02-19-2008, 01:56 PM
Congress: The Great Slide
Tavleen Singh
It is that season in Delhi when there are so many weddings that it is hard to go down a street and not run into a baraat. Sometimes wedding parties collide and there are horrendous traffic jams, and so on my way to the wedding reception of a friend�s daughter I found myself stuck for an hour trying to negotiate the road to the Maurya Hotel. When I asked a passing policeman what the problem was, he said, �There is a wedding and they say that the Prime Minister will be coming, so that is why there is this jam.�
It was the wedding I was invited to, and though the Prime Minister did not come, Sonia Gandhi did and a hundred other personages of political importance. When I finally made it to the entrance of the wedding tent in the hotel gardens, I ran into LK Advani and his wife and daughter who were just leaving. Among the other personages of political importance present were cabinet ministers and chief ministers, high officials and so many TV anchors and editors that we joked about how if there was a bomb it could take out the entire upper echelons of the Indian media. When journalists are invited to an event of this kind, they never refuse because rarely do you get a chance to meet so many sources of important political information with so little effort. If you want to find out how the political winds are blowing, there is no better place to be than a power wedding in Delhi.
The first conversation I found myself drawn into was with a spokesman of the Congress party who was being asked by a woman journalist why Rahul Gandhi was not more evident in a leadership role. The spokesman bridled instantly. �Well, I do not know what you mean because he works very hard, you know. You can always find him in the Congress party office, meeting people and attending to party matters.� The woman journalist was not deterred by this put down and insisted on knowing why the heir to the Congress party was wasting his time on such things as para-sailing. �Is that what a future Prime Minister of India should be doing?�� The Congress spokesperson refused to answer.
The next conversation I found myself having was with a politician who is actively involved at the moment in promoting a Third Front. It was already a reality, he said, and would become a more powerful reality soon because the two main Marxist parties were expected to join in the not-too-distant future. So what did he see happening by way of the next government of India after the 2009 general election/ �Oh, we will have a Third Front government for sure� he said, �with the Congress either joining it or supporting from the outside.� Did he think there was any chance of LK Advani becoming India�s next Prime Minister? He did not deny that this was a possibility. The one thing he was certain of was that he did not think the Congress would be in any position to lead the next government.
That evening as I flitted about talking to politicians of varied hues and journalists of varied views, I found that this was the general view. In my many years of covering politics and governance in Delhi rarely have I seen a political party lose so much support in so short a period. Usually when a government enters its last year in office, what sets in is anti-incumbency; so what is interesting about the present situation is that there is less anti-feeling towards the government and more towards the Congress. It is as if people have accepted that the real boss of Dr Manmohan Singh�s government is Sonia Gandhi, and since she is the president of the Congress, she is to blame for the things that have gone wrong.
It is hard to believe that this is the same Sonia Gandhi who till not so long ago was treated with awe not just by her own party but by opposition parties as well. It seems like only the other day that whoever you talked to in Delhi�s political circles talked of how �Madam� had taken a political party that was nearly dead and breathed new life into it. Her �charisma� was respected even by those who objected to her foreign origin. So what has gone wrong in the past few months?
After my evening of instant investigative journalism at the power wedding, I sought the views of political pundits and asked them to analyse why the political wind had now started blowing in a direction that was no favourable to the Congress. They said that it was mostly because decisions related to governance and politics were being made by Sonia Gandhi herself and this had exalted 10 Janpath to a position that was above that of the Prime Minister�s Office. A political analyst who is an ardent Congress supporter had this to say: ��Don�t ask me what they�re thinking any more or why they think that the Congress is going to win the next election by sending Rahul Gandhi off to spend a night in a Dalit�s hut one day and para-sailing in Maharashtra the next day.��
Sonia Gandhi�s singular personal failure has been her inability to project her son as her heir, and having concentrated her energies on doing this, she has let the Congress slide. This is the gloomy view of even those who think of �Madam� as India�s great white hope. Sentinel Assam Editorial 18.02.08
Tavleen Singh
It is that season in Delhi when there are so many weddings that it is hard to go down a street and not run into a baraat. Sometimes wedding parties collide and there are horrendous traffic jams, and so on my way to the wedding reception of a friend�s daughter I found myself stuck for an hour trying to negotiate the road to the Maurya Hotel. When I asked a passing policeman what the problem was, he said, �There is a wedding and they say that the Prime Minister will be coming, so that is why there is this jam.�
It was the wedding I was invited to, and though the Prime Minister did not come, Sonia Gandhi did and a hundred other personages of political importance. When I finally made it to the entrance of the wedding tent in the hotel gardens, I ran into LK Advani and his wife and daughter who were just leaving. Among the other personages of political importance present were cabinet ministers and chief ministers, high officials and so many TV anchors and editors that we joked about how if there was a bomb it could take out the entire upper echelons of the Indian media. When journalists are invited to an event of this kind, they never refuse because rarely do you get a chance to meet so many sources of important political information with so little effort. If you want to find out how the political winds are blowing, there is no better place to be than a power wedding in Delhi.
The first conversation I found myself drawn into was with a spokesman of the Congress party who was being asked by a woman journalist why Rahul Gandhi was not more evident in a leadership role. The spokesman bridled instantly. �Well, I do not know what you mean because he works very hard, you know. You can always find him in the Congress party office, meeting people and attending to party matters.� The woman journalist was not deterred by this put down and insisted on knowing why the heir to the Congress party was wasting his time on such things as para-sailing. �Is that what a future Prime Minister of India should be doing?�� The Congress spokesperson refused to answer.
The next conversation I found myself having was with a politician who is actively involved at the moment in promoting a Third Front. It was already a reality, he said, and would become a more powerful reality soon because the two main Marxist parties were expected to join in the not-too-distant future. So what did he see happening by way of the next government of India after the 2009 general election/ �Oh, we will have a Third Front government for sure� he said, �with the Congress either joining it or supporting from the outside.� Did he think there was any chance of LK Advani becoming India�s next Prime Minister? He did not deny that this was a possibility. The one thing he was certain of was that he did not think the Congress would be in any position to lead the next government.
That evening as I flitted about talking to politicians of varied hues and journalists of varied views, I found that this was the general view. In my many years of covering politics and governance in Delhi rarely have I seen a political party lose so much support in so short a period. Usually when a government enters its last year in office, what sets in is anti-incumbency; so what is interesting about the present situation is that there is less anti-feeling towards the government and more towards the Congress. It is as if people have accepted that the real boss of Dr Manmohan Singh�s government is Sonia Gandhi, and since she is the president of the Congress, she is to blame for the things that have gone wrong.
It is hard to believe that this is the same Sonia Gandhi who till not so long ago was treated with awe not just by her own party but by opposition parties as well. It seems like only the other day that whoever you talked to in Delhi�s political circles talked of how �Madam� had taken a political party that was nearly dead and breathed new life into it. Her �charisma� was respected even by those who objected to her foreign origin. So what has gone wrong in the past few months?
After my evening of instant investigative journalism at the power wedding, I sought the views of political pundits and asked them to analyse why the political wind had now started blowing in a direction that was no favourable to the Congress. They said that it was mostly because decisions related to governance and politics were being made by Sonia Gandhi herself and this had exalted 10 Janpath to a position that was above that of the Prime Minister�s Office. A political analyst who is an ardent Congress supporter had this to say: ��Don�t ask me what they�re thinking any more or why they think that the Congress is going to win the next election by sending Rahul Gandhi off to spend a night in a Dalit�s hut one day and para-sailing in Maharashtra the next day.��
Sonia Gandhi�s singular personal failure has been her inability to project her son as her heir, and having concentrated her energies on doing this, she has let the Congress slide. This is the gloomy view of even those who think of �Madam� as India�s great white hope. Sentinel Assam Editorial 18.02.08