Out with your inner voice

Both the Prime Minister and the Congress President need to step out of the cordon thrown around them by their minders and mediators. And most of all, we?d like to know those who govern us, better, writes Barkha Dutt.

We do not need a statistical survey to tell us the mood of the nation. These are depressing times.

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We may have joined the grandmasters of the globe and bagged a seat at the high table of international power, but within the country there’s a sharp sense of drift.

It isn’t just because terrorism has grown roots in our backyard or because our Pakistan policy has collapsed into confusion and contradiction.

If we feel we have lost our way it is because we aren’t sure that the government and the Congress are walking in step anymore.

Yes, yes, insiders will issue angry denials and tell us that this is a media myth. Those who know the Prime Minister and the Congress President will tell us how famously they get along, and how neatly compartmentalised the power-sharing agreement is. These loyalists will argue that any hurdles in decision-making are mere by-products of coalition politics.

And perhaps this is true. So why suddenly do such few people believe it?

The answer may lie in the silence of Sonia Gandhi.

And the loud, but ambiguous explanations dished out by those who claim to know her mind.

Add to this a couple of geriatric Cabinet ministers who still haven’t forgiven Manmohan Singh for becoming Prime Minister, and what do you have? An overgrown garden of rumours, with no one to pluck out the weeds.

In the last six months, every political controversy has pretty much followed the same script. The Prime Minister gets upset and disheartened, or so we are told; the party puts its own spin on events in the form of whispered leaks and urgent phone calls to journalists; and Sonia Gandhi maintains an inexplicable silence, believing perhaps, that the confusion shall pass.

And ordinary people are left with the impression that their leaders are not leading, that neither the Prime Minister nor Ms Gandhi is asserting enough authority. Even worse, we have no access to what they really think, apart from speculative gossip in the media.

It doesn’t say much for political management that the two decisions that created the loudest rumbles within, were both cleared by the cabinet -- the fuel hike and the decision to divest Neyveli Lignite Corporation.

Take the fuel hike first. The party still insists that the government overstepped the amount that had been agreed on politically. Maybe so.

But didn’t the public protests by the Congress only end up weakening the image of its own government? Those in the know insist that the ministers involved were more than ready to roll back the hike; that it was Sonia Gandhi, in fact, who decided that reneging on the hike at this time would make the Prime Minister look terrible.

But in those 48 hours, there was not a single statement from 10 Janpath. Instead, the party and the government contradicted each other in public, only reaffirming the cliché of a beleaguered Prime Minister. And Sonia Gandhi’s silence unwittingly underlined that impression, because it left the space wide open for rumours to swirl up and swallow the truth.

The silence has been a Gandhi trademark for years. It isn’t deliberate, say her friends and advisors; she is simply shy and private. At one point, I suspect, this silence even bestowed the Gandhi family with an accidental air of enigma; India’s first family seemed so unknowable, they became mysterious and fascinating, and left us hungering for more.

But the times have changed. Sonia Gandhi almost became Prime Minister; she is seen to be a key architect of India’s future; and now that she is perceived to be the last word on policy, the people of India will demand to know what she thinks, and will want to hear her speak.

Instead, even now, it’s so rare that it causes ripples of anticipation each time Ms Gandhi makes a mere statement in public. Why should that be the case in the world’s largest democracy, especially when it comes to the leader of the country’s biggest political party?

The blanket of privacy that Sonia Gandhi has wrapped so tightly around herself will simply have to be shrugged off. Both in the interests of accountability and to avert the political distortions that silences inevitably create.

It may well be that the Congress President and the Prime Minister have no clash of either personality or philosophy. But ordinary Indians need reaffirmation of that, both in speech and action. Instead, there’s resounding silence at one end and constant rumours of impending resignation at the other. Two weeks ago, when all divestment projects had to be put on hold, the Prime Minister’s office had to jump in to say, yes, Dr Singh was angry, but no, he was not quitting.

Anger can actually be a pretty good ingredient for effective leadership. I think, many of us may want to see an angrier Prime Minister, and an angrier Congress President, just so long as they are worked up over the same things.

Why for example, does neither of them cleanse the Cabinet of politically irrelevant old-timers who are still stuck in a time-warp? The Minister for Human Resources pulled the quota rabbit out of his magic hat, and left the Prime Minister and the party to defend a policy they privately disagreed with. The Minister for Minority Affairs suggested that the Bombay blasts might have been the work of Hindu groups on a day when the government had squarely blamed Pakistan. The DMK was able to dictate terms on divestment, even though one of its own ministers was present at the Cabinet meeting that gave the go-ahead on Neyveli. And, of course, this is still a government in search of a Foreign Minister.

The tragedy of Bombay has left most of us brittle and impatient. Never before has it been as imperative for us to believe that the government, in whose hands we have placed our lives, is both strong and united.

And most of all, we’d like to know those who govern us, better. You may hate George Bush and Tony Blair’s policies, but there’s no doubt that the world’s most powerful leaders are more accessible to their people than ours are.

So perhaps both the Prime Minister and the Congress President need to step out of the cordon thrown around them by their minders and mediators.

And remember, the sound of silence is sometimes the noisiest.

The writer is Managing Editor, NDTV 24x7 barkha@ndtv.com