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From heir apparent to heir manifest

The moment Sonia Gandhi — who had kept clear of any formal role after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi — overcame her reluctance and agreed to become president of the Indian National Congress in 1998, it became clear that the attempt to find a leadership outside India’s best-known political family had collapsed. The non-dynastic interregnum lasting seven years was not without its significance — with P.V. Narasimha Rao proving a formidable, if contr oversial, helmsman and breaking away, in economic as well as foreign policy, from the established Congress mould. Overall, in the six decades of Independence, the Congress party has been in power at the Centre for 48 years; and during these Congress-ruled years, the Nehru-Gandhi family has not owned the Prime Ministership of India for just 10 years. Equally interestingly, the pre-eminent leadership of the party has been out of the family’s hands for just nine of the 60 years of Independence. Sonia Gandhi may have carved for herself a special place in India’s political history by her ‘No’ to the top government job but the future has not been in much doubt from the time Rahul Gandhi decided, in 2004, to stake his claim to it from the family stronghold of Amethi — ironically in a State where the Congress had been steadily marginalised. From then, it has been a quick climb to the general secretaryship of the party.

The organisational changes that opponents may see as a camouflage for the anointment of heir apparent as heir manifest seem to have a certain dynamism about them. Fresh blood, including young blood, has been inducted into the All India Congress Committee and its various official positions, including membership of a new-fangled ‘Group to look into future challenges.’ The Bharatiya Janata Party may snigger at ‘dynastic rule’ but its own desperate negativism seems to be a function of its bankrupt communal policies, its geriatric leadership, and its moribund organisational state. On the other hand, the political signal sent out by Sonia Gandhi’s organisational activism is that the Congress is preparing for a general election that could come 12 to 14 months before it is due in mid-2009. Given the virtual political break that has occurred with the Left on the nuclear deal (against a backdrop of deepening strategic relations with the United States); considering the state of the BJP; buoyed by public opinion polls; and hoping to pre-empt uncertainties that can lie ahead, the party that leads the United Progressive Alliance minority government evidently hopes to increase its independent weight in the next coalition government by picking up, say, 30 extra seats in the 15th Lok Sabha. Whether its optimistic calculations are rooted in objective reality or derived from wishful thinking will be known soon enough — beginning with the Gujarat Assembly elections to be held towards the end of the year.

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