Sonia146;s rusty utopia

Through 20 hours of political grandstanding during the debate on Monday and Tuesday, speaker after speaker explained the purpose of a no-con...

Through 20 hours of political grandstanding during the debate on Monday and Tuesday, speaker after speaker explained the purpose of a no-confidence motion.

It is, for instance, argued one MP, meant to expose, oppose or depose the ruling dispensation. To this rhyming troika must be added another objective, one that gave ballast to the first no-trust vote in the 13th Lok Sabha: To propose Sonia Gandhi as the uncontested leader of a non-BJP government.

Her opening march through a nine-point chargesheet against the NDA government set the terms for the elections ahead. But even as the debate fragmented into provincial rivalries and partisan exchanges, it could be said Gandhi was partly successful. Confident and confrontational, she sought to dictate the agenda; and a constellation of non-Congress opposition leaders, many of whom once voiced reservations about her prime ministerial candidature, closed ranks behind her.

A no-trust debate, however, is not merely about theatrics and alignments. In this exercise in positioning herself as a politician to reckon with, Gandhi failed to complement her rainbow coalition with a vision. In fact, in the nine-point offensive against the NDA government, she gambled with the Congress party8217;s traditional strengths.

Take two examples. She charged the government with 8216;8216;blatantly undermining the independence of our foreign policy8217;8217;. Read with claims that the Congress was instrumental in drafting a parliamentary condemnation of the attack on Iraq and in preventing the despatch of troops to Mesopotamia, the implication was clearly New Delhi8217;s cordial equation with Washington. This betrays an anachronistic nostalgia for non-aligned adventurism. It is also poor politics. It was after all Indira Gandhi who in the early 8217;80s embarked upon repairing relations with the US. Similarly, in summarily lamenting the 8220;dismantling of the public sector8221;, Gandhi distanced herself from the economic reforms of two Congress governments 8212; Rajiv Gandhi8217;s and Narasimha Rao8217;s.

One of the prerequisites for a healthy two-party or two-coalition system is bipartisan consensus on the basics. Through a decade of political instability, this consensus has more or less held on foreign policy and economic reform. In her speech, Gandhi not only undermined this consensus, she castigated the government for what had been her party8217;s strengths. Gandhi must realise that leading the opposition 8212; or laying claim to future leadership of India 8212; entails far more than flawless delivery of fiery speeches, it involves internalising a vision for progress.

By harking back to a socialist, non-aligned utopia that three Congress PM8217;s had junked, she does herself and her party injustice.