So Sonia Gandhi has made up her mind, has she? National politics, and why not? Gandhi is a revered name, if you think of the Mahatma. And respected by Indian voters, thanks to Indira Gandhi and Rajiv, Sonia’s husband.
Besides South Asia is the region which produced the world’s first woman prime minister, Sri Lanka’s Siri-ma Band-aranaike.
Since then we watched Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi, elected to the highest office in the world’s largest democracy, and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s daughter, Benazir elected by a grateful constituency. Widows and daughters are important players on the Bangladesh parliamentary stage too. Houses of parliament have become widows’ houses!
It was the Congress of course which pulled the rug to topple poor I. K. Gujral’s 15 party coalition. Already the tactical moves of the major actors revealed that Rajiv’s widow was a factor in the larger equation. The behaviour of Congress president Sitaram Kesri certainly made the front page in many a national newspaper. Mahendra Ved of the Times of India, for instance, wrote:
“Several influential leaders of the party privately express confidence that the widow of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi will campaign in a way and lead it to victory. Armed with the findings of the Jain panel, they think they have hit upon a cause that would help them at the hustings.
The votaries of the hard line include party vice-president Jeetendra Prasad, K.Vijaya Dhas Reddy. Arjun Singh and party treasurer Ahmed Patel”.
Should the DMK be permitted to play a part in the United Front (UF) administration after what the Jain Commission has stated about the role of the DMK vis-a-vis the Rajiv Gandhi assassination? That said the same report was the critical question.
What the news agencies have not adequately stressed are the implications of a remark by an “authoritative source” (unidentified) that not ALL information gathered on the LTTE-DMK nexus has been recorded.
In the fourth chapter of the report (titled Growth of Militancy), the report indicts V.P Singh for security lapses.
As anti-coalition and anti-DMK sentiment spread at all levels of the Congress hierarchy, and then to the party’s nation-wide mass base, Sonia Gandhi’s hand was greatly strengthened.
And yet it was not just the Pro-Rajiv Congress opinion-makers that trained their guns on Prime Minister Gujral and his alliance. Other big guns joined the anti-Gujral blitz. One of the heaviest guns was Chief Minister Joyoti Basu of West Bengal. Not only is West
Bengal a frontline industrialised state but the ruling party is the country’s largest leftist organisation in India. The CPM chief is India’s most respected Marxist veteran politician who made his name nationally and internationlly, quite early in his career.
Mr. Basu’s sense of time and place was near-perfect. Having participated in a four-hour session of the CPM’s politiburo, comrade Basu decided that the annual general meeting of Bengal’s National Chamber of Commerce, was the ideal venue to mount his attack on Prime Minister Gujral’s United Front. Needless to add his artillery was mounted on the left of the target, Prime Minister Gujral’s “Alliance”. Mr Gujral, said the CPM chief had failed to honour his pledges to the working class, and the poorest of the poor. Mr. Gujral had “sold” the voter an “attractive” anti poverty programme. The CPM’s support was given on an explicit undertaking — the implementation of the CPM, meaning a “common minimum programme”. The CPM had trusted Mr. Gujral when he pledged that the schemes under the CPM would be given the highest priority.
Another issue was the “crippling burden placed on the state governments” by the recommendations of the “Fifth Pay Commission” appointed by the central government. The Gujral government had not been considerate enough to discuss the matter with the Chief Ministers. The policies of the Gujral regime had created “great disparities” between the staff employed by Delhi, and those employed by the state governments. Not surprisingly pro-Marxist journals and newspapers have blamed the IMFand the World Bank, and accused the Gujral regime of toeing a pro-American line.
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