T N Ninan: What of Sonia?

WEEKEND RUMINATIONS

So we have the first anniversary of the formation of the UPA government. But we also have the first anniversary of the Sonia Gandhi renunciation.

While much newsprint has been spent on looking at how Manmohan Singh has done, what about the Congress president, who also happens to be the UPA chairperson and the head of the National Advisory Council? The central question is, was it a renunciation at all?

Yes, and no. Yes, because she is not the Prime Minister and it says something of a person who can give that up. No, because she has not disappeared into an ashram. Nor has she confined herself to purely party matters.

It might be argued that as chairperson of the UPA, she has the right to get involved in policy issues that flow from the alliance's Common Minimum Programme. But what about her involvement in appointments, not just of Cabinet ministers (where a party president could expect to be heard) but also of bureaucrats?

It is an open secret in the capital that Manmohan Singh could not have his first choice as his own principal secretary, apparently because Sonia objected.

And does the position of NAC chief entitle her to look at the details of legislative bills and ask for changes? If she wants a provision dropped or introduced, does that become the law? Which brings up the key question: how much does all this undermine the position and authority of the Prime Minister?

Should Manmohan Singh's position be compared to that of Shaukat Aziz across the border, while Sonia is like Pervez Musharraf""the real power? If so, how much was it a case of renunciation, and how much a careful and wise assessment of what the political situation would permit?

Recognising that Sonia Gandhi has wrested a meaty role for herself, the interesting development is how she has brought the mainstream political process face to face with the rising tide of NGO involvement.

Many would agree that India's politics has increasingly been divorced from developmental issues, with the focus on caste and community arithmetic, plagued by the criminal-politician nexus, and unable to reverse the collapse of governance.

Into this cynical world of pork barrel politics, Sonia has let loose the Jean Drezes and Aruna Roys of the world""earnest folk with a record of commitment to the underdog and able to more than argue a point from that perspective.

For all their qualities, in the ordinary course neither an Ahmed Patel nor a Lalu nor a Chidambaram would have given them the time of day.

But with Sonia Gandhi's backing, they have rammed through the introduction of the Employment Guarantee Bill and the Right to Information Bill; it was also Sonia Gandhi who listened to the NGOs and decided that the controversial bill on tribal rights should go through.

All three bills have given the UPA government something to talk about as signature initiatives.

There are economists who will quarrel with the wisdom of the employment programme, just as wildlife lovers are beating their breasts about the tribal rights bill. But Sonia Gandhi's looking at the point where economics meets politics. From that perspective, the NAC has been as innovative an idea as Rajiv Gandhi's technology missions were for circumventing bureaucratic procedures.

Manmohan Singh will probably be comfortable with these specific initiatives, as also with the ambitious Bharat Nirman programme, which together will almost certainly be the Congress talking points in the next election.

But where does that leave economic reform, which is the PM's corner of the ring?

The truth is that the focus on the aam admi goes back to an old Sonia conviction that the Rao-Manmohan reforms of 1991-96 did not benefit the poor.

Flowing from this, Sonia had got the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation to work specifically on the relationship between reforms and poverty reduction.

It does not seem to be the case that Sonia Gandhi believes in either Nehru's conviction-led statism or the tactical leftism that her mother-in-law practised; nevertheless, she seems willing to sacrifice even the most obvious reform measures in order to keep the Left as an ally. And if Manmohan's heart bleeds for missed opportunities, well, tough luck for the Prime Minister.