of the Budget Session. The fact that it was he who had once sought to make land acquisition a signature issue—with Niyamgiri and Bhatta-Parsaul, leading up to the evolution of the UPA’s reformist legislation—could not have been more ironic.
Talk was that what made Rahul leave in a huff was an internal party survey where Congress leaders from various states wanted the more experienced Sonia to continue at the helm. Although he was supposed to come back in April with an overhaul and all-new team, the second likelihood is what seems to be coming to pass.
Take this for a straw in the wind. A senior leader of the party, when asked about the AICC session, said it might even be postponed to September-October. And leadership change? “Why?” he snapped. Nonetheless, the Congress president’s term has to be either extended by consensus or a new chief appointed before the year is out.