8th Anniversary Essay 1

Sonia Gandhi’s winning strategy by Rajiv Desai”Freedom‚s just another word for nothing left to lose,” sang Janis Joplin in the 1960s. Faced with party factionalism in 1969, Indira Gandhi bought into that sentiment: she split the Congress Party and jettisoned the syndicate of regional satraps and sold the Indian electorate a radical Left ideology. She won that encounter and went on to win a convincing majority in the 1971 election.Sonia Gandhi, who holds her mother-in-law as a model, is confronted with a similar situation. As head of the ruling UPA coalition supported by the Left Front, she has to decide whether her party will be bullied by the Left or strike out on its own. Opinion polls show that if an election were held today, the Congress would win a few more seats, but a call to the hustings would produce another hung Parliament. In my view, the pollsters are probably wrong. Congress would win enough seats to form a government without Left support. Because the commissars of the Left have been shown up as furthering the China-Pakistan agenda and the BJP has lost whatever little credibility it had.It is widely believed that Indira Gandhi won the 1971 election because her party took a sharp Left turn, nationalising ‚Ëœcore industries‚ like banking, steel, insurance and generally steering hard left. For two years, 1969-1971, she ran the government with support from various socialist groups and by pushing a Left agenda. However, the main reason for her triumph was the Treaty of Friendship and Mutual Co-operation with the Soviet Union. Since the late 1960s, when the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) was negotiated, India‚s major foreign policy goal has been to challenge the discriminatory regime that was formed with a view to freezing membership of the nuclear ‚Ëœhaves‚ club. In 1974, when Indira Gandhi‚s government conducted an underground nuclear test in Rajasthan, it announced to the world its opposition to NPT while simultaneously signalling the country‚s acquisition of indigenous nuclear capability. The test provoked hostile reactions worldwide and led to the formation of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to monitor global nuclear trade, with the particular objective of reining in the Indian programme.That was more than three decades ago. Today India is faced with a different choice. The world is at its doorstep, with capital and technology. But there are constraints. India is not a signatory to NPT, plus it has conducted nuclear tests in 1974 and 1998. Meanwhile, in 1991, the NSG expanded its ambit to include such technology and equipment that could be construed as ‚Ëœdual‚, for civilian or military use. After huffing and puffing about the discriminatory international nuclear regime for nearly 40 years, New Delhi has triumphed. The Indo-US accord on civilian nuclear cooperation represents a milestone foreign policy achievement. In one fell swoop, the accord lifts the restrictions on nuclear trade and dual-use technology; it makes place for India at the global table as a responsible nuclear power and positions it a step away from full-fledged membership of…