Some weeks ago, when Congress President Sonia Gandhi asked Jairam Ramesh to head the core team for the Congress campaign in the 2009 general elections, he readily agreed to give up his ministerial responsibilities as Union Minister of State for Commerce & Power in Shram Shakti Bhavan and Udyog Bhavan, and move with a suitcase to his new home on Gurudwara Rakabganj Road.
“And”, he said, describing his new lodgings to a reporter, with dramatic pauses, “Guess what ! There’s an attached loo!”
Around the same time five years ago, when Ramesh and his team had moved to temporary quarters at South Avenue offered by Ambika Soni, the party came up with the slogan: “Congress ka haath; Aam Aadmi key saath”, which became the brand differentiator in the 2004 general elections. The Aam Aadmi team didn’t mind the cramped flat, they didn’t mind the limited parking, they didn’t even miss the gizmos, computers, deep sofas and cappuccino machines, all standard equipment in any self-respecting advertising agency’s office. But what they did object to was the single, shared toilet. And Ramesh and the others would use the loos at the Claridges or Ashok Hotel nearby when nature called.
That problem has been solved for the Campaign 2009 Team. But the substantial one remains: What is the Congress going to sell in 2009 to persuade people to re-elect it to power, and in larger numbers so that they are not blackmailed by alliance partners ?
Ramesh is still working this out. The 2004 election, in hindsight, was easier. There was no anti incumbency to fight, although several years of sitting on Opposition benches had invested the Congress with a peculiar defeatism. It was as if the party was convinced it could not win an election. In 2004, Ramesh’s theory was that the election would not be a single national election, but a series of small pan-India elections, so the Congress needed the right allies to help it form the government.
But in 2009, many of these allies have become albatrosses around the Congress neck: Like the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha with a plethora of criminal charges against some of its leaders; the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu that has charged the Congress with betrayal and treachery on the issue of the Tamils in Sri Lanka; and the Nationalist Congress Party that thinks nothing of calling Sonia and Rahul Gandhi ‘arrogant’ in its party publication, even while trying to strike an alliance with the Congress.
The Congress has already announced that its state units will dictate the choice of allies. So as campaign manager for the Congress party, not only will Ramesh have to come up with promises that will entice the people into voting for the Congress but also ensure allies gravitate to the Congress rather than the BJP.
As a trained engineer and economist, Ramesh will have no difficulty explaining the reasons for the economic slowdown. But what will the Congress do about the jobs that have been lost? That is another matter.
He will also have to explain why the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance was so slow in replacing a smart and well-turned out home minister with one who actually did some work.
So, is the Standard Operating Procedure of 2004 — Think local, act national — still be valid in 2009? It’s early days yet, he says. Maybe for 2009 it should be — Think global, act national.
