The president of the Congress, Sonia Gandhi, is facing a lonely decision as she did in the summer of 2004 when she decided to step aside in favour of Manmohan Singh as prime minister. At that stage, she was under tremendous pressure from almost all her partymen to assume the office of the prime minister. She asserted that she was listening to her “inner voice” and therefore not accepting their near-unanimous pleas. Once again, she faces the lonely decision whether to focus on the Indian national interest and Rajiv’s legacy or be influenced by her party veterans who tend to put what they consider, often mistakenly, party interests ahead of other vital considerations.

Rajiv Gandhi wanted to integrate India technologically with the world. He laid the foundation of India’s nuclear weapons programme and of the expansion of its civil nuclear programme by initiating negotiations with Russia on the Kudankulam project. Are we going to sustain and nurture his legacy or are we going to wind it up because the Left threatens to withdraw its support to the government if India were to continue the Rajiv legacy of technologically integrating with the world? All this for a few more months in office?

Rajiv Gandhi’s decision to make India a nuclear-weapon state was a painful one taken after four years of agonising. It was a lonely one. He might have informally consulted R. Venkataraman and P.V. Narasimha Rao who were the two in the know on the weapon research effort during Indira Gandhi’s days. But the decision was his alone. The cabinet was not in it, nor the party. Nuclear decisions all over the world were lonely ones and submitted to legislatures and parties for debate post facto. So it was when Atal Bihari Vajpayee took the decision to conduct the Shakti tests. When such decisions are taken by leaders the legislatures and parties usually accept them. Only leaders who have the confidence to carry the party and legislatures usually take such decisions.

... contd.