Cong targets BJP’s agro policy, to clear stand on coalition

The first party plenum to be held under the presidentship of Sonia Gandhi, the Bangalore AICC session, say insiders, will clarify the party’s stand on coalition, as deleanated in the 1998 Pachmarhi resolution. This has not only been a subject of great debate within the party but has also sent “confusing” signals outside.

However, this doesn’t necessarily mean a major departure, from what was said in the Pachmarhi draft, is in the offing at Bangalore. “Keeping in mind the present political ground realities, the AICC will aim at a kind of sharper reiteration of what has already been stated,” party sources said.

While committing itself to one-party rule, the Pachmarhi resolution had stated that possibilities of “coalitions will be considered only when absolutely necessary and that too on the basis of agreed programmes which will not weaken the party or compromise its basic ideology.”

According to a senior leader, there will be no major deviation from this policy, except that the political resolution would leave lesser scope for ambiguity in the party’s stand and make it more flexible.

Since Pachmarhi, there has been a lot of rethinking in the party on that portion of the resolution which stated that “the present difficulties in forming one-party governments was a transient phase in the evolution of our polity.” Now a large section of the leadership is convinced that coalition governments are not only here to stay for sometime but they can also offer stability.

It’s been two years since Pachmarhi. The Congress itself made an unsuccessful bid to cobble up a coalition government at the Centre with Sonia Gandhi at the helm in March 1999 after toppling the NDA. Subsequently, it became party to coalition governments in Maharashtra and Bihar and shared power with erstwhile opponents “to fight the communal forces”.

Apart from the political situation, the AICC session is also expected to emphasise strongly on economic issues — the failings of the NDA government and the party’s own committment to the poor. There is a strong belief in the party that the economic policies being followed by the NDA government, especially in the agricultural sector, are a recipe for disaster in the coming times and that the only way to nail the BJP and its allies was to expose its shortcomings on this front.

No wonder that the party has been focussing itself on the economic front — from appointing a special committee under former Union Agricultural Minister Balram Jakhar, to drafting a separate resolution on the plight of farmers.