Ringside View

Economist Column
Indian's crisis in external front, is liberilisation the answer?

Ringside View
For a third alternative

Loud Thinking
Reeling under fear.

The Congress President Mrs. Sonia Gandhi seems to be suffering from Hamletian conundrum. Not one, but two. To assume or not to assume power at the Centre. To accept or not to accept the coalition politics.

Until the results of the recently held assembly elections in the Hindi heartland were out, she appeared to be in favour of assuming power, even with the support of the Left, inside or outside the government, no matter. There were fissures in the party on the question, yet she was working overtime to take her party nearer to the Left.

But after her party came back to power in Delhi and Rajasthan, while retaining Madhya Pradesh, she has developed a cold feet on the question of joining a coalition. Now she is dreaming that Congress rides back to power on its own. So she has declared from the AICC platform, "We stand ready at all time to discharge our constitutional responsibility and will do so if and when circumstances demand." Further, she gloated, "We know what good governance means. We are also capable of offering a stable government. Our objective should be to present such a government on our own."

True, there is reason for Sonia Gandhi to be upbeat. When people were leaving the Congress, she had stepped in and within a very short period, she could restore confidence in the minds of Congress workers. The voters too. The results came handy.

But what she forgets is that the BJP's non-governance and its aggressive Hindutva agenda had contributed a lot to the Congress' gain. She also does not realize the reality that coalitions are still there to stay. The Congress has hardly any presence in five North-Indian states. It secured just two percent of vote in Uttar Pradesh in last Lok Shaba election. Even if it is admitted that following her assuming the presidency of the party, there has been a perceptible swing in favour of her party, still it would be hard for her party to defeat the BJP on its own.

Actually, it is not electoral arithmetic, but the politics of the Congress that stands in the way of its joining hand with the left and democratic forces for making a coalition against the BJP and its allies. It is true that the Congress is against the BJP's Hindutva agenda, but it cannot change its own policies on the economic front. Seven years ago, when it was in power at the Centre, the Congress ushered in so-called market reforms. Though the party had to pay high price for this policy in the ballot box, it cannot reverse it, thanks to the party's commitment to the Indian as well as foreign monopoly houses. As a consequence, the just concluded winter session of the Parliament has seen how a truce between the BJP and the Congress had helped the former bring in two contentious bills -- both aimed at satiating the appetite of foreign investors.