NEW DELHI, 24 March — The inner grapevine of Delhi — the one with the real grapes as distinct from hothouse plants — is bristling with the news that Sonia Gandhi is preparing for a late 2002 general election. That is one of the explanations being offered for the selection of at least three candidates to the Rajya Sabha. Their rite of passage has apparently been purchased by a very reliable corporate house, a deal justified by this impending election.
It is in the nature of such stories that they cannot be verified. This does not necessarily make them untrue, but they remain suspect and must therefore be discounted. Moreover, Reliance now is accused of every sin as well as virtue on earth. Again, this does not necessarily make the accusation untrue, but since there can never really be verification of suitcase-friendship we must not rush to any judgment.
What is far more relevant, politically, is that Sonia has given Rajya Sabha seats to two men who are convinced that she cannot win the next general elections.
Of the three “grapevine” candidates, one is a complete non-entity, Abrar Ahmad, Congress party hopeful from Rajasthan. Sonia has chosen to replace K.K. Birla with a non-entity, but that is her prerogative. This gentleman used to be a minor entity once, as some junior minister in finance, but apparently used the opportunity to make important corporate friends who know how to repay favors. His other qualification for Congress largesse is that he keeps his mouth shut, and obedience is always popular with any political leader, not just Sonia.
The other two are more interesting. Subirami Reddy is an amazing personality, who thrives in the Congress despite huge, rather crass five-star-hotel parties; a guest list sprinkled with filmstars and brimming with starlets; and an obsessive itch for self-publicity. No one has a larger invitation card or more free photographs available to newspapers. Reddy lost from Vishakapatnam in the last general elections.
The second is the more traditional politician Murli Deora, whose public relations is infinitely more intelligent. He lost the last elections from south Bombay. The last elections were also the first in which Sonia was the undisputed leader of the Congress.
Both Reddy and Deora were surprised by their defeats. Both believed, with some justification, that they were more popular in their constituencies than their parties because of the work they had done for the voters. They believed that their individual goodwill would see them through even if the overall performance of the Congress was poor, as indeed it was, although less so in Maharashtra than in Andhra Pradesh.
Both were confident of pulling through till the last minute. Both were shocked by their defeat. Since neither could blame himself for losing they sought external reasons. The general defeat of the Congress was not sufficient as a reason. Reddy had won from Vishakapatnam despite a Telugu Desam Party (TDP) wave earlier and had nursed his constituency lavishly. He had spent another fortune during the elections itself. Very few Congressmen have nurtured their constituencies as caringly as Murli Deora has nurtured south Bombay. He has held the seat in the face of tidal waves, let alone waves.
Both Reddy and Deora realized, privately, that the decisive factor in their defeat was that Sonia had become unacceptable to their largely urban constituencies. Obviously they would never say that publicly. But they knew that they could not handle what might be called the “post-272” electorate in a television-savvy region. Moreover Deora discovered that the Musalim vote, a critical element in his vote-accrual, had left him because of the Congress and that Sonia had not been able to bring it back.
Reddy and Deora are practical politicians who cannot survive without membership of Parliament. The one thing that they are certain about is that Sonia cannot bring them back to the Lok Sabha from Vishakapatnam and south Bombay.
They do not blame themselves for this situation. In their own eyes, they remain the best of nurses, and what better credentials can a candidate have for the Lok Sabha? They do not blame the overall political environment either. How could they? With the central government self-destructing on a daily basis, the mood is going to be fertile for anyone challenging the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the next general elections.
Moreover, there will be natural sympathy for both of them since they lost the last time. In that sense the next elections are ideal for them. But they have no confidence in Sonia’s ability to deliver an election that she should be able to pick up without an effort. If they had faith in her they would have waited. If a much-older Rajiv Gandhi had been leader of the Congress now, they would have waited; in any case he would have dismissed their suggestion for a Rajya Sabha seat with a characteristic smile and asked them who would come to the Lok Sabha if not them.
Congressmen like Reddy and Deora would have been expected not only to finance their own campaigns to the Lok Sabha but also to help others by dipping into their moneybags.
But both Reddy and Deora preferred to grovel and slip into the Rajya Sabha rather than wait and fight for the Lok Sabha. Nor would they have had to wait much longer. The general elections may not come this year, but it will be difficult to prevent them from taking place next year. Reddy and Deora preferred humiliation and a seat today to Sonia and uncertainty tomorrow.
Sonia of course had no clue about the implications of sending two defeated Lok Sabha candidates from eminently winnable constituencies to the Rajya Sabha. In sum, she has rewarded two politicians who have no faith in her electoral abilities. Because, and this is beyond argument, if the Congress cannot win in places like Vishakapatnam and south Bombay in the next elections, when urban anger against the BJP and its allies will be at a peak, then the Congress cannot hope to come anywhere near power.
These two are bell-weather constituencies, in the south and the west from which any reasonable Congress candidate should romp through. These seats will now go to comparatively inexperienced candidates while Reddy and Deora delight in their well-paid good fortune in Central Hall.
The irony of course is that Reddy and Deora may be right in their skepticism about Sonia’s abilities. They have, with their actions, made explicit what others know implicitly — that the results of the assembly polls will not automatically convert into a victory in a national election. There are many reasons for this, both subjective and objective.
It is the Congress governments, for instance, who will be facing the anti-incumbency factor in the states where they are in power. In Punjab for instance the Akalis will do much better the next time than they did this time. In Uttaranchal, the Congress will be split leaving opportunity open for the BJP. In Madhya Pradesh even Digvijay Singh will not be able to pull off a miracle again.
But the big unspoken dread of course is about the impact that Sonia’s own personality makes on the vote. In the states the voters were not electing her; they were electing others as chief ministers.
Congressmen like Reddy and Deora, and so many others less fortunate than them who cannot get into the Rajya Sabha, do not want to take a chance on the results of another clash between Atal Behari Vajpayee and Sonia Gandhi.
They are not ready to bet that “strange-accent” Sonia will be able to take on the homespun Vajpayee when the struggle comes to the bone. Her enemies claim that Sonia rewarded the Reddys and Deoras because of lucrative pressure from corporate power. I would prefer to believe that she was merely gullible, but that is not good news for the Congress either. The jury is still out, and more evidence will be available to decide whether the reason is corporate pressure or gullibility.
The Congress could, if handled correctly, win a simple majority in the next general elections: The central coalition government has done enough self-damage to ensure this. But if the Reddys and the Deoras are right, and Sonia is incapable of winning in Vishakapatnam and south Bombay, then Sonia could end up as the Mayawati of India.
In other words, we will see a repetition of the Uttar Pradesh results at the national level, with Parliament divided three ways: The BJP, the Congress and the third front. Sonia, like Mayawati, will lead a group of MPs searching for a bargain in the 14th Lok Sabha in order to prevent the constitution, very quickly, of a 15th Lok Sabha.
Could the President of India impose president’s rule on the whole of India? I will need to check with some Constitutional lawyer. One, that is, who is not in the Congress.
