Column

There are few Congress takers for Sonia Gandhi’s combative call to take Mayawati head on. She may be ready to go to jail, but others in her party are not. They are limousine politicians who have become so unused to agitational politics after decades of living the good life that the UP top brass couldn’t hide its dismay when Gandhi announced that the state unit would lead the charge against Mayawati’s arbitrary cancellation of land for a railways ministry project in Rae Bareli.

An eyewitness was amused to note the consternation on the faces of Rita Bahuguna, Pramod Tiwari et al, who obviously don’t see themselves spending a night in jail or sweating it out in a long march from Rae Bareli to Lucknow. The irony is that the people of Rae Bareli know it too. The same eyewitness said he heard someone in the crowd cackle with derisive laughter and shout out to Gandhi, “What agitation will these people lead? They’ve all sold out.’’

It couldn’t have been a pleasant experience for Gandhi to hit a Mayawati air pocket. But those who know the tough-talking hard-as-nails Dalit leader were expecting her to strike after Gandhi’s rally in Dadri, next door to Mayawati’s ancestral village of Badalpur. It’s not quite clear whether it was a calibrated strategy by the Congress to send Gandhi in to beard the lioness in her den or whether it was one of those off-the-cuff Jhajjar-type errors. (Remember that famous speech in a Haryana village at the height of the Left-Congress nuclear face-off, when Gandhi’s ill-timed attack on her Marxist allies was attributed to a bad speechwriter?) At Dadri, Gandhi, for the first time, opened fire at Mayawati and criticised her government’s land acquisition policy. “In UP, the state is acquiring land in improper ways. There is corruption,’’ she alleged. Gandhi’s speechwriter, whoever it is, almost invariably ends up underestimating the enemy. The Jhajjar speech almost had the Left withdrawing support to the government before the Congress was ready. The maut ka saudagar speech is widely regarded as the turning point for Modi in last year’s battle for Gujarat. Now, the Dadri speech has given Mayawati an opportunity to pit herself against Gandhi directly and raise her own profile. The derailing of the coach factory project may not have gone down well with those who put development on a pedestal. But for the BSP’s Dalit voters who feed on symbolism, it’s yet another sign that their icon has arrived.

TAILPIECE

Finance minister P Chidambaram is in a deep sulk. He’s just lost the prestigious race to head the IMF’s policy steering group, the International Monetary and Financial Committee. It’s whispered in party circles that it was industry minister Kamal Nath who sabotaged Chidambaram’s bid with quiet lobbying among powerful international friends.
The two have been at loggerheads for a long time over various issues, including SEZs.
Chidambaram was pipped to the post by Egypt’s finance minister Youssef Boutros-Ghali, who is the first representative from a developing country to chair this body. It was a bitter defeat because last year too, Chidambaram tried but lost to the then finance minister of Italy. That was attributed to the power politics of the developed world. This year, his loss is being blamed on the power politics of the Congress party. The previous chairman, Gordon Brown, raised the profile of the post when he went on to become the prime minister of the UK. Maybe Chidambaram was hoping to follow the same route.

Email: a_jerath@dnaindia.net