Sonia can take over the orphaned Congress but not the country - The Free Press Journal

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So the suspense is finally over. The inscrutable widow of 10 Janpath has at
last openly thrown her lot with the Congress Party.

>From an ordinary 'four anna' member to an active leader of the Congress will be
but one quick step. And it may come about sooner than most people think. For the
ambitious Italian-born heiress to the dubious Indira-Rajiv Gandhi legacy has been
itching for long to run the family-run firm, that is the Congress according to her
own lights.

So far she had exercised tremendous control over the affairs of the party from
behind the shadows. Now she would do so openly. This is to be welcomed. For the
false pretence about her being disinterested in politics has at last been
discarded. It would have required a super human effort for the daughter of an
Italian plumber to give up on the vast empire that is India.

After all, she and her extended Italian tribe had profited immensely in more ways
than one by her 'Gandhi' connection. And when I say this I don't have only Bofors
in mind. There have been a million other ways in which the Italian in-laws of the
Gandhis have turned the Indian connection to their great advantage.

Doubtless Sonia's coming would enthuse ordinary Congressmen no end. The moribund
organisation dying under the leadership of fossils like Sitaram Kesri could get a
fresh lease of life.

For in a country where poverty and illiteracy still rule the roast, the royal
Gandhi connection could still mesmerize some people - notwithstanding that we are
soon to celebrate 50 years of our democratic republic. She could turn out to be
the foremost vote-getter for the party. Her curiosity value being high, people
could be expected to turn up at Congress meetings if only to have a glimpse of the
famous daughter-in-law.

More important, the leaderless and hopeless Congress workers could find an anchor
in her. Nothing pumps up the adrenaline in Congressmen better than the thought of
being in power soon. Congressmen, like most others, might admit that the Italian
'bahu' of the Gandhi family was not an ideal choice to lead the country. But all
her sins would stand condoned because she alone seemed to be able to restore the
old glory of the 112-year-old Congress.

So Congressmen, orphaned for long for want of a vote-winning leader, can be
excused their misplaced euphoria. When the chips do fall in place, as they soon
will once the grumpy Sonia Gandhi stirs out in the rough and tumble of real India
unlike the sanitised one she has lived in all these years, they will realize that
the polity is too divided and too polarised into various castes and regions for it
to be commandeered by One Leader. lie days of 'One Leader, One Nation', Sonia will
soon find out, cannot be replicated.

Mandal and Kamandal might have finally put paid to Congress's dream of regaining
its unchallenged hegemony over India. I make bold to say that even if Indira
Gandhi were to be re-born she would fail to repeat her electoral successes of the
1971 and 1980 parliamentary elections.

The cancer of caste that has eaten into the body politic will have reduced Mrs
Gandhi merely into another Brahamin leader. She might break through the barriers
of regionalism to notch some successes in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu but in the
Hindi heartland where Mandal rules supreme she would get her electoral
comeuppance. In the total absence of ideology and ideas, caste has become the sole
determinant of electoral behaviour for large sections of the people.

The rise of Kanshi Rain's BSP, the complete alienation of the minorities,
particularly the Muslims, and the switch of the Brahamins away from the Congress
to the BJP had broken the back of the Grand Old Party of India.

Small wonder that the once mighty Congress is now reduced to play second fiddle to
regional parties in State after State. The point is that the Congress is in such
dire straits that even Sonia Gandhi would find it hard to breathe life into it.

This is, however, not to say that Sonia Gandhi's coming would not alter political
equations all around.

For one, people like Kesri would have to go back to the doormats that they have
been all their lives. For none is so brave in the Congress to confront Soniaji.
They will lie prostrate before her beseeching her to lead the party. In their
self-degrading conduct power-hungry Congressmen see their salvation. Sonia Gandhi
or either of her children can take over the party at the snap of their little
finger, such is the moral depravity of Congressmen. But what will they make of
the Congress once they are fully in charge of it?

Is the purpose of Sum a in going public with her four-anna primary membership
purely altruistic insofar as she wants to save the Congress from extinction? Is
she out to save the Congress from the rotten Congressmen in whose hands it seems
to have fallen of late? Or is it to save herself and her Italian relatives and
friends like Ottavio Quattarochhi from the advancing arms of the law in the Bofors
case? Surely, the tinting of her entry into the Congress is of most significance.
The probe into the Bofors seam has entered the penultimate stage. lie names of the
bribe-takers have been furnished by the Swiss but it is yet to be investigated as
to who in turn the recipients of these bribes bribed in order to bag the Howitzer
contract from the then Rajiv Gandhi Government. Make no mistake about it. Most
of the bribe-takers named by the Swiss were commission agents or middlemen who
would keep their part of the loot and pass on the remainder to the key figures who
alone were in a position to swing the multi-crore contract the Bofors way

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