Author: James Lamont
Publication: Financial Times
Date: September 12, 2011
URL: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/2c0a7254-dc4e-11e0-8654-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=rss#axzz1Xmagwtfc
The return of Sonia Gandhi to India came not
a moment too soon for the ailing party she leads and its political allies.
During her month-long absence, the Congress
party-led coalition government has stumbled from one crisis to the next. It
has looked at a loss without one of the most powerful women in the world,
and the torchbearer of India's most celebrated political dynasty.
Exactly why Mrs Gandhi, the 64-year-old widow
of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and president of the Congress party,
was away from her adopted homeland is a mystery. She travelled to the US for
emergency medical treatment, but what ails her remains a closely guarded secret.
The sickness in the heart of the Congress-led
government is far more plain to see. The past month has been a turbulent one
even by the standards of Indian politics as prime minister Manmohan Singh
struggles with growing corruption allegations.
Mr Singh has expended a lot of energy lately
fending off a growing anti-corruption movement, led by veteran Maharashtran
social activist Anna Hazare and supported by tens of thousands of young and
middle class people. The movement last month forced Mr Singh's cabinet to
bow to tougher anti-graft laws demanded by the street.
Had Mrs Gandhi been in good health and at
home, she may have avoided the crashing mistake of jailing Mr Hazare, a move
that secured the success of his popular hunger strike.
The tide of corruption scandals has not receded.
Lately, the spotlight has shifted onto the
civil aviation and oil ministries. Even without reading between the lines,
reports by the state auditor paint a picture of incompetence if not outright
looting.
These audits join investigations into a scam
in the telecoMrs sector that could have cost the government as much as $39bn,
the mismanagement of the Commonwealth Games and property deals by the military.
Even the civil nuclear deal between India
and the US, which brought Delhi's nuclear programme out of decades of international
isolation, looks wobbly. An investigation into bribing MPs in the vote that
opened the way for the agreement with Washington has led to the jailing of
a one-time Congress ally, Amar Singh.
Those closest to Mrs Gandhi have failed to
step into the breach in her absence.
Faced with Mr Hazare's movement, Rahul Gandhi,
Mrs Gandhi's 41-year-old son, made a ham-fisted intervention.
Worse, he was booed by angry relatives when
he turned up ill-advisedly alongside a host of other politicians at a hospital
treating the victims of last week's terror attack on the Delhi High Court.
Those Mrs Gandhi has appointed to influential
positions have not shown natural authority. Meera Kumar, the regal parliamentary
speaker, has ineffectively presided over a bitterly divided parliament. The
president, Pratibha Patil, devotes a great deal more time to handing out awards
to schoolchildren than to enforcing the stature of the state.
Such is the disarray that even L.K. Advani,
the 83-year-old veteran leader of the opposition Bharatiya Janata party, scents
that the government may not last the distance until the 2014 parliamentary
elections.
Now, if ever, is the time for Mrs Gandhi to
speak up to reassure India's 1.2bn people. Mrs Gandhi is credited with rejuvenating
the Congress party to make it the people's choice in 2004 elections. She needs
to do it again to cleanse a tarnished political brand.
If she doesn't, the balance of Indian politics
will continue to slide away from Delhi to regional leaders, free of political
dynasty and winning plaudits for purposeful delivery like Bihar's Nitish Kumar,
West Bengal's Mamata Banerjee and Gujarat's controversial Narendra Modi.
Mrs Gandhi's style is to rule by silence.
This has worked for her, and the coterie of advisers around her to this point.
Most interpret the silence as sagacity, dignity and power, even valiant stoicism.
But a culture of silence and secrecy at the
heart of democracy is corrosive. A rising nation seeks greater transparency,
greater honesty. Failure now to speak clearly and rule openly will deepen
suspicion that her political dexterity is implied rather than real, and widen
a risky credibility gap.
It will also feed fears that she may be too
ill to govern at the moment when her leadership is most needed.
