National Herald, Indira Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi

As Sonia Gandhi said “I am Indiraji’s bahu and I’m scared of no one,” in reaction to Delhi high court summons to her and Rahul Gandhi, it is important to read between the words and lines.

What was the necessity to make a POLITICAL STATEMENT when the court case is not at all political in nature?

Well, that has been the strategy of none other than Indira Gandhi when she was implicated in 1977-1980 in many criminal cases by then Janata Party government. While, the then PM Morarji Desai knew that the long legal battle could have taken away all the energy from a 60 year old lady and that Indira Gandhi was contemplating to even retire from public life, Chaudhari Charan Singh did a political suicide. He arrested Indira Gandhi, caused hardships to her and suddenly the entire public sentiment turned against the government and for Indira Gandhi. She won the 1980 elections comprehensively. Sonia Gandhi remembers this and is HOPING and WAITING for Narendra Modi government to repeat the same mistakes committed by then Janata government. Therefore, it is no surprise on part of Sonia Gandhi or Rahul Gandhi having called this court case as a political vendetta. Both of them and the entire congress party have still not come to terms that they have lost the election in 2014. They still continue to live in 20^th Century which belongs to very few good works of Congress and mostly bad politics of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and then Rajiv Gandhi. Therefore, whenever they face a challenging situation, they can’t stop themselves from invoking Nehru, Gandhi’s. Rahul Gandhi is content in saying “meri dadi ko mara, mere papa ko mara”, somehow trying to pull out political mileage, which doesn’t stop even after a quarter of a century has passed after these sad incidents.

Sonia Gandhi has been the longest serving Congress president. She portrays herself to be an ideal “BAHU”, making her in-laws her shield and her family her sword. She expects each Congress member to worship her, her family, her in-laws and keeps on talking about the past, past, past, past….

This very attitude has prompted the culture of flaunting political connections by the smallest gully-neta when confronted by a smallest traffic police for smallest thing such as breaking the traffic signal. And this culture is hurting the nation the most today.

This attitude of Congress of publicly invoking family legacy when faced with a legal case raises the question: are legal summons an insult or disrespect to the grandeur of Sonia Gandhi’s family? A “how-dare-the court-summon-us” attitude is not particularly democratic. The attitude shows how Sonia and family wants themselves to be treated as privileged, above the law; sometimes even like kings and queens.

But this BAHU politics won’t work in the face of allegations of financial irregularities and malpractices. Sonia may try to compare herself with post 1977 Indira who dared the Janata government to arrest her and eventually used her small period of imprisonment to emerge as a martyred leader. There is hardly any comparison between 1977 and 2015. Most OTHER politicians such as Narendra Modi, Nitish Kumar, Arvind Kejriwal, Mamata, Devendra Fadnavis, etc… unlike Sonia and Rahul, pride themselves on their humble beginnings.

Subramanian Swamy’s case is not a political challenge requiring street fights and maximum histrionics. Instead, the sycophants around Sonia Gandhi should advise her and Rahul Gandhi to give a point-by-point rebuttal to the charges in court. The legal maze of the National Herald case can hardly be settled through invoking the political era of Indira Gandhi.

The NDA government on other hand is happy to see the Sonia-Rahul duo and Congress squirm under the spotlights provided by the National Herald scandal, where the needle of wrongdoing clearly points to them. However, the government is also facing another challenge in Rajya Sabha over key legislative reforms, the goods and services tax (GST) being the most important among them.aught in a scandal?TI

Therefore, instead of giving in to the pressurization tactics, the government would be better advised to call the Congress' bluff. It should under no circumstances help the Congress wriggle out of the National Herald scandal by directly or indirectly pressuring the investigating or prosecuting agencies to go slow. That would be a real subversion of the rule of law.

The government should give the Congress a simple and strong message to try their best to disrupt the development of the country and that the government is prepared to sacrifice the GST, and should launch a nationwide propaganda campaign to tell the world that the Congress is derailing Indian growth story to protect one family.

The rapid shift in the Congress stand from disruptions over the Herald case to Vyapam and Lalit Modi shows that the party is exposed. The NDA should thus drive home the advantage and allow the Congress to continue with its disruptions and tell the world day in day out that this is about deflecting attention from the Gandhi family's real estate blunder, not Vyapam, which is anyway being investigated by the CBI, and the courts are already monitoring it closely.

The chances are that Congress will give up first.

No. 1, the focus continues to remain on the Gandhi family's Herald blunder.

No. 2, disruptions continue to be seen by the public as evidence that Congress and the Gandhi family is indeed hiding something.

No. 3, Congress allies have already begun to wonder whether they have to be dragged along with Congress antics just to protect the Gandhi family or should they pay the price for just being their ally.

No. 4, the GST won’t be a big loss in the short term as there will only be problems and challenges in the first two years of implementation, causing discomfort in the trading community and mild hike in inflation. GST also will cause a reduction in state autonomy on finances once implemented. It will be impossible for states to give up GST once they are in. Sacrificing GST is therefore no big deal in the short term.

There are chances the non-Congress parties will be tired of the Congress' antics which, they know, is about saving the family. Any prolonged disruption can only benefit the BJP. With state elections due again in a few months' time, the regional parties cannot but be worried about playing the Congress game.

The government should, in the meanwhile, prepare to run the reform programme through simple budgetary actions such as merging excise and service tax and the other financial actions which can be simplified and made to look like reforms.

Legislation may suffer, but not for long. If the government is willing to withstand this winter of discontent, the Congress will return to the discussion table with its tail between the legs. Meanwhile, it should persistently try to divide the opposition and get them to discuss the Congress' tactics.

It is ridiculous to think and assume that the PMO has pushed the National Herald case against Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi to pressurize the party to support the GST Bill. It would be too innocent to think that Modi won’t be aware of the uproar by Congress members in Parliament following the summons. He in fact would have preferred the case not coming up now as it was always clear the Congress was looking for excuses to stall the parliament functioning. While Congress sensibly argued against the 1% inter-state levy in the GST Bill, they put forth other unreasonable demands like putting an 18% ceiling on the GST tax rate in the Bill itself. That was the best way of ensuring the GST Bill never went through.

Even as Modi showed huge amount of maturity and calmness during answering the debates on both constitution and intolerance, on the day of the meeting, Rahul was sarcastic to mention to the TV channels that government had called upon Congress leaders under pressure, and that the party’s strategy was not of consultation. He further continued his rhetoric when he said that the BJP was out to hurt the interests of farmers with the Land Bill and it was the Congress party that had ensured the Bill never went through even if country needs land for industrialization and urbanization, or that farmers would be better off if they were going to get 4 times the value of their property under the BJP’s Bill, unlike the land acquisition during Congress and other regimes at throwaway prices. And then, amazingly, Rahul Gandhi went on to say that the labour reforms proposed by the BJP were going to hurt labour and the Congress would do its best to stop them. Even if everyone knows the pro-labour policy of the last 68 years has ensured poor jobs growth and so-called anti-labour reforms would do more to generate jobs; Rahul thought he would be able to convince people of this country of the same rhetoric that failed in the elections 18 months ago.

The National Herald case first came up in 2013, when the Congress party was in power, so there was no question of the BJP leadership trying to come up with it to put pressure on the party to pass the GST Bill, or any other legislation for that matter. The allegations, first made by Niti Central, were straight-forward – that Congress leaders like Sonia and Rahul Gandhi had conspired to take over the National Herald, using the Congress party’s money, and that this was done with an eye to the property owned by the newspaper. Whether the allegations hold good or not, is for the courts to decide, and that is where the matter is. If all charges against politicians are to be settled out of court; which is what the Congress party’s strategy seems to be amounting to, it is a sad day for Indian democracy.

The control of the country's longest-serving party by one family has done the nation enormous damage and distorted all politics. TIME TO END IT and MAKE CONGRESS A GANDHI MUKT PARTY. The day, majority of Congress party members gather courage to voice this known fact, better days will begin for Congress party.