http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1098130
Sunday, May 20, 2007 11:16:00 PM Sonia and the Mayawati factor Minhaz Merchant Mayawati as future Prime Minister? Can the rainbow coalition of Dalits, Brahmins and Muslims the new Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister has strung together work at the Centre? The answer to that will determine the long-term direction of Indian politics and the longevity of the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty. Mayawati's victory in UP has transformed the political arithmetic in India but it would be naïve to underestimate the allure of the Gandhi-Nehrus at the centre of India's still-fractured polity. So how will Sonia and her inner circle combat the incipient Mayawati threat? To understand Sonia's mind, rewind to 1968 when she married Rajiv and settled down to an apolitical life in a very different India from the one she confronts today. Following Indira Gandhi's assassination in October 1984, Rajiv was annointed Prime Minister — against a near-hysterical Sonia's pleadings. Seven years later Rajiv was himself dead, assassinated by a woman LTTE suicide bomber named Dhanu. Sonia's worst fears had been realised. She withdrew her young children (Rahul was 20, Priyanka 19) into a protective shell. Between 1991 and 1998, the Gandhi-Nehru family abdicated politics. But Sonia, still grieving Rajiv's loss, was watching developments closely. By 1998, she had made her decision. The Gandhi-Nehrus would, after all, reclaim their legacy. She returned to active Congress politics, got rid of party president Sitaram Kesri and within six years maneouvered the Congress-led UPA into government in 2004. Rahul was now 33, Priyanka 32, married with young children. Sonia's first decision was to make a virtue out of a necessity and decline the Prime Ministership. A CEO-PM like Dr. Manmohan Singh was both better equipped and more credible to run the government while she ran the party and groomed Rahul. That was, in fact, her second major decision — to choose Rahul over Priyanka as Prime Minister-in-waiting and heir to the Congress leadership. The first priority for Priyanka, in the best Italian and Indian tradition, was to raise her young children. Active politics would not allow that. Rahul, reluctant at first, was the only choice. Sonia knew this. Now comes the interesting part. What exactly is Sonia's long-term plan for the Congress, for herself, and for Rahul and Priyanka in the dramatically altered political landscape following Mayawati's triumph in Uttar Pradesh? Broadly speaking, the strategy goes like this: Rahul, having learnt his lessons the hard way in the 2007 UP assembly elections, will still spearhead the Congress general election campaign in 2009. If the UPA is returned to office, with or without Mayawati's support (currently the BSP's 17 Lok Sabha MPs support the UPA from outside), Rahul will be given a junior ministership. His young turks (Sachin Pilot, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Milind Deora and others) will get plum posts. Manmohan Singh, though 77 in 2009, will continue as PM. He will remain the sober, decent, technocratic face of the Congress-lead UPA government. Mayawati's victory in UP could, of course, upset Sonia's calculations. But can Mayawati (a Jatav Dalit) capture Delhi on her own? An alliance with the Congress is a likelier possibility in 2009. Sonia and Mayawati may need each other more than either would like — but neither has much of a choice. Throughout the UP assembly election campaign, Rahul and Sonia were careful not to even once criticise Mayawati. They had sensed her growing power long before the rest of the country. Sonia's strategy now is to take a leaf out of Mayawati's electoral book: if it is possible to build a successful coalition of Dalits, Brahmins and Muslims in India's largest state, surely it can be replicated at the Centre as well. A Congress-BSP alliance in the 2009 general election is entirely plausible. The former Italian au pair has shown that she has the will and the means to do what is best for her family and — in the best tradition of "India is Indira" — the country. In India, certain things simply don't change. Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Subscribe to ZESTCaste by sending a BLANK email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
