Matters of style

VENKITESH RAMAKRISHNAN

SONIA GANDHI'S tenure as Congress(I) president has been marked by the setting up of innumerable committees meant to review and tone up the functioning of the party.

The first of their kind was the Task Force headed by P.A. Sangma, to generate ideas to rejuvenate the party, and the committees to look into the poll debacles in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab. These were set up in the first week of her tenure as president, which started on March 14.

Holding court. Many party leaders complain that her induction of corporate management methods in running the party and her reliance on a group of confidants who have vested political interests are blunting the Congress(I)'s political instincts.

The four months since then have seen the constitution of more committees - to review the party constitution, enforce party discipline, formulate a moral and ethical code for leaders and activists, inspect the functioning of the party headquarters and the administration of State units. Policy formulation committees on economic, defence and foreign affairs as well as a grievances cell associated with her residential office at 10 Janpath followed. The latest in the list are a cell at the party president's office and committees to chalk out plans for a Narora-type brainstorming session to be held in September. A committee was set up also to look into the Rajya Sabha poll debacle in Maharashtra.

It is not known what these committees have achieved. Decision-making and execution of programmes continue to be the monopoly of a group of persons close to the leader, in the tradition followed by all Congress(I) presidents. The new power players include Sonia Gandhi's essentially apolitical private secretary Vincent George, the Congress(I) president's office convener Margaret Alva, the quiet and unobtrusive party general secretary Oscar Fernandes, the mercurial Mani Shankar Aiyar and Congress(I) Working Committee member Arjun Singh. There seems to be a special relationship between Arjun Singh and Vincent George. According to sources, the duo plays a major part in evolving Sonia's responses to day-to-day developments.

Others have comparatively limited roles. While Oscar Fernandes and Margaret Alva coordinate Sonia's activities at the All India Congress(I) Committee, Mani Shankar Aiyar is in charge of planning and organising her tours.

The committees headed by such senior leaders as P.A. Sangma, A.K. Antony, K. Karunakaran, Manmohan Singh and K. Natwar Singh seem to have little role in the actual running of the party. Take the example of the Task Force. It studied the organisational problems at length and came up with numerous suggestions. However, their implementation has at best been ad hoc and cosmetic. While innocuous recommendations like the one to do away with the post of AICC(I) joint secretary and replace it with that of a secretary were accepted, more significant suggestions such as the one to replace PCCs with regional committees in organisationally weak States like Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh were ignored. Clearly, the proposals that went against vested interests in the party were not acceptable.

Similarly, though various general secretaries and secretaries have been put in charge of overseeing organisational matters in individual States, there are complaints that the president's tour programmes are organised without proper consultation with the State units. Sonia's visits to States like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar were failures for this reason. The nomination of candidates for the Rajya Sabha elections was also criticised as being flawed owing to the lack of consultation with the respective State units.

Other committees such as the constitution review committee headed by K. Karunakaran and the ethical and moral committee headed by A.K. Antony are yet to submit concrete suggestions. There is a feeling among at least some members of these committee that their work is not being taken seriously. The foreign and defence affairs committee, headed by Natwar Singh, was embarrassed after the Pokhran nuclear tests when its initial reaction of questioning the timing of the tests was virtually negated by Sonia Gandhi herself after a meeting with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Sonia went on record as praising the tests and linking them with the initiatives of past Congress(I) governments on the nuclear research front. However, this stance changed later and the party returned to the position adopted by the foreign and defence affairs committee. What fate awaits the central coordination committee for a Narora-type camp, headed by Nawal Kishore Sharma, and the special organisational, political and economic affairs committees associated with it is to be seen, though middle level leaders seem to set great store by these.

Among the committees that are reported to function with some semblance of efficiency are the Congress(I) president's office cell and the news-watch group located at the AICC(I) headquarters, which monitors news and helps formulate the party's reaction. The former, headed by Alva, has Janardhan Dwivedi and Virender Tyagi as its other members. The group is run by a team of young party workers such as Tom Vadakken, Archana Dalamiya and Dr. Anuradha Kunte, some of whom were associated with the cell right from the days when Rajiv Gandhi was Congress(I) president. The cell has evolved a unique system for individuals to seek appointments with the party president. This involves dropping letters in boxes kept outside the cell office instead of routing them through individual leaders.

However, Sonia Gandhi's leadership has not been able to replicate this democratisation and decentralisation in other departments of the party. The winding up of the grievance cell in her office after a month of existence points to this. For this, the Congress(I) president has none to blame other than her style of functioning, which involves a tendency to withdraw into a shell and depend on a group of people to take major decisions.

BY late June, when the biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha took place, even middle-level leaders of the party were complaining about Sonia Gandhi's style of functioning and her dependence on a select group of people, while projecting a facade of democratic functioning.

According to a former Union Minister, Sonia Gandhi's style bore resemblance to those of both her mother-in-law Indira Gandhi and husband Rajiv Gandhi. It was Rajiv who sought to introduce corporate management styles, complete with computer analyses of election data, in the Congress(I); Sonia Gandhi's dependence on a select group, however, is reminiscent of the Indira Gandhi days. The leader said: "When it comes to personal interaction, she tries to emulate Indira Gandhi. The tours to various States, especially to places where calamities had occurred, is clearly taken out of Indira Gandhi's book. Remember Indiraji's trip to Belchi during the Janata Party regime of 1977-78?" The way Sonia talked to and mingled with the people during these tours, holding sick children and comforting people in distress, was also reminiscent of Indira Gandhi, he added.

At the AICC office and while interacting with party leaders, however, Sonia is more in the Rajiv mould, and places a greater emphasis on the written word than on the oral. Party leaders say that ever since Sonia Gandhi took over, party meetings have seen a return to the "concept notes" and "written briefs" that were in vogue during the Rajiv years. That both Rajiv and Sonia had at best a limited knowledge of Hindi perhaps underlay this practice.

But many senior- and middle-level leaders complain that Sonia's durbar, which comprises people with vested interests or those insensitive to realpolitik considerations, vets these concept notes and briefs to suit their agenda. One leader said: "The whole exercise becomes redundant." According to this leader, whereas in the Rajiv era the coterie-induced degeneration in the party's political instincts set in only after a few years, in Sonia's case, "the process of deterioration has set in much faster."

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