By Aakar Patel
In her silent way, Sonia Gandhi is changing India. The impact of her social legislation against poverty (NREGS), against corruption (Right to Information Act), and now against inequality (Women’s Bill) is epic. The impact might not be clear to us immediately, but that is because we are in the middle of her programme of change.
These laws reveal the scale of her ambition, and what she thinks her job as Congress president is. They also show she's not cynical, which is strange because she has lived in an Indian political house since the age of 24. She is convinced that big change can come to India democratically and through Parliament. She has picked that as her cause and these laws will be her legacy. That sets her apart from our other leaders, whose great acts have come not in Parliament but on the battlefield, like Advani and his Rath Yatra or Vajpayee and his atom bomb.
Her husband led Congress in the Lok Sabha with 404 seats. He was flamboyant, but it’s difficult for us to remember the things Rajiv Gandhi actually achieved. Sonia has half that number in MPs but she is armed with the sort of clarity about her agenda that no leader since Nehru has had.
With limited space to manoeuvre in Parliament, she has already delivered laws of the sort of quality and direct effectiveness that no government in India ever has. To know what else she is up to, have a look at the National Advisory Council (http://nac.nic.in/concept.htm) and the issues it has been working on since Manmohan Singh took office.
UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi speaks to media after the bill cleared the first hurdle on Tuesday
From urban renewal to protecting the jungle land of tribals and from digitising rural records to building village roads, what she’s urging government to take up is quite remarkable. And it is consistent. She has trusted the intellect of Manmohan to deliver on the economy, on foreign relations and on figuring out how to govern this unruly nation. Her interests lie in social causes, in the classical manner of the Congress.
This government has four years to go and it will be revealing to see what else she is able to push through.
We want a Bharat Ratna for Sachin (and he says he’s quite open to accepting it) for being superb at whacking balls about with his bat.
But the really bold strokes are being played by a 64-year-old widow whose passport now says she is Indian.
