April 6, 1998

Sonia will have to go beyond image-building exercises and scripted speeches if she's to make an impact. 

By Harish Gupta

From its splendid isolation of seven years, 10 Janpath has suddenly become a modern variant of the Diwan-i-Aam. The visitors are huddled across a fence 250 ft long and 50 ft wide in the lawn, with a raised plank in the middle of the fenced area, placed to give the assembled photographers a convenient angle. As Sonia Gandhi, the lady of the house and president of the Congress, headquartered next door, begins her daily darshan, the Special Protection Group (SPG) men promptly take positions, keeping lensmen strictly at bay, quietly pushing back the overzealous visitor who must garland her, and speeding the parting of one batch to welcome the next. As Sonia walks across the fence, she has no special message for the crowd, except a shukriya (thank you) to the Muslim, a namaskar to others, and an affectionate pinch to the baby in a mother's arms.

Some visitors, of course, have their complaints, often typed on the letterhead of the local block Congress, which are promptly passed on to Sonia's private secretary Vincent George, always in tow. But most of the 1,000-odd people who assemble at 10 Janpath every afternoon are responding to the party's call. If it is the turn of Meira Kumar, MP from Karol Bagh, to bring the crowd today, tomorrow it will be the turn of Sheila Dixit, who unsuccessfully fought the elections from East Delhi constituency. Mohammed Abbas, a Congress leader who had brought in a minibus-load of his followers, said he was doing his "duty". Every day, there are at least a dozen buses, minibuses and light trucks that are chartered for promoting Sonia's mass-contact programme. The show is impressive in its style of crowd management, and in projecting as the president of a party of bald and pot-bellied leaders, a demure, sprightly lady in a cotton kurta.

However, beyond this image-making drive, Sonia has hardly put the stamp of her style on the Congress leadership. Last week, when veteran Marxist leader            E M S Namboodiripad passed away, the BJP's L.K. Advani, then neck-deep in the operations to win a majority in Parliament, could still make time to fly down to Thiruvananthapuram to attend the funeral. Sonia was conspicuous by her absence, a lapse inconceivable in a leader with a sense of history and of political propriety. She tried to make amends three days later by attending an all-party meeting in Delhi to pay tributes, but she did not speak a word. She was also tongue-tied on Martyr's Day, March 23, while offering tributes to Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru at the All-India Congress Committee (AICC) premises.

However, Sonia's public silence may be a prelude to the April 6 AICC session in which most partymen expect her to spell out the party's future strategy. Her spin doctors are reportedly drafting her addresses at the session. But a fortnight after taking over as the Congress president, Sonia doesn't seem to have got her political reflexes right. The avoidance of speaking extempore is but a manifestation of the reflex inadequacy. Also questionable are some of her instinctive acts, like inviting Mamata Banerjee to tea after the Trinamool Congress leader had cemented her ties with the BJP and had been planning a joint campaign against the Left Front in the ensuing panchayat elections in West Bengal. Mamata politely turned down the invitation, but it was a rap on the Congress' knuckles. In politics, as in poker, nobody shows his hand without assessing the rival's cards.

AICC Joint Secretary Jairam Ramesh justifies Sonia's reluctance to speak in public by saying she has an "open mind and a closed mouth", which is "quite the opposite" of most Indian politicians. Party General Secretary Tariq Anwar says Sonia is "keen" to bring the Congress back into the electoral map of the two mega states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. "She has asked me to prepare a blueprint." A good question is, why did the Congress drop below the horizon there if Anwar -- or anybody for that matter -- had the answer? Partymen now expect the new president to use her charisma and authority for restructuring the organisation. Ajit Jogi, an AICC spokesperson, says that the three hours she spends at the party office each day go into "an elaborate talent-scouting exercise".

In reality, however, she is just trying to familiarise herself, meeting the general secretaries on one day, and the joint secretaries on another. The "interactions" are actually quite simple. For example, she inquired from a joint secretary about his wife and children. When asked by a joint secretary if she could "institutionalise" the AICC by attending the office five hours each day, she said she would love to do so but her security guards wouldn't allow it. She has set up a five-member grievance redressal cell, headed by Margaret Alva, to deal with complaints from the public. She has also begun visiting Parliament as chairperson of the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP), occupying a cubicle at the CPP office, but she is still a stranger to intricate floor strategies. The job of presiding over the morning meeting of the CPP executive is left to Sharad Pawar.

At the AICC, she is very much the goddess of small things, recently clearing the eight-year-old dues of the staff of News Watch, who produce the party's news bulletin. And she demands two bulletins daily instead of one, recognising perhaps that information is power. But in a party that is itching to turn a minority into a majority, there are many more things that add up to power; such as an ability to inspire colleagues and convince potential allies. If she has such abilities, these will be put to test at the AICC session where 1,200-odd delegates will meet her as a person, not as a reader of scripted speeches.

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