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Sonia Speaks

Author: Tavleen Singh
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: August 12, 2012
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/sonia-speaks/987141/0

She spoke. Not only did she speak, she had a hissy fit in the Lok Sabha. India’s most powerful political leader speaks so rarely that I watched in wonder as she berated L K Advani for daring to call her government ‘illegitimate’. Then I went onto YouTube to check when it was last that Sonia Gandhi spoke extempore in public. I came upon many election speeches and a promotional video that told me ‘ten things’ about our leader that you may not know. She likes to keep her house clean and dusts her own room, ‘especially before important meetings’. She is an ‘excellent chef’. She loves Munshi Premchand and her favourite book is Godaan. She speaks nine languages, including French and German, and she loves handloom saris. While imbibing these riveting details about our leader’s personal life, I searched in vain for a spontaneous political statement. I did not find one. Even after 26/11, she read nervously from an autocue to express her outrage.

Sonia Gandhi is possibly the only political leader in the world who does not communicate regularly with the people who elected her to power. She does not even communicate with us hacks. She gives no interviews and never comments on the big issues of the day. We have allowed her to get away with this because some of us are too scared to say anything negative about so powerful a political leader and some of us have been seduced into silence by private audiences and privileged access. So we do not even ask questions about Madame’s health or her frequent trips abroad for treatment or who pays the bills. We fear her wrath even though we know that the health of political leaders is not usually allowed to remain shrouded in secrecy.

If Sonia’s aloofness were an individual quirk, it may not have caused much damage. But, in careful emulation of her, the Prime Minister has, in his second term, become almost as aloof and as for the man who could be India’s future prime minister, he is inaccessible except to a small coterie of friends and flunkeys. This has caused unease within the ranks of the Congress Party but nobody dares speak up.

How Congress chooses to conduct its affairs is its own business. But, the aloofness and silences of the country’s three most important leaders is very much our business because it has created an ominous situation. In the empty space where there should have been leaders, we have seen all manner of gatecrashers. Yoga gurus, rural activists, NGOs, judges, accountants to the government, retired Generals and Magsaysay award winners have leapt into policy making with the enthusiasm of novices and the naivety of fools. And, not even when they have made unsubstantiated charges from Jantar Mantar, Ramlila Maidan and television studios have we heard our three big leaders respond.

This is not the whole story either. There is the added problem of ministers behaving as if they were freelance and not accountable to anyone. When the former Finance Minister made decisions that caused harm to the economy and directly affected foreign investment, the Prime Minister did not speak up once. Why? When the former Power Minister dismissed the biggest power cut in human history as a minor glitch and praised his engineers for their speedy repair work, he behaved as if he was his own master. Not even accountable to the people.

Then on the day that 600 million Indians went without power, when he found himself promoted to the Home Ministry, he confessed that he was accountable only to Sonia Gandhi. Asked by television anchors why he thought he deserved to be promoted, he said with a sweet smile, ‘I have always been loyal to the Gandhi family.’

He spoke the truth. This government is led by Sonia Gandhi. No matter how much she tries to hide behind silences and high walls, it is becoming increasingly clear that she cannot escape responsibility for the things that have gone wrong. Almost everything has gone wrong both politically and economically and the general sense of nobody being in charge at the top is frightening.

Unsurprisingly, gloom has descended over the economy and before the year ends, things are likely to get so bad that unemployment could become a serious problem. So it is just as well that Sonia Gandhi has decided to become more active in Parliament and take responsibility for the ways in which her government works. When times were good, people were prepared to overlook the fact that she had placed herself in a position that gave her total power without any accountability. But, now that times are bad, people are in a less forgiving mood. Sonia needs to learn quickly that those who decide to enter public life do not have the option to remain silent.
 
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