Everywhere Sonia goes, partymen raise the slogan: "Sonia Gandhi kaisi hai, Indira Gandhi jaisi hai". Sonia has modelled herself on her famous mother-in-law. Her red Sambhalpuri sari at Swamy's party could have been worn by Indira Gandhi. Her wave of the hand, the intonations of her speeches are reminiscent of her mother-in-law. Sonia has shown the attention to detail which Indira Gandhi was knownfor. On her visit to Punjab recently, Sonia saw Beant Singh's widow sitting in a row behind and sent son Rahul to escort her to sit by her side in the front. At the end of the function she whispered in her son's ear again and he personally saw her to her car.When Narasimha Rao attended the CWC meeting last year, she had made sure that senior leader Jitendra Prasada meet him when he alighted from the car and again escort him to the vehicle when he got up to leave. After dethroning Sitaram Kesri, she drove straight from the CWC meet, at wh-ich she was anointed party president, to his house, disarming him in the process.But Sonia has not yet acquired the sense of political timing that Indira Gandhi was kn-own for, nor her identification with the downtrodden,(even though much of it was no more than populism), and th-at was what made her get accepted as a national leader.

Indira Gandhi had headed for Belchhi where dalits had been massacred in 1977, shortly after her defeat. It was monsoon time and jeeps couldnot reach the backward village in Bihar. Indira got atop an elephant and reached the place. Belchhi marked the beginning of her comeback trail.

When the last massacre took place in Jehanabad recently, Sonia had sent Shivraj Patil and Meira Kumar there for an on the spot study. They were not allowed to go to the spot and returned to Delhi from Patna after issuing a statement. Again, had Sonia Gandhi insisted on going there and courted arrest if necessary when prevented from doing so, she might have made the country look at her with different eyes. In the process, she might have also wiped out some of the animus that came her way when the Congress bailed out the Rabri Devi government in Pa-rliament.

Had Sonia gone to Chamoli on the first day itself, she would have set the terms of the political debate and not Jayalalitha, and yet do-ne so without antagonising the AIADMK chief, her potential ally. Suspense would have continued on whether or not she would have gone to the party had the earthquake not struck.The situation would have been open to interpretations but she would have had many more cards up her sleeve.

Attending the party was more a feather in Jayalalitha's cap. Sonia gained in so far as she rattled the BJP. By her own standards, (and without going into the merits of it), it is prime ministers and presidents who have called on her at 10 Janpath in the past, even though she has held no official position in government.

If she had immediately visited the quake-hit hills, she might have electrified Uttar Pradesh, where her party needs to revive. She would have been better placed to make an issue of the partisan basis on which relief is being distributedif those coming back from Chamoli are to be believed. But most important, she would have demonstrated as nothing else could, that to reach out to suffering people was on top of her political agenda, and that immediate political gains in the ongoing struggle for power in Delhi were of secondary importance.

The argument against VIP visits to sites ofcalamities is valid only up to a point. You cannot stop the representatives going there in a democratic setup. Often they can shake a lethargic administration into action. The answer lies in pressing more officials into the area concerned. Three secretaries to the Government of Maha-rashtra had camped in earthquake-hit Latur for many weeks supervising the relief activity and dealing with everything else, including VIP visits.

There was another event last week which underlined the yawning gap that exists between the Capital's preoccupations here and the concerns of India out there. One of the two recipients of the Chameli Devi Award for Outstanding Woman Journalist, Vasavi, had won the prize for an article about how a tribal woman in the Santhal Paraganas was yoked to a plough in place of a bullock and made to work in a field. Her crime: she had dared to plough that field which lay fallow after there was a shower of rain and her husband refused to work on it. Custom forbids women from ploughing, andaccording to Vasavi, the instance is not an isolated one in the area.

Sonia Gandhi may be a newcomer to politics. But that could turn out to be an advantage were she to set out to change the concerns of politics. The Congress has to go back to people's politics. Without it, it may come back to power but it will not be credible.