Sonia Gandhi is far more accessible today and displays a good command over political issues in public

The Congress party alone has the potential to provide an alternative government at the Centre. But it needs to get its act together in the three years left till the next general elections.

In the last two years, Sonia Gandhi has not only managed to keep her party together but the 11 state governments being run by the Congress have provided a fairly stable administration. Merely keeping afloat may not be sufficient to come back to power at New Delhi. But it helps.

Up to 1999, Sonia Gandhi was virtually a prisoner of an aging cabal of Congress leaders. Leave alone understanding the balance of social forces in India, she did not know how to deal with the major actors in the anti-BJP camp like Mulayam Singh Yadav, Harkishen Singh Surjeet, J Jayalalithaa and Mayawati.

Indeed, as the Sangma episode showed, she did not even understand what ambitions were raging in the breasts of Congressmen. But it was her failure to provide an alternative government in 1999 after the BJP had been defeated in the Lok Sabha, which was perhaps her last political error.

Since then Sonia Gandhi has not made any major political blunders. After the 1999 general elections, she has gained in gravitas. And although the influence of political coteries around her is still there, she seems much less amenable to manipulation by individual leaders.

As her visit to Mayawati’s birthday celebrations showed, she has even learnt to stoop to conquer. She is far more accessible today and displays a good command over political issues in public. The party too has gone through a process of consolidation. It has held together in particularly difficult times.

Unlike her mother-in-law, Sonia Gandhi does not seem to have the political itch to destabilise other leaders in the party. In fact, she has displayed a remarkable willingness to work along with them. When the late Jitendra Prasada wanted to challenge her for the post of the Congress president, she tried to placate him initially by removing Salman Khurshid as the UP Congress Committee (UPCC) president. When he insisted on a contest, she defeated him.

However, within weeks, she offered him a compromise and as a result, the election of the UPCC president became unanimous. Her handling of the Karunakaran-Antony conflict in Kerala showed that she is reluctant to push any party leader to the wall. She seems to have adopted a broadly consensual approach in the party.

She has actively discouraged dissidence in the state units. Not a single Congress chief minister has been changed since 1999. The net result is that the Congress state governments have given stable governance with the chief ministers not having to constantly look over their shoulders.

Today, the Congress has several chief ministers who shine in contrast to their BJP counterparts. Whether it is Digvijay Singh in Madhya Pradesh, S M Krishna in Karnataka, Ashok Gehlot in Rajasthan, Vilasrao Deshmukh in Maharashtra or Shiela Dikshit in Delhi — each one of them is seen as an able administrator who listens to political ground signals. The quiet consolidation of the Congress, aided by the incompetence of the BJP and its allies, has meant that the party is waiting in the wings to assume power in two more states — Punjab and Uttaranchal.

This is not bad going at all. However, this does not mean that the Congress is set to assume power at the Centre. Major hurdles need to be overcome for doing that — not the least of them is the issue of acceptability of Sonia Gandhi as the chief executive of this country. The opposition to her becoming the Prime Minister exists both within her party as well as outside it.

A far more serious problem for the party, however, lies in fashioning new social alliances in UP and Bihar. Unless it does that, it cannot come to power at the Centre. Time was when the Congress enjoyed the support of the Brahmins, the scheduled castes and the Muslims in these states. Now the focus of the party seems to be only on the Muslim vote.

The party needs to recognise that sizeable support among the Hindu community is a pre-requisite for electoral victory. The Muslim voters will help elect only that party which can defeat the BJP. To be able to do that, the Congress has to stop equating religion with communalism, and without compromising on its secular credentials, it should make an attempt not to be seen as anti-Hindu.

A threat to the Congress support-base has also emerged from the prolonging war in Afghanistan. The war is leading to a growth in sectarian consciousness in India, which could land even those who are not attracted by the Hindutva ideology in the lap of the BJP. The Congress has to decide how to combat this. These are not easy tasks. But they have to be undertaken if the party wants to even dream of power at the Centre.