The Sonia effect: Party over Govt

The two-day convention attended by some 9,000 rank and file members of the party was the first of its kind, and Congress workers were visibly overwhelmed by the opportunity to speak out in front of the top leadership.

Sycophancy in the form of singing hallelujahs to Sonia’s leadership surfaced often enough in the speeches, but there was also refreshing candour as many grassroot worker aired grievances about party functioning at the lower level.

The aim of the convention, as enunciated in Sonia’s opening remarks, was to ensure that the Congress workers ‘‘are fully equipped, fully armed, fully prepared to propagate the Congress point of view and to expose the BJP’s slanderous propaganda about us and its miserable failures where it is in power.’’

But more than the litany of charges against the NDA government’s ‘‘record of misrule’’, it was the emphasis laid on reviving the party organisation — and making the ordinary party worker the cornerstone of this exercise — that was the real highlight of the convention. In her inaugural speech, Sonia said: ‘‘Political parties form governments.

Governments do not dictate the agenda of political parties. We must always honour this fundamental democratic reality…Our state governments particularly must keep this in mind. If the party organisation does not highlight and project our programmes, who will?’’ And while exhorting every Congress worker to ‘‘Think of the Country, Act for the Party’’, she also assured them in her concluding speech that ‘‘we must remember that the government is there because of the party, the party is not there because of the government.’’

Cadre-based parties of both the Left and Right have always emphasised the importance of the party over government, but for the Congress(I) it is a new theme and it is directly related to Sonia’s leadership. The Congress party may have been a vibrant pan-Indian organisation throughout the freedom struggle — it still has the most widespread network of party offices and workers in the country — but more than four continuous decades in power eroded that vibrancy considerably.

Indira Gandhi appealed directly to the masses and did not have much time for the party and Rajiv Gandhi got 415 seats on a platter as it were and did not know the meaning of struggle till it was too late. The party atrophied under Narasimha Rao and Sitaram Kesri, leaders without charisma who seemed both unable and unwilling to enthuse the party worker.

Sonia has faced a different scenario and followed a different trajectory. Although she belongs to the ‘‘Family’’, her foreign origins cast a shadow over her leadership. She has had to depend on the rank and file of the party, rather than its leaders, to gain legitimacy. Over the last five years, she has gradually emerged as the supreme leader of the party and the block presidents convention was another big step in establishing her authority.

But it is also the timing of her entry into the party that has made her much more sensitive to the need of focussing on organisation and struggle. Unlike Indira and Rajiv who became leaders when the Congress was in power, Sonia came into the arena when the party was not just in the Opposition but had just about reached its nadir.

Sonia, party workers insist, is a lot more democratic in her functioning and has, of late, become a lot more approachable to the rank and file than her predecessors. One reason for this is she is, after all, the leader of the Opposition and cannot display the same arrogance that being in power brings. Most Congressmen have yet to come to terms with being out of power — they do not quite know how to sweat and struggle to build a party that had come to them readymade at Independence.

Sonia, having taken over the reins of the party when it was out in the cold, seems to have a better sense on that score. And so even though the Congress(I) runs as many as 15 State Governments today, the focus of the convention was on how to oppose and expose, struggle and fight to revive the fortunes of the party.

The second important aspect of the convention — the decision to return to the Congress’ old Left of Centre plank focussing on the poor and downtrodden (Congress ke haath, garibon ke saath is the new battle cry) — is also related, in a way, to Sonia’s leadership. The Congress(I) was the first to usher in economic reforms which has directly benefited sections of the upwardly mobile middle class. But it is the urban middle class that continues to harbour an almost visceral hatred towards Sonia on account of her foreign origins.

In keeping with Indian tradition, the rural populace, whether in Bellary or Amethi, had no problems accepting a videshi bahu as their own. Their bias against her apart, the urban middle class is also the segment that has been most affected by the Hindutva onslaught.

The Congress(I) is still struggling to meet this ideological offensive, and its latest efforts to draw a distinction between Hindutva and Hinduism appears aimed at reaching out to the ‘‘religious Hindu’’ ( this category includes a large numbers of Dalits, Adivasis and OBCs) as opposed to the ‘‘political Hindu’’ who is still firmly with the Sangh Parivar.

But for all the enthusiasm displayed at the convention and the Ramlila Maidan rally, Congressmen know that without a revival in the crucial states of UP and Bihar, without sewing up alliances with regional parties, and without the support of the influential middle class, returning to power at the Centre will remain a distant goal. By refusing to address any of these issues, Sonia’s message to the party is: forget the short cuts, prepare for the long haul. Hum honge kaamyab ek din.