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Sonia Gandhi s transformation from an unsure Congress party president to the unchallenged political chief of the ruling United Progressive Alliance government happened with some speed in the aftermath of the Congress-led coalition s surprise victory in the 2004 general election. Her renunciation of the prime minister s post enhanced her moral stature in the public eye, but it is her skilled handling of the equation with the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, that indicates the emergence of a self-confident politician, secure in her position at the helm of national affairs. In this fully revised and updated biography, Rasheed Kidwai tracks the evolution of the new Sonia Gandhi against the backdrop of the Congress party s return to power after years in the Opposition. The last five years have witnessed the Congress president s growing assurance in her dealings with party stalwarts, with coalition partners and Opposition leaders. Drawing on his long experience as a political journalist, Kidwai chronicles how Rahul Gandhi s smooth passage into the front rank of the party s leadership was achieved and gives a vivid account of how Sonia Gandhi navigated such critical moments as the office of profit crisis, the presidential election, the Indo-US nuclear deal and the vote of confidence. In Sonia, A Biography, Rasheed Kidwai tells the extraordinary story of one of India s most enigmatic women, whose journey from the small Italian town of Orbassano to 10 Janpath, New Delhi, is one of the most fascinating in contemporary India.

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Lettres et linguistique

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Publié par	Penguin Books Ltd
Date de parution	06 mai 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9788184752496
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0450€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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RASHEED KIDWAI
Sonia
A Biography
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Preface
Prologue
1. A Long Journey from Orbassano
2. A Tale of Two Bahus
3. The Prime Minister s Wife
4. A Tug of War
5. Educating Sonia
6. Sonia Takes Over the Congress
7. The Rebels
8. General Elections 2004: The Emergence of Gandhi Sonia
9. A Tightrope Walk: The Party, the Government and the UPA
10. Enter Rahul Gandhi
11. The Office of Profit Controversy
12. The Presidential Polls
13. A Tale of Friendship
14. Sonia s Handling of the Congress Organization, 1998-2008
Illustrations
References
Copyright Page
PENGUIN BOOKS
SONIA: A BIOGRAPHY
Rasheed Kidwai, forty-three, is Associate Editor of the Telegraph , Calcutta. He graduated from St. Stephen s College, New Delhi, and holds a master s degree in mass communication from UK s Leicester University where he went on a Commonwealth India scholarship. Kidwai is a regular political commentator on various television networks, radio programmes and newspapers. He is a guest lecturer at several journalism schools, universities and media organizations.
For
my wife Farah
Preface
The first edition of Sonia: A Biography was released in December 2003 just days after the Congress crushing defeat in the party-ruled states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. The period had marked an all-time high for the then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA). Buoyed by the electoral success, Vajpayee had called for early general elections in April-May 2004.
The outcome of the general elections, however, surprised everyone. The Congress-led alliance emerged as a winner and Sonia Gandhi was suddenly at the centre of every power equation.
In 2009, the opposition closed ranks, spent colossal amounts in projecting veteran L.K. Advani as a prime ministerial candidate, questioned Dr Manmohan Singh s integrity in the context of the Indo-US civil and defence nuclear deal. Throughout the election campaign, the N-deal was portrayed as India succumbing to US pressure and compromising the national interest, but the electorate reposed its faith in the Sonia-Manmohan combine. The 200-plus Lok Sabha seats verdict in favour of a Congress-led coalition gave rise to the speculation that Sonia would project son Rahul Gandhi as future prime minister. However, during 2004-10 Rahul continued to deny that his sole purpose in politics was to become prime minister. The Congress general secretary carried out his stated aim of learning politics brick by brick . This period also saw Sonia confronting many battles, ranging from the issue of corruption to a decline of the party organization.
Here is my modest attempt to piece together some of the most extraordinary and dramatic events in Indian politics in the last decade. As an independent and unauthorized biography, this work attempts to offer a perspective on events till December 2010 and seeks to examine Sonia s new role.
I take this opportunity to once again express my deep sense of gratitude to numerous Congress party members who continue to provide insight into the finer aspects of Sonia s personality, her style of functioning and Congress party politics. I am also grateful to leaders of other political parties, academicians, intellectuals, opinion-makers and bureaucrats who went out of their way to help me.
No words can express my gratitude to Aveek Sarkar, my editor and guide. Manini Chatterjee, Deepayan Chatterjee and R. Rajagopal offered valuable help and patronage which gave me time to finish this book along with my journalistic assignments. I am also thankful to Bharat Bhushan, Sankarshan Thakur, Devdan Mitra, Rakesh Joshi, Shubhabrata Bhattacharya, Radhika Ramaseshan and Prakash Patra for their help.
Among friends I wish to particularly thank Nirmal Pathak, Swaraj Thapa, Priya Sahgal, Hartosh Singh Bal, Sheela Bhatt, Askari Zaidi, Sunetra Chowdhary, Rama Laxmi, Bhavdeep Kang, Shikha Parihar, Richa Sharma, Naghma, S.A.H. Rizvi, Avinash Dutt and Farhan Ansari for their useful tips.
To my wife, Dr Farah Kidwai, who has always been a source of inspiration and support, I express my thanks. I must also mention A.A. Kidwai, Dr Aziz Ansari, Ajum Ansari, Dr A.R. Kidwai, Sarah bhabhi and Saima, to whom I am deeply grateful.
A special thanks to Saad-Ghazia, Shahab-Sadia, Saif-Farha, Shams, Umar, Umair, Ayesha, Samad, Suboor, Falah, Abaan, Shad and Safia for keeping me laughing.
Finally thank you Penguin Books, my editor Ranjana Sengupta, and Debasri Rakshit for her meticulous editing, and Prita, Meru and Shantanu for all the encouragement.
Rasheed Kidwai
New Delhi July 2008
Prologue
The original Mrs Gandhi-Indira-had delivered a second successive election victory for the Congress in 1971 but before that she had to win a war. The reigning Mrs Gandhi-Sonia-has also led the Congress to a consecutive poll success but hasn t had to go so far as to fight an external war, though there have been many domestic battles.
On this count, both Indira and Sonia have won elections back to back. Indira never won a third one running.
Given the culture of worship in the Congress, no one would openly weigh Field Marshal Sonia against Indira but comparisons are inevitable if only because they share the name. And if only because they re both women leading the country s oldest party in circumstances very different but also similar in that each has had to skipper the ship in stormy waters.
Sonia considers Indira to be her role model with whom comparisons are by definition not possible. But her style is also sharply different from that of the late prime minister who was not known to be democratic in the way she ran the party.
Since 1998, when she was a reluctant entrant into politics, Sonia has been anything but a control freak, a term often used for the Congress high command under her mother-in-law. With the exception of J.B. Patnaik in Orissa and Vilasrao Deshmukh/Ashok Chavan in Maharashtra, Congress chief ministers have seldom been shunted out by Sonia.
Even her core team, consisting of Ahmed Patel, Oscar Fernandes, Janardhan Dwivedi, Digvijay Singh and others, has remained intact with minor fluctuations. Unlike in Indira s days, the team of advisers has not grown into a cabal at whose feet the party and the nation have to worship.
Sonia s respect for regional leaders like Sheila Dikshit, Bhoopinder Singh Hooda, Ashok Gehlot and other chief ministers has resulted in the Congress consolidating its gains in Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan and other states.
Some Congress leaders find Sonia s task of reviving the party more daunting than in the Indira era when there were no powerful regional parties to battle, nor any compulsions of coalition politics.
For most part of her tenure, Indira s Congress had a strong social base of Brahmins, Dalits and minorities and her standing among the scheduled tribes was unchallenged. Once she had established her authority after the Congress split, Indira didn t have to worry about winning elections until she lost her head and declared Emergency.
Sonia, on the contrary, had everything going against her when she took charge with the BJP growing in power. Congress leaders refer to Sonia s own 1998 remark that she was not Jawaharlal Nehru s daughter to illustrate the difficulties she had to face till 2004 when she led the party to power. She had made that statement when Sharad Pawar, P.A. Sangma and Tariq Anwar had raised the issue of her foreign origin.
When power was waiting at the door of 10, Janpath, she made Manmohan Singh the prime minister, a step which might not have been expected of Indira who in her time did not allow what she considered parallel centres of power to develop. Since then, Sonia has tried to stay in the background while Singh ran the country amid loud whispers of conflict that never developed into anything serious.
Having won another election in 2009 with such flourish, there were many in the Congress who thought that under Sonia and Rahul, the party would rediscover its national character by stamping its presence again in Uttar Pradesh and taking its tally beyond 200 Lok Sabha seats. Twelve years ago, when Sonia took the helm, the doubt was if it would push past half that number.
Sonia has done many things differently from her larger-than-life role model. But, since numbers are what decide polls, the winner of Mrs G vs Mrs G can be called with certainty only in 2014 if Sonia delivers a 3-2 score by winning three consecutive elections.
Between 2004 and 2010 the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), which had come into being hurriedly and under extraordinary circumstances following Sonia s act of renunciation, functioned well under Manmohan but the coalition faced innumerable challenges from within and outside. In the larger context, it worked more like a bureaucratic machine than a political conglomerate. There were many lacklustre performances in some of the key portfolios, while ministers frequently differed with each other, sidelined their juniors and cared little for a sense of accountability-a basic feature of parliamentary democracy.
On 30 September 2010 when the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court delivered its landmark judgment on the vexed Babri Masjid/Ramjanmabhoomi dispute, both Sonia and Manmohan dithered instead of assuming a proactive role to pave the way for the construction of a temple and a mosque as suggested by the judges. The Congress s lack of enthusiasm in acting as peacemaker showed Sonia s own assessment of the Ayodhya dispute as the Congress s Achilles heel. India s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was quickly dragged into the Ayodhya imbroglio in December 1949 when idols were surreptitiously placed inside the sixteenth century Babri mosque.
Nehru had asked the then Uttar Pradesh chief secretary, Bhagwan Sahay to restore status quo. But the then deputy commissioner of Faizabad, K.K. Nayar