Reading Sonia Gandhi’s mind

For some of us, mere hacks, the past week has been one of excruciating indigestion because not only have we had to eat crow but eat a lot of it. First, we went wrong on what the Indian voter was plotting. Second, none of us had a clue as to what was going on in Sonia Gandhi’s mind. But on that we cannot exclusively be blamed. A leader is entitled to his or her distance, privacy, mystique, but in a democracy there have to be systems in place for information, advice, clarification. All we had were six talking heads shuttling between studios. The media are not looking for gregarious leaders, only accessible ones. True, leaders will not have time for each and every media request. This is where the spokesperson comes in, the trick here is for the leader to appoint someone he or she provides total access to. A credible spokesman is one who comes across as having a complete grasp of the leader’s agenda.

It is ironical that in a phase of exponential media expansion, two of our top leaders have been almost media shy. Prime Minister Vajpayee, even if he did accord access, was always sunk in the deepest layers of thought, surfacing occasionally with cryptic one-liners. Unless there were those in the charmed circle, one’s understanding of Sonia Gandhi is that she too was averse to sharing her mind with the media. Although it must be placed on record that Ambika Soni did make an effort at establishing links recently.

L.K. Advani enjoyed the media but his fatal flaw was that he confined himself to a coterie of committed scribes. The leader must appear to be universally accessible. In statecraft, predictable, straightforward decisions reveal an uncluttered, tidy mind. Selecting Manmohan Singh was predictable and yet Sonia Gandhi deserves the nation’s gratitude for having chosen wisely. It made us proud of our great democracy, its innate Bharatiyata.

Her selflessness consists not in just declining the throne; it consists in assigning to herself the challenging task of Congress revival. Manmohan Singh will navigate the country’s governance as its elected CEO. Sonia Gandhi will address herself to the political fallout from the verdict. First, she has to see how the BJP positions itself. Its big balloon on the foreign origin issue deflated before a nation riveted on its TV sets, the BJP does not know which way to look. Vajpayee has been embarrassed by the two ladies threatening to shave their heads and go into mountain caves. Now that the party has a limited presence in Karnataka, will it moderate itself in the course of its horizontal expansion as a right-of-centre national formation? Or will it dissipate itself in agitations in the Hindi heartland?

The Left’s support to the Congress-led alliance must be understood for what it is. Hubbe Ali kam; Bughze Muawiya zyada. They are in the game not because they love Ali (read, the Congress) but because they hate Muawiya (BJP) more. When the Congress talks of revival it does not have Kerala and West Bengal in its ken, given its alliance partners in New Delhi. The real political Kurukshetra has yet to be fought in UP where Mulayam Singh and Mayawati are in control of the Congress’s old vote banks. Both, in differing proportions, are also holding on to the Muslim vote. Even though the Congress did not win seats in UP, Rahul Gandhi’s limited outings provided clues that the Muslim, who had defected en masse from the party after the Babri masjid demolition, is willing to trek back provided it looks a potential winner.

Since Mayawati’s hold on the Dalit vote is more tenacious than Mulayam’s on his combination, there is an element in the Congress suggesting a possible tie-up with Mayawati. Her vote share has gone up even in states like Maharashtra. An understanding with Mayawati would then have the double advantage — helping the Congress-NCP combination in the forthcoming Maharashtra elections and fortifying the Congress for the eventual ‘maha yudh’ against Mulayam in UP. The SP, fearful of a Congress, is privately willing to go to any lengths, even accommodation with arch enemy Mayawati.

Thus the pirouettes in UP go on. It should provide good political schooling for Rahul Gandhi even as Manmohan Singh attends to the task of running the country, both under the benign eye of the Congress president whose popular ratings are at an all-time high.