Part I: 'Vajpayee is strong as Sonia is so weak'

Sonia Gandhi's elevation as the constitutionally elected president, and that too with such a huge margin, is not going to give Sonia a new perspective. Or political savvy. Actually, Sonia has no choice other than to learn.

No more can she keep projecting her doubts and hesitancy as dignified self-restraint. The political culture in the Congress party to be servile and not speak your mind up may continue for some time. But sooner or later, the party bigwigs are going to figure out that it is damaging their prospects of making it into the corridors of power again with such a lack lustre leader. But for the moment, she is the undisputed leader. A telling comment on the strength of the party.

Says A K Antony, who is the tallest Congress leader in the South because of his clean image: "I am optimistic about the future of the Congress. But I do not expect great miracles. The party will gradually recover."

Sonia will have to re-invent herself.

No more will the novelty of the Italian bahu speaking Hindi work. No more will crowds go mad with happiness seeing her wave to them. No more will her quick strides to a podium or coming down a staircase be compared with the energy that her mother-in-law had. She needs to provide a new vision for the party and restore its confidence in itself. She needs to talk extempore. The nation wants to hear her, not have her spokesmen shield her all the time.

Where are all the leaders gone, you may ask. All have moved away to suffer alone. In silence. Was this the great old Congress party? Do they not have a single stalwart? At the moment, all are hiding behind Sonia's pallu. Even people like Manmohan Singh. He does not speak his mind anymore. Reporters do not rush to him. They know he will not talk. There cannot be a more eloquent example than him. An example of how a short-sighted political party and leader can silence and neutralise a good mind.

Off the record conversations with Congressmen can be very intriguing. There are clearly two kinds of Congressmen here. One who will give you the on-the-record quotes in a few seconds and then talks his mind on what he really feels. Then, there are others who make you promise anonymity and then talk. The first kind are power chasers. The second are those who have minds and cannot tolerate Sonia.

Sonia may have had only 94 votes cast against her in the presidential election, but that does not mean a thing. Jitendra Prasada was hardly a choice. He cannot draw crowds. He cannot get the kind of media attention that Sonia attracts. He had no charisma. He just had the image of a rebel. But, that does not help get votes. Sonia cannot run away from the fact that in the last general election she led the party to winning just 28.5 per cent of the votes.

It was singularly the worst performance for the Congress. The BJP got just 23.5 per cent votes, but at least the party used its political savvy to put together clever tactical alliances to form a coalition government.

"Sonia could not do that, as no one wanted to dine with her," says a Congress MP.

When the Congress Working Committee made her president in March 1998, they thought she was the answer as she attracted crowds during election rallies more than any Congress leader. No one told them that the crowds came to see her lovely range of colourful Kanjeevaram sarees, catch a glimpse of daughter Priyanka, who has earthy charm plus poise, and go home convinced they should vote for someone who they could identify with and who could deliver the goods.

In her book, Rajiv, she had clearly talked of the trappings of power and the superficial glitter and flattery that went with it. But that was long ago. Today, she is a victim of what she ran away from all those years ago: Power. Her coterie -- comprising her secretary, Vincent George, Arjun Singh, Ahmed Patel, Salman Khurshid, Ambika Soni, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Madhavrao Scindia and M L Fotedar -- have convinced her that holding the reins of power is just a question of time.

If Sonia had been actually trained in the topsy turvy world of Indian politics, she would have figured out that she is chasing an illusion.

With one controversial decision after the other, credibility is one quality she is no more associated with. Take the Rajya Sabha nominations for example. She had earlier planned to nominate senior leaders like K Natwar Singh, Ram Niwas Mirdha, Vijaya Bhaskara Reddy, V C Shukla and V N Gadgil to the Rajya Sabha. But she denied seats to all of them. No one knows why. This led to a flurry of dissident activity.

Often, 10 Janpath has rode roughshod. State units are reportedly not happy. Even in municipal elections, 10 Janpath wants to have a say in the candidates. This is not the manner in which a national party is run. Sonia is increasingly being seen as a dictator who wants to have her way and will jettison those who do not comply with her wishes. Of late, her spin doctors have been advising her subtly to correct the image by talking of inner party democracy and how the will of the grassroot workers will ultimately be respected. When asked whether Congressmen who had left the party would be allowed to return, Sonia said, "I will go entirely by what my grassroot workers tell me."

After her election, she promised to unveil the party's new agenda to delegates at the next AICC session. Everyone is waiting.

One of her first tasks will be to organise Pradesh Congress Committee elections. Various state units already are signalling to her to nominate the PCC chief. If she does this, she would encourage sycophancy again and the party may end up paying a heavy price. She just has to look at the way Digvijay Singh in Madhya Pradesh and S M Krishna in Karnataka have emerged as two strong chief ministers by having gone to the people and launching programmes that can better their life.

It is not that the Congress does not have leaders. It is only that she has to identify them and give them responsibility. And freedom.

In Bihar, all MLAs are more interested in clinging to a ministerial berth rather than shoring the party against the growth of the Rashtriya Janata Dal. In Tamil Nadu, violent clashes have punctuated Congress meetings. In Orissa, the party is demoralised and faction-ridden. In Uttar Pradesh, factional fights have destroyed the party that once was unchallenged. Today, it does not have a chance in the coming assembly election.

Sonia is not sure what her party's stand should be. Should it be anti-liberalisation or support foreign investment? Anti-nuclear or pro-nuclear? She took credit for liberalisation saying her party initiated it and that more reforms would follow if her party rode to power. But in early March, she slammed the NDA's economic policies. She said, "They pose a grave challenge to India's economic sovereignty."

Sonia will always be compared to her mother-in-law who had a mind, a vision, a following and above everything else, grass root support. She understood politics, its intricacies and was a master strategist. Sonia cannot claim to have any of this. The only similarity with her mother-in-law: both had tasteful saris.

Sonia Gandhi was always an enigma. Nothing ever got written on her when Indira Gandhi was prime minister. Very little was known about her. She was busy playing a dutiful daughter-in-law. Even after Rajiv became PM, little was known about her as she deliberately kept a low profile and followed Rajiv on his tours with her pallu draped over her head. She was the quintessential wife playing her role to perfection.

But after taking over the reins of power in her party, she destroyed the image the media had of her. It did not take much time for them to figure out that she shied away from the press only because she had nothing to say.

At the Congress meet at Pachmarhi, a resolution was passed in 1988 underlining that the Congress under Sonia would be wedded to principles, ideology and ethics in politics. Two years later, it sounds unreal. Sonia urgently needs help with a fresh make up job. Sonia will have to work hard to be seen as someone who is a visionary, someone who sees something beyond power. Otherwise, history will see her as another player in decadent Indian politics.

The road to power is just too long. Sonia has lots of work to do.