Roadshow Congress's tested war-time strategy, Rahul Gandhi's challenge

NEW DELHI: In Sonia Gandhi's 17-year stint as Congress president, there has been one trusted war-time strategy the party brass has deployed during political distress: Gandhi hits the streets to firm up a political plank and to mobilise like-minded parties. When she led the Congress leaders' march on Tuesday from Parliament House to Rashtrapati Bhavan to protest against the 'growing intolerance', it was her latest such outing. While the march launched the party's latest national plank, its potential would depend a great deal on the outcome of the Bihar polls.

This was Gandhi's third 'roadshow' since the Modi regime took charge. On March 12, she led a march of top Congress leaders to ex-PM Manmohan Singh's residence to express solidarity with him after he was summoned as an accused in a coal scam case. That march was designed to project the Congress brass as victims of a 'vindictive NDA regime.' Five day's later, Gandhi rallied 14 Opposition parties to march to Rashtrapati Bhavan to oppose the NDA's land acquisition bill, triggering a stand-off inside and outside Parliament that culminated in the Centre giving up the bill. That antiland bill protest provided Congress V-P Rahul Gandhi an opening for a national tour and try an image makeover after his sabbatical fiasco.

Tuesday's march showcased the larger unity of Congress leaders, something the high command, especially Rahul, badly needs to quell in-house rumblings.

"Some organisations and people associated with the government or a part of Modiji's government are trying to attack the plurality of the country and promoting intolerance… The President had expressed his opinion, but the PM is silent which clearly shows he approves of such incidents," Sonia said. A victory for the Grand Alliance in Bihar, the Congress calculates, could help it work on the plank to unite many Opposition parties against the NDA. A setback could scuttle the plot.

When Congress was in the margins from 1998-2004, during the Vajpayee regime, Sonia carried out three street shows, one for the 'tea party' with Jayalalithaa, that ended in disaster while trying to prop up an alternative regime. The other two were between 2001-04 in states over agrarian distress and drought. Those trips helped Gandhi transform from a 'videshi bahu' to 'Soniamma'.

This was followed by her pre-2004 LS poll visits to houses of Ram Vilas Paswan, HKS Surjeet, Sharad Pawar, Lalu Prasad, CPI headquarters, etc to stitch up the UPA. Incidentally, a major challenge for party's president-in-waiting, Rahul Gandhi, is to acquire his mother's cultivated skills in choreographed political bridge-buildings.