Setback to Sonia

Setback to Sonia

There is no mistaking the main signal from the latest round of Rajya Sabhaelections. The Congress and its leadership will have no one to blame butthemselves for the predictably dismal consequences of misreading thesignal.

Two party luminaries from Madhya Pradesh Arjun Singh and Chief MinisterDigvijay Singh have hastened to illustrate the art of missing entirelyeven so obvious a political message, leaving it for like-minded others tomisinterpret it egregiously. It is not hard to guess why they have hurriedto discount any anti-Sonia Gandhi dissent in the Congress. It is becausethey are part of the caucus that has been trying to project the Congresspresident with the most tenuous of connections ever perhaps to the commonman's India as the surest promise of revival and return to power of what wasonce the nation's premier political formation. They have sought to stiflesuch moderate and reasoned criticism of the "party leadership" (read 10Janpath) as presented with a sophist's politeness by Kapil Sibal.

The entertaining legal eminence had been preceded by others who had beensimilarly snubbed. What the Rajya Sabha poll results show is the utterpointlessness of the attempted put-down of the critics who had begun toturn. The Congress cross-voting revealed by the results is clear disproof ofthe almost total loyalty that the Sonia leadership has been stridentlyclaimed to command inside the party.

It should be poor consolation indeed to the Congress that cross-voting hasalso affected the electoral fortunes of the BJP in this instance, especiallyin Uttar Pradesh, that Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee himself has beenconstrained to voice concern over this as an all-party phenomenon. The factremains that the Congress has suffered even more, compelling the partypresident in West Bengal to resign and the Karnataka Chief Minister torecognise the rot in the state's ruling camp. The results bring out aproblem that the party has to deal with, but not as a matter of disciplinealone.

To brand the cross-voting as indiscipline is to beg the question. The needis to face the fact of the frustration behind the party legislators'fickleness. The Congress hopes, raised high by the comeback to the partyhelm of the `family' in Sonia's form, have since been cruelly belied byelections to the Lok Sabha and several state assemblies. Loyalties of theCongress kind, related to power more than to principles, cannot last forever.

This is not to say, of course, that a shifting of the unofficial Congressheadquarters from 10, Janpath will instantly bring the party the sweet smellof success. Nor that the party, more shrunk than a shadow of its formerself, has several other leaders up its sleeve. The problem of leadership inthe Congress is not one of personality but of an alternative politicalpackage. This is what Sibal and some others have perhaps been trying to saybefore being rudely interrupted. As he has pointed out, the party has yet tocome out with clear stances on a host of basic issues ranging fromliberalisation to the nuclear policy. And, while belatedly abandoning thePachmarhi path of no alliances, it is nowhere near becoming part of anetwork like the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.