Draft Cong manifesto takes middle path

The Congress position on labour reform and how much the pre-eminence of the US should be emphasised and backed by the party were the two most hotly discussed issues at the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting yesterday to consider the draft manifesto.

The manifesto was prepared by Jairam Ramesh incorporating another draft by Mani Shankar Aiyar and finishing touches were given to it by Pranab Mukherjee.

Members made a number of suggestions at the six-hour meeting during a page-by-page reading of the draft that was, in the end, rendered a mild, cautious and "directionless" document, a member of the CWC said, largely because leaders like Manmohan Singh emphasised that it was better for the party to be safe than to be sorry.

Accordingly any sentence that could be interpreted as being controversial or could upset a community or group, was either watered down or deleted altogether.

Singh warned that the party should make no unrealistic promises and should be careful and cautious about its focus because the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government had led the economy into a dangerous arena.

The manifesto"" if all the amendments are incorporated"" walks the economic middle path. It is not pro-poor but it does take the credit for the 1991 economic reforms. Interestingly, it does not talk about the real first wave of reforms that began in the 1980s.

The presence of Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) leader Sanjeeva Reddy, who attended the CWC meeting for the first time as a special invitee, led to a discussion on the stand the party should take on labour reforms.

Sanjeeva Reddy is considered a loose cannon by the Congress because he is as much a labour leader as a politician, who has been labour minister in the Andhra Pradesh government in the 1980s.

He is known to have an independent position on the labour movement and moves by the Congress leadership to set up a parallel organisation by encouraging dissident leaders to rebel against Reddy, led to a breakaway INTUC being formed last year.

Reddy has supported the recommendations of the second National Labour Commission that both Manmohan Singh and Pranab Mukherjee do not agree with, and opposed the May 11 strike called by all the trade unions, although Congress chief Sonia Gandhi was in favour of the INTUC joining the strike.

Reddy also endorses the stand of the West Bengal INTUC, that supports the Trinamool Congress and has issued public statements in favour of the labour policies of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu.

In the draft manifesto, the Congress position on labour reforms was so carefully spelt out that it supported both industry and labour. A section of the party led by Sanjeeva Reddy wanted a clearer position.

The discussion was prolonged and at the end of it, the Congress appeared to have decided to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and not have any reference to labour laws at all. However, the final decision was left to Sonia Gandhi.

A similar discussion took place on the role of the US in the world and how much India should support the new tendency towards a unipolar world.

Whether non-alignment should continue to be a Congress policy and whether an interim council in Iraq that is put in place without the UN seal of approval, are all issues that have a bearing on how the party should view the US, leaders felt.

At the end of the CWC, leaders felt that the meeting reached just one conclusion that was unanimous: that Sonia Gandhi's presidentship of the party was unchallenged despite electoral setbacks. "She sat through the meeting, heard everyone, made suggestions and ruled decisively. After a long time, we saw some decisionmaking," said a member.

The Congress, members said, did not deviate from its stand on secularism or minorities. A section of CWC members said the document drafted by a panel headed by Pranab Mukherjee was not very imaginative.