2014: The Election That Changed India (16 page)

Between May 2004 and May 2014, Sonia Gandhi was the most powerful person in the country. Everyone within and outside the government, including the prime minister, acknowledged it. It was quite simply the nature of the ruling arrangement that had been created when Mrs Gandhi, citing her ‘inner voice’, declined to be the prime minister and chose Dr Singh instead. She was the chairperson, Dr Singh was her hand-picked Chief Executive Officer. It was an understanding based, above all else, on mutual trust and respect. It was also an agreement that suited both. Dr Singh, as the quintessential bureaucrat, was used to taking orders and handling the nitty-gritty of governance; Sonia was happy to wield power without the daily responsibilities of office.

Former Congressman Natwar Singh in his book
One Life Is

Not Enough
has claimed that Sonia’s decision not to become prime minister was dictated by Rahul, who feared for her life. ‘The inner voice theory is bunkum,’ Natwar claimed in several interviews. Was it a conscience call? I had asked Sonia Gandhi this question during a private meeting, soon after she turned down the prime ministership. She had merely nodded her head enigmatically. It is likely that the decision was taken at the family high table in the presence of Rahul, Priyanka and a few close friends, but the final call was hers. The ‘inner voice’ theory may have been a convenient political spin—it did confer on her a moral halo of martyrdom. But then again, how many politicians will give up what can be so easily theirs?

I first met Sonia Gandhi in 1995 in Amethi when she had launched a veiled attack on then prime minister Narasimha Rao, accusing the government of ‘going slow’ in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination investigation. ‘Are you joining politics?’ we had asked her excitedly then. ‘No, I am not. But I do believe that Rajivji’s sacrifice must not be forgotten,’ she had responded. The grieving widow in white seeking justice for her husband—Sonia’s political profile seemed to be an extension of her private persona as a guardian of the family legacy, keeper of the Nehru–Gandhi flame. You didn’t sense then that she was cut out for the rough and tumble of electoral politics.

And yet, three years later in 1998, she was Congress president, sparking off a furious debate over her foreign origins. She was probably prepared for the attack, but perhaps was not ready for just how personal it would get. I saw a flash of fury when I asked her the question soon after she took over the party leadership. ‘I feel 100 per cent Indian,’ she said. ‘They are attacking me because they have nothing else to criticize me for.’ The lonely and injured widow-of-Rajiv image came to the fore—Sonia played the victim card to perfection to outsmart senior leaders like Sharad Pawar who had raised the foreign origins issue.

While she could be gentle and genteel in private conversation (she liked to discuss art and culture), her political persona was marked by a ruthless streak. It was clear that she did not forget or forgive easily—she did not attend Rao’s funeral nor did she allow his body
to be brought to the Congress headquarters or a samadhi for him in Delhi. ‘Sonia’s world is divided into loyalists and those who are not with the family. Her political and even personal choices are determined by this,’ is how a senior Congressman explained her behaviour. Dr Singh, as a docile, almost servile ‘loyalist’, was made for Sonia; a Rao or a Sharad Pawar would never be socially or politically acceptable to her as they simply did not pass the rigorous loyalty test to a family in which she had subsumed her entire being.

In December 2005, I did a fairly extensive interview with Mrs Gandhi, a rare occurrence since she generally refused to speak to the media. I had extracted a promise from her when I was setting up CNN-IBN that she would give us an interview in our launch phase. She kept her word. I asked her about whether she had any regrets about turning down the prime ministership. ‘No, not at all,’ she said with a quiet firmness. ‘Manmohan Singh is doing a fine job as prime minister. I have full faith in him.’ I asked her to respond to the charge that she was dictatorial and was remote-controlling the government. In a moment of candour, she smiled, ‘Not dictatorial. In fact, sometimes I feel I am too democratic and seek too many opinions before taking a decision.’

The truth, as it often does, lies somewhere in between. Contrary to speculation, Sonia did not seek to intervene in the daily functioning of the government, but she did keep a close watch on key issues and appointments. Her policy involvement was driven through the National Advisory Council (NAC), a group explicitly set up to provide external inputs to the prime minister. It was Sonia’s way of ensuring her stamp of authority over certain critical decisions. She had been deeply influenced by her mother-in-law’s politics, and would tell her friends that the Congress was meant to fight poverty and communalism. In private conversation, she sounded a bit like Mother Teresa. ‘India is a country of and for the poor!’ she would often say.

The NAC was given a plush office in 2A Motilal Nehru Marg with a small staff. A gathering of ideologically like-minded left-of-centre individuals from civil society, the NAC would meet once a month
between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. to discuss various agenda papers. ‘It was all very professional,’ one NAC member told me. ‘Sonia Gandhi is a very good listener—she would rarely interrupt and ensured that all deadlines for making presentations were kept.’ The NAC, though, didn’t have the final word. ‘Soniaji made it clear to us—we should advise, but the final authority was that of the Cabinet,’ says a member.

In UPA-I, the arrangement appeared to work, at least initially. The NAC assisted in the crafting of important legislation, including the Right to Information (RTI) Act, a landmark law in ensuring transparency in government. It helped that in UPA-I, the left was an ally and that many NAC members had strong links with the left. A standing joke in the NAC was, ‘When in doubt, let’s go and meet CPI(M)’s Sitaram Yechury, he’ll be on our side!’

Mrs Gandhi’s trusted bureaucrat Pulok Chatterjee was another bridge between the NAC and the PMO as a secretary in South Block, while Jairam Ramesh as an NAC member in UPA-I would push the envelope as well. ‘We were all on the same page in UPA-I. There were regular UPA coordination meetings with a common minimum programme. In UPA-II, it was apparent that we were all operating on different agendas—no coordination and no common programme,’ is how a member described the change. Sonia herself had to step away from the NAC in 2006 over the office-of-profit controversy when she was accused of violating a rule that as an MP, she could not hold another ‘paid’ post. She only returned in 2010. By then, the group had lost its sheen.

Not everyone in the government saw the NAC in benign terms. More than one minister told me there was no place for a ‘super-Cabinet’ in the Indian political system. ‘It’s only there to satisfy Sonia Gandhi’s ego,’ was one sharp criticism I heard often. Pawar, for example, felt that the NAC was, as he told a colleague, ‘a group of busybodies who are undermining the Cabinet system’. Pawar, who had been in politics for close to five decades, was incensed when the NAC tried to fast-track the food security legislation during UPA-II. ‘We must not do anything in a hurry like this,’ he warned the prime
minister, who was also worried about the financial costs in a period of economic slowdown. Pawar found support in deputy chairperson of the Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, whom the prime minister trusted implicitly. ‘We tried to convince Soniaji but she was just not willing to listen,’ Pawar told me later.

In the end, the Manmohan–Pawar–Montek combine had to yield ground to the authority of a Sonia-led initiative that aimed to provide subsidized foodgrains to approximately two-thirds of the country’s 1.2 billion people. With Sonia holding firm, the bill was passed in September 2013. One estimate put the cost at Rs 125,000 crore. Even if the final figure was lower, there were still legitimate concerns over fiscal and inflationary pressures. ‘You must understand Sonia Gandhi,’ an aide told me later. ‘She doesn’t trust economists but goes by her political instincts, and her instincts told her that food security would be a political winner.’ What she forgot was that many Opposition-ruled states had already initiated efficient foodgrain distribution programmes. At the fag end of its tenure, the Congress leadership was clutching at straws.

While the NAC was branded a civil society–state interface, Sonia had a more direct political involvement through a Friday evening ‘core group’ meeting at the prime minister’s residence at 7, Race Course Road. This was meant to be the real power centre of the UPA government. The core group members included the prime minister, Pranab Mukherjee (before he became President), Chidambaram, A.K. Antony, Sushil Shinde and Ahmed Patel. None of them were vote-catching leaders—almost all of them owed their place to their proximity to the Congress’s First Family.

Patel is an interesting character who exemplifies how the Congress has become a ‘drawing room’ party that relies on deal-making. A Rajya Sabha MP from Gujarat, he was a key power centre. A silent, almost shadowy figure rarely seen on camera, he was Sonia’s political secretary, expected to handle the ‘dirty business’ of crisis management in politics. ‘The rest of us work by day, Ahmed Patel works in the night,’ was how one Congressman laughingly described Patel’s modus operandi. For most journalists trying to penetrate the Congress’s
interlinked durbars, Patel was a gold mine—he gave us the ‘
andar ki khabar
’, but never wanted to be quoted or come on camera.

The core group was meant to ensure greater coordination between the Congress party and the government. It was seen as a repository of all political wisdom. And yet, it was this very core group that created further headaches for both the party and the government. It mishandled the Anna agitation. It sent its ministers to meet Ramdev. It endorsed the breaking up of Andhra Pradesh. It even approved the ordinance that would give convicted lawmakers a reprieve.

The core group also could not stop the party and the government from speaking in different voices. The first sign of this came as early as July 2009, barely two months into the life of the new government. The prime minister had gone to Sharm el-Sheikh where, on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit, he had signed a joint statement with his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani to cooperate on fighting terror. Born in Pakistan, Dr Singh had always been keen on breaking the ice with Islamabad. Empowered by a strong mandate in the elections, he thought this was the ideal moment to make a fresh effort at peace—it could even be a Nobel Prize-winning achievement.

Only, the timing went horribly wrong. The scars of the 26/11 terror attack in Mumbai had not healed and the Maharashtra assembly elections were just months away. The prime minister may have wanted a place in history; his party had an eye on the polls. Instead of backing him, they decided to criticize the move. Manish Tewari, who was Congress spokesperson at the time, recalled how he was sent an SMS from a senior party leader asking him to leave midway through a TV programme with former diplomats, and stop defending the government. Another spokesperson, Abhishek Singhvi, received similar orders.

‘I think that’s the moment the prime minister just switched off,’ fears Tewari. If the party and Sonia would no longer back him to take tough decisions, then he felt it just wasn’t worth it any longer. The same party leadership that had endorsed him on the Indo-US nuclear deal had now turned against him. Dr Singh had just had a
major bypass surgery in January and his health was only gradually recovering—Sharm el-Sheikh set him back once again. He would never really recover. A senior member of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) confirmed to me that in his second term there were at least four separate occasions when Dr Singh offered to resign.

It was not just Sharm el-Sheikh. Whenever the government was in a crisis—be it the Anna agitation or the 2G scam—Dr Singh felt the party did not defend him vigorously enough. Sonia did make periodic statements in support of her chosen prime minister. For example, when the telecom scam broke, her first reaction was, ‘It is shameful that a person of the integrity of the prime minister should be targeted in this manner. Everyone knows the prime minister is 100 per cent above board.’ Somehow, though, her words lacked the confidence she had shown when she stood by him on the Indo-US nuclear deal.

Indeed, Sonia’s own role in UPA-II’s critical years between 2009 and 2011 is questionable. A good example of her political instincts failing her was the manner in which she dealt with the aftermath of the sudden death of Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy in September 2009 in a helicopter accident. A powerful regional satrap who had brought the Congress its largest basket of seats in a state in the 2009 general elections, Reddy had become a symbol of the Congress’s electoral success. His death created a vacuum. His son Jaganmohan was keen to fill it and take over.

I had met Jagan just a few days before his father’s tragic accident. Short but well built, he had the swagger of a mini Tollywood star. He wanted to make his Sakshi Television, he said, the largest regional television network in the country. ‘It would be great if your channel can help me in this—we need your support,’ he told me. I had heard about Jagan having become an extra-constitutional authority in Andhra—stories of alleged arm-twisting, vast riches and corruption were filtering through. I was keen to stay as far away as possible.