Return Of The Congress Sage

Now that everybody who is anybody in the Congress has privately or publicly rubbished Sonia Gandhi, she has suddenly discovered virtues in P V Narasimha Rao. It is not difficult to imagine what must have transpired between the two reticent individuals when she called on him last week. Remember, the Congress party has cleared the dues of Rajiv Gandhi for using an aircraft of the Indian Air Force as Prime Minister, but has refused to foot Rao's bill when he was in office. By all accounts, it was a brief meeting, and conversation was difficult, not only because of Rao's fate in the Congress during her presidentship or the two different versions of the art of political communication. The precise advice he gave to her to tide over her woes may not be known, but the originator of the doctrine of "inaction as conflict resolution" must surely have recited his favourite poem by a Telugu poet:

 

I cannot correct the wrongs/I cannot show the way,/I cannot punish those who go astray,/ I cannot even live in happy unconcern/As countless others do:-/So what's the point of my worry/At what happens in the world?

The lines acquire a new meaning in the context of Sonia Gandhi's problems in the Congress. She already seems to have put his doctrine into practice: the recent remarks by K Karunakaran, Jitendra Prasada, Rajesh Pilot, Balram Jakhar, Vitthalrao Gadgil, Vasant Sathe, Jairam Ramesh, etc. _ that would have otherwise led to suspension, if not expulsion from the party _ have not evoked much of a reaction from her. But surely she cannot afford not to worry about what happens in the Congress, which explains why she made the short distance to Rao's residence across the road from 10, Janpath.

A steady band of loyal supporters have been the only regular visitors to the residence ever since Rao was marginalised in 1996, first by Sitaram Kesri and later by the Sonia Gandhi dispensation. Prominent among the visitors have been Manmohan Singh, Pranab Mukherjee and Rajesh Pilot. Some of those who thrived during his tenure in office but were similarly marginalised later are hoping for a change of fortunes. But in turn, Rao has kept himself busy writing the sequel to The Insider that, he promises, "will bristle with controversies on every page".

In politics, brevity was his mantra, but the literary debut was marked by verbosity, and came to be dubbed as a "Pen-full debut". In a rare public appearance, Rao delivered the JRD Tata Memorial Lecture organised by Assocham recently, but discussed the points on liberalisation with Manmohan Singh before delivering it.

There are many who feel Rao, embroiled in the JMM and other cases, has not been given the credit he deserves for his low-key but radical actions while in office. Apart from rescuing the economy from the depredations of 1990-1991, it has only recently come to light that it was under Rao that India's weaponisation of its nuclear programme was completed, though he avoided going in for tests.

The flip side, of course, is the demolition of the Ayodhya structure during his tenure. His supporters claim that upholding the Congress party's interests and its government was behind the JMM controversy, though that is no reason to justify trading in votes.

But the lasting image of his tenure in office has been that of the "Mauni Baba" wielding the laptop, and punching in commands for economic liberalisation. Today, however, he is said to be unhappy with the NDA government's feverish pace of liberalisation.

As Rao said in the Tata Lecture: `I lost one job trying to implement a socialistic programme. And as if to balance it, I have also lost another job trying to liberalise what had tended to become insensitive somehow after the socialist process, though not because of it, I am convinced_. All that has been affected over the decades, and now the dynamism of globalisation will overtake it; but what is disconcerting is that it promises to benefit only one of the two economies (urban, rural). The other will not even be left unaffected; it may in fact be affected adversely. At some point, therefore, the growing distance between the two can suddenly go beyond endurance and create tremendous internal social and economic strains, throwing the whole liberalisation programme itself into disarray and delay....

"Therefore, here is the need of a strong bridge _ a challenge for the expert architects and engineers of economy_..We cannot wait for the trickle down; we need to engineer a by-pass by investing massive resources for the benefit of the poorer sections, particularly in the rural areas, directly from the State's resources. Smooth assimilation is the crux. I consider this to be the correct and lasting way to globalisation whose bottomline is partnership, not annexation."

Towards the end of his tenure, Gandhi family retainers accused Rao of trying to make the Family redundant in the Congress. Legal wrangles forced him to resign as Congress chief, a post that continues to hold some significance for him: "You see, the Congress president's post is different from others. It used to be called rashtrapati in the old days. There is just one in the whole country. I felt it was important to maintain the image of that office regardless of whether or not I thought there was a case against me," he said in an interview.

Election to the post of Congress president is due in November this year, and it is even bets as to who will be the candidates apart from Sonia Gandhi. Sharad Pawar would have been an alternative had he remained in the party. But the situation seems ripe for others: Madhavrao Scindia, Pilot, Karunakaran, Pranab Mukherjee, Manmohan Singh.

One certainty is that should Sonia Gandhi decide to stay away from the contest, it will actually be a riot out there, a situation that only someone like Rao will be able handle.