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Sonia in charge but her alliance is shaky
If Rahul Gandhi is in retreat in a Buddhist monastery in Myanmar, as
rumours have it, then he can be said to be imitating, in part, the Sakya
prince who left home and hearth 2,500 years ago to find out the meaning
of life.
In the Congress' heir-apparent's case, however, his
quest is seemingly for finding his own rightful place in the
130-year-old party.
Why he decided to a take a break, recalling his
earlier periodic slumming in Dalit households, will not be clear till he
breaks his silence. But, as of now, some of the effects of his absence
are becoming clear.
The most obvious of them is that Sonia Gandhi
has had to return to active politics to fill the vacuum caused by her
son's truancy.
What happened as a result is to highlight the fact
that the party did not miss Rahul during the political tremors caused
by the judicial summons to Manmohan Singh and the submission of a
petition by 100 MPs belonging to 14 opposition parties against the land
acquisition law to President Pranab Mukherjee.
Besides, it is
also evident that the Congress' worst-ever performance in the last
general election hasn't curbed Sonia Gandhi's combativeness or the
willingness of other parties to follow her lead.
It goes without saying that the boost to the Congress president's profile has marginally diminished the vice-president's.
This
wouldn't have been the case if he had stayed back and accompanied his
mother in the march to Manmohan Singh's residence to offer the party's
support to him, or met the media in the forecourt of Rashtrapati Bhavan
following the meeting of the opposition leaders with Pranab Mukherjee.
Unlike
in matters of love, where absence makes the heart grow fonder, it is
the opposite in politics where being present at crucial moments make or
break a leader.
It is too early to say whether Rahul has missed
the cue by choosing to be away at a time when the initially high
approval ratings of the Narendra Modi government have begun to slide a
little.
But the speculation that the Congress may not be in a
hurry to anoint him as party president suggests that the dauphin may
have taken a false step.
For one, Sonia Gandhi's assumption of
the leadership role despite her indifferent health suggests a
realization that she may have reposed too much faith in Rahul's
capability and willingness to take charge.
For another, her
return to the battlefield means that the so-called old guard - Ahmed
Patel, Janardan Dwivedi, Motilal Vora and others - who are said to have
earned Rahul's ire have acquired a new lease of life.
It is back
to square one in the Congress, therefore, where Sonia Gandhi, its chief
for a decade and a half, is now expected to continue for some more time
because of the uncertainty about the seriousness of her successor.
Even
if Rahul is appointed the president, it will be an act of tokenism
because his prolonged sabbatical has shown that his interest in the
hurly-burly of politics remains sporadic.
For both Congressmen
and the country, the apparent dual control at the top - for Sonia Gandhi
will not fade away if Rahul takes charge - will be a reminder of the
perils of dependence on one family with its penchant for keeping the
reins in its grip.
Such reliance may have been all right if the
family had retained the charisma and popularity of its earlier
generations. But neither Sonia nor Rahul can lay claim to such an
attribute.
Moreover, their ideological orientation appears to be
out of sync with a globalized world where deregulated rather than
controlled economies are the flavour of the day.
Yet there is
reason to believe that the family wants to abandon the reforms initiated
by Manmohan Singh in 1991 and revert to the Congress' earlier path of
Nehruvian socialism. As the party's general secretary Digvijay Singh has
said, the "right-wing space does not belong to us".
The Congress
is probably hoping that the 10-odd parties which are with it will give
it an edge in the matter of numbers. But these include some of the
parties, such as the Janata Dal-United and the Rashtriya Janata Dal
whose attempts to set up a new party have come a cropper, apparently
because of ego hassles.
To add to the numbers, Sonia Gandhi even
sought Anna Hazare's support on the land acquisition law - the very
person who launched a highly effective anti-corruption movement against
the Manmohan Singh government in 2011.
However, the fact that
Anna hasn't forgotten those days is evident from his comment that the
Congress' motive for opposing the land acquisition bill is only to gain
"political mileage" as the party is not interested in the welfare of
farmers.
If Anna is deemed a spent force, so in a way are the
Communists who joined the march to Rashtrapati Bhavan. The INLD leaders
are in jail. The influence of the RJD and the Janata Dal-United is
limited to Bihar.
Sonia Gandhi, therefore, can be said to be
leading a somewhat ramshackle alliance even as her son's absence casts a
shadow on the Congress' future prospects.
(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at [email protected])