Crisis Of Confidence In Congress: Sathe

The Congress is once again facing a crisis of confidence. There is a certain amount of confusion and mental depression amongst the senior members.

These are not words of Jairam Ramesh who created a flutter by saying the party could not come to power for the next fifty years under Sonia Gandhi, but that of senior party leader Vasant Sathe. The excerpts are from Sathe's editorial in the latest edition of `Congress Sandesh', the mouthpiece of the Congress. Sathe is the chairman of the editorial board.

In an obvious reference to the growing attack on Congress president Sonia Gandhi for having failed to deliver power to Congress, Sathe has said, "Soniaji has been and continues to be fully aware of her own limitation, both inherent and circumstantial. She has never made any claim to having the charismatic capacity to single-handedly get the masses of India to vote the Congress to power, as if with a magic wand. Her natural reserved and shy nature was a great handicap with the media and the intellectual elite. Language was one of the major hurdles."

 

Sathe is referred to in the party as a known loyalist of the Gandhi-Nehru family.

At the same time, Sathe states that though there were many other "more brilliant and seasoned leaders" in the party, the "glaring truth" was that there was no single person who could command popular appeal in the majority of states and in all parts of India. "Even if some one personality was projected, there are others who would pull him down. The crab culture is well known in the Congress", Sathe said, adding that it was because of this great handicap that all leaders found a common acceptable uniting point in the Nehru-Gandhi family.