Sonia Gandhi's Reluctance to be Prime Minister

Sonia Gandhi today expressed her reluctance to being the Prime Minister of India. Dr. Manmohan Singh is now being considered as the consensus candidate for the post. Most allies - both prepoll as well as postpoll - have expressed shock at this sudden news. Mr. Somnath Chatterjee of the CPI (M) has called the anti-Sonia campaign being spearheaded by the BJP and NDA as unfortunate.

Sonia apparently never wanted to be the Prime Minister in the first place. What I personally find strange is that if this indeed was the case, why did she accept the post of the leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party, which can only logically lead to the Prime Minister's post. What factors led to Sonia Gandhi's sudden display of relunctance is a mystery. It could be that she is playing her cards very smartly. As President of the Indian National Congress (INC), she is still very much the focus of most of the Congress's power in charge of deciding the party's policies. Somebody else from the party being the Prime Minister does not in anyway reduce her strength. Infact staying in the background takes the responsibility off her shoulders just as the Communists decision to provide outside support to the new government gives them power without responsibility.

Many strange events are unfolding as I type this. Praful Patel of the NCP, which won nine seats in the Lok Sabha told the NDTV in an interview that they will try to persuade Sonia Gandhi not to back down. This is strange because the reason Sharad Pawar, P.A. Sangma and Tariq Anwar broke away from the Congress party to form the NCP was because of Sonia Gandhi's foreign origin issue. That now Mr. Pawar's party is changing its tone, probably means that Mr. Pawar wants to play his cards safely. His seats tally haven't given him much of a bargaining power anyway in the new government. And if he tries to position himself against the rest of the allies, his position is going to be weaker still.

It will be interesting to see what will happen if Dr. Manmohan Singh does indeed become the Prime Minister. How the rest of the Congress leaders support him. With most of the power still in the person of Mrs. Gandhi, Dr. Singh will have a clear challenge on his hands to govern well and keep his unity within his own party. I feel the latter will be more difficuilt to achieve.

Interesting times ahead!

The Left against Disinvestment

Just a day after the results, and some days before even forming the common minimum program (CMP), the Indian National Congress (INC) is already being mentored on what the economics of the new government should be - something that might give the party a taste of the troubles to come. Many members of the left have already made statements to the press opposing disinvestment. While some have reserved their oppostion to profit making Public Sector Units (PSU), some others like Sitaram Yechuri have asked for "scrapping" the disinvestment ministry itself.

Also, while Manmohan Singh, who is going to supervise the creation of the CMP document has already warned that oil prices will have to go up keeping in mind the global prices, Laloo Prasad Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) told the press that oil prices will have to remain the same even if it means adding more subsidies.

The stock markets displayed their jitteriness closing way below yesterday's levels. The Sensex closed more than 300 points below yesterdays closing levels, the largest intra-day fall in four years.

The Congress is not used to coalition politics and has a bad history with coalition governments. They have come to believe they almost have the moral right to rule. So it will be interesting to watch how they negotiate with their coalition partners especially the Third Front with the Left parties and Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party (SP), with the latter already saying his party is closer to the Left than it is to the Congress. Sonia Gandhi's role in dealing with coalition partners will decide how effectively her party will govern and also how long will it last. Most probably she will have to find someone who is a mix of Mr. Vajpayee and George Fernandes of the outgoing NDA coalition to walk the tight rope. Leading candidates for this role are probably Manmohan Singh (who is already going to play a major role in the CMP) and V.P. Singh, who is very much in the mould of Mr. Fernandes - person who can bring people together and sort out the differences between them. What remains to be seen is to what extent is Sonia Gandhi going to let outside forces dictate terms to her. For the bottom line is still that she still needs the support of atleast 50 members from outside of her pre-poll alliance to get a simple majority.

Rajdeep Sardesai and his Theories

Rajdeep Sardesai of NDTV tends to over-analyse things. But then what else could you expect with Pranoy Roy sitting on one side and questioning him and Dorab Sopariwala as if it was a technical interview. Consider what he said this evening on the election analysis show. To paraphrase Mr. Sardesai, he asks if it is wrong to consider the results of the elections as a vote against Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He goes on to say that this election was in effect very much like a Presidential election with Mr. Vajpayee pitted against Sonia Gandhi and now finally the myth of Mr. Vajpayee had been broken! I think Mr. Sardesai has not been reading the opinion polls lately. While most opinion polls that were conducted just before the elections could see signs of the NDA faltering and the other parties gaining, all of them were unanimous in their observing that Mr. Vajpayee still had the mass support that cut across all demographics and anti-incumbancy didn't in any way dent his appeal to the voters. Infact an NDTV poll, published on May 4th, 2004 concludes that Mr. Vajpayee's popularity had actually surged compared to earlier polls. Opinion polls conducted by various agencies were also unanimous in their conclusion that Mr. Vajpayee was more popular then Ms. Gandhi and was also considered a better leader than the latter. The same poll also observed that "a hefty two-thirds" of the people of Uttar Pradesh when asked whether they voted for the candidate or the party, said "they voted for the party, a much higher proportion than in the earlier two phases." Mr. Sardesai clearly seems to be unaware of the work of his own co-workers.

Even the election verdict, while against the incumbent NDA, was not in favour of the Congress and clearly not in favour of Sonia Gandhi, who very recently had to consider backing down from the Prime Ministerial candidacy, just to draw support from the Third Front parties.

Also Mr. Sardesai's assertion that many of the ministers in the NDA government lost their seats in this election, again is trying to make a point where none exists. All most three fifths of the the last Lok Sabha representatives lost their seats this time. Isn't this more of an anti-incumbancy wave rather than a vote against Mr. Vajpayee?

Mr. Sardesai doesn't make sense at all!

NDA Takes a Beating

The people of India have given their verdict and have voted out the NDA and its "India Shining" campaign. It is a clear verdict against the NDA, a fact which was admitted by former Parliamentary Affairs minister Ms. Sushma Swaraj. As trends for almost all of the 543 constituencies are out, the NDA will not even cross the 200 seats mark a drop of almost 80 from last time. The Congress and its allies will manage to get around 215 seats, an improvement of around 60 from last time. The Left will get around 50 seats. Sonia Gandhi is going to stake claim to form the next government at 4.00 pm IST.

What all this means is that the next government, which will be lead by the Indian National Congress (INC) will in all likelihood be a stable one that will be able to complete its full term of five years. Moreover with Congress being the largest party in the coalition, it seems most of the obstacles in the way of Sonia Gandhi becoming the next Prime Minister of India are quickly melting away. Because of the resurgence of the Left, even Sharad Pawar (with his stand on the foreign origin issue) and his NCP party no longer have the bargaining power that he would have been hoping to get.

A stable government is certainly a good thing for India, even more so now with its emerging power status. I would be surprised if there are many policy changes as regards India's current status in the IT industry. There might be some concerns of slowdown on the issue of disinvestment, with the left playing such a major role. Also it will be interesting to see what the INC's stand will be on relations with Pakistan. Sonia Gandhi had accused the NDA of being inconsistent. So one has to see what consistent route, her government will take. Also on Economy, one can only be hopeful as it was during Dr. Manmohan Singh's reign as Finance Minister that the liberalisation of the Indian economy began. Dr. Singh will most probably be the next Finance Minister (unless of course, by some twist of fate, he becomes the PM.)

So we certainly have interesting times ahead. I, for one, am looking forward to the future.

Older Posts/Archive

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Linguistic Basis for Reorganization of States in India

I just posted the following question on Living in India:

With the demand for the creation of the state of Telangana, getting frontpage coverage recently, I would like to ask the readers of Living in India the following question:

If the states in India were to be reorganized from scratch today, would a linguistic basis be a beneficial one?

[Living in India • blogzine]

I am mainly interested in knowing the various points of views on this issue. I understand that there is no absolute right or wrong on this issue. I myself believed (note the past tense) that a linguistic basis was a logical one. For one, it empowers the people speaking a language and belonging to a common culture. A person belonging to a particular community knows better than others the problems facing their community and what compromises(if need be) can be made in order to solve it. Secondly it preserves the local language and culture belonging to the region. Third, the states had to be reorganized anyway for better management of both people and resources and any form of reorganization would have created some discontented groups. So in that sense, a linguistic basis is better than any ad hoc demarcation.

But recent events have certainly have made me think once more about these issues. Last year the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena (ABVS), a student body of the Shiv Sena, ransacked the offices of the Railway Recruitment Board to protest the hiring of non-Maharashtrians. A TOI covergage of this incident can be found here. Also now, it has become more difficuilt for the central government to refuse the demands of smaller communities of any state, who ask for a state of their own citing injustice and neglect from their state governments. Take the case of Telangana. While Telangana obviously appears to be the victim of such neglect, doesn't giving in to the demands of the Telangana Rashtra Samiti take the pressure of the state government of Andhra Pradesh. Moreover, there are clearly other states (Uttar Pradesh for instance) that are too large in their current form that probably are in more need of reorganization. The demand for statehood has now become a hot political issue. It is not difficuilt to imagine political parties raking up such issues for their own political ends. With the rise of regional parties in India and their critical role in Central and State politics, the situation can very easily deteriorate.

While it is not possible to change the past, I feel it is time for the next Central government to take stock of the situation and develop a consistent policy on how to handle the issue of reorganization. This policy must be developed in consultation with the opposition for it to be effective. Also it is certainly worth debating the idea of giving more autonomy to the states and holding them accountible for mismanagement of their people. Too many governments are running huge budget deficits and are doing nothing at all to address this problem. They know they can always look to the Central government to bail them out. Coalition politics has made this even more easier now. People have shown that they are willing to re-elect governments that will work for them. Chandrababu Naidu's re-election in 1999, Sheila Dixit's relection last year are all clear evidence of this. But the same people have also shown how neglecting them can prove disastrous. As the case with Andhra Pradesh shows, Chandrababu Naidu lost votes across the entire demographics, including the regions of Telangana. Hence it is unfortunate that it is the demand for the creation of the state of Telangana and the coalition of the Congress and the TRS that is receiving such major coverage, when infact the major news item should have been how Chandrababu Naidu failed in giving priority to the people who needed his help the most.