Larger implications of Sonia's absence

At a time when the print and electronic media are vying with each other in ferreting out and giving publicity to classified official documents in an unending series of exposes, it is nothing less than an incredible feat on the part of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government and the Congress Party to have kept under wraps the nature of the illness of their supreme leader, Ms Sonia Gandhi, who also commands the highest profile among public figures in India.

Even the name of the hospital and the country in which it is located are not known for certain. But this column is not into the debate that has been going on as to the people's inviolable right in a democracy to know the health condition of someone on whose physical and mental fitness the proper and effective functioning of a pre-eminent political party and the Government run by a delicately cobbled up parliamentary alliance depends.

There may well be irrefutable justification for secrecy and privacy if that was the only means of guarding against thousands swamping the hospital and the place of recovery and continuously subjecting everyone involved to a barrage of anxious queries. Constant disturbance can even hinder the process of recovery.

Leaving all that aside, there are larger implications of Ms Gandhi's absence, and it has become imperative for the Congress Party to come to grips with them. It should have a clear understanding of the kind of long-term stewardship it should have that would contribute to its credibility, taking account of the complexion and configurations of the future national political landscape.

DYNASTIC CULT

There are two fundamental questions which the Party must answer to itself. The first is whether it wants to stick to the dynastic cult, or is prepared to liberate itself from past hang-ups and hangovers and forge the capacity for fresh and innovative thinking.

Remember, it was during the brief five years of a non-dynastic Prime Minister, P. V. Narasimha Rao, that the country was able to put paid to the licence-permit-quota raj that prevailed for 45 years after Independence.

Another aspect of sticking to the dynastic fetish is the possibility that the entire party leadership, comprising the tried and tested, experienced and savvy, political stalwarts of long-standing may have to subordinate itself to the say-so of a person like Rahul Gandhi, whose qualification on present showing is merely that of being the son of Ms Gandhi.

At least, she had the advantage, in her formative years, of having been mentored by a leader of the calibre of Indira Gandhi who straddled both the Gandhian and Nehruvian eras and was a colossus in her own right, but Rahul Gandhi cannot lay claim to any such tutelage.

ESSENTIAL PRE-REQUISITE

The second weighty issue is whether the roles of the Party President and Prime Minister should be separate or combined. In the period after Independence, even when the Party was homogenous and dominant, whenever the posts were held by different persons, either it gave rise to serious conflicts of personalities or the Party Presidents ended up readily submitting to the Prime Minister's will.

Political analysts are since agreed that the smooth and purposeful working of parliamentary democracies hinges upon the primacy of the Prime Minister and that, if he does not head the Party himself, he should have a pliant Party President managing its affairs in tune with his thinking. But there is an essential pre-requisite: The Prime Minister should have a mass political base in his own right, and be an elected member of the Lok Sabha, and prepared to crack the whip to ensure that the Ministers work in unison and in line with his directions.

The present method of splitting the roles of Party President the Prime Minister but hyphenating them with mechanisms like the NAC is doing no good to the Party or the Government.

COMMENT NOW