The road goes uphill from Shimla

Indira Gandhi was ousted from prime ministership in 1977 and by the summer of 1987 so many scandals had been thrust on Rajiv Gandhi that one began to clearly see on the horizon the eclipse of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. Since then the most audacious step an otherwise weak and limp party leadership has taken is to have staged a coup against the party’s elected president, the late Sitaram Kesri and hurriedly installed Sonia Gandhi as president. Then at Pachmarhi came the first major test of Sonia Gandhi’s leadership. Any leader with an eye on the big picture would have cast a glance at the party’s declining fortunes since 1967 (Rajiv Gandhi’s victory in the wake of Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984 was an aberration), recognised the emerging new caste realities and settled for coalitions as the only way forward if the aim was the New Delhi gaddi.

But Congress leaders, aware of the shrinking size of the pie, saw no interest for themselves in a shrunk pie being shared at the cabinet table by the likes of Mulayam, Laloo and the Dravida parties. Too clever by half, they argued that since elections were due in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi in November 1998, there was no need to play the ‘‘coalition game’’ at this stage because there was no Third Force worth taking seriously in the three states due for polls.

The Congress won in all three. What did the Congress victories prove? That the party could win on its own, without coalitions, because there was no substantial force in the three states to coalesce with. But what was the message the party propagated? Elections in the three states had demonstrated the Congress could win elections on its own, that it was on an upward curve.

Results that followed from a decision taken for a particular situation obtaining in three north Indian states were amplified as a general principle applicable to all states. It was forgotten that UP, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal account for 250 seats and the Congress has been reduced to a non-entity in these states needing coalitions as stilts even to be seen by the electorate.

Additionally, the drum beaters began to hail ‘‘Soniaji’’ as the great hope who will lead them to power in the coming elections. Then what happened in the following general elections? ‘‘Soniaji’’ returned the party’s all-time low tally of 114 seats, 26 fewer than what the party had won when Sitaram Kesri was Congress president!

If so, does a search for coalitions come with pre-conditions? That Sonia Gandhi will lead the coalition if and when it materialises at the Centre? At least this is what she is allowing her cohorts to say. In which case, why should prospective coalition partners show their hand now when the Congress is about to go on trial in four states.

An indecisive Congress faces a BJP, admittedly anxious in UP, Bihar and West Bengal, but cruising along with the prime minister’s ‘‘problem solving’’ mode enunciated in his April 17 speech at Srinagar with a potential to pave for him the way towards some of the middle ground once occupied by the Congress. It is just conceivable that the Congress may come up trumps in the state elections which would cause consternation in the NDA (unless, of course, general elections are held along with the state elections) but the Congress must remember: First, it is after such a victory, unrelated to the Sonia factor, that the party was down to 114 seats in Lok Sabha when she really exerted herself.

Second, should the party insist on her as the leader of an alternative alliance, the game would collapse even before it has been put together.