Congress: Ten Years under Sonia

By Mahendra Ved

On the afternoon of March 14, 1998, I witnessed a symbolic changing of the guard. Within minutes of the Congress Party working committee passing a resolution electing Sonia Gandhi as president, two workers were using hammer and chisel to remove her predecessor's nameplate and affix hers. Not having a camera, I watched with frustration the golden opportunity to record a historic event slip by. In 10 years, Sonia's sharp European features have given way to a certain fleshiness. The tightly pulled-back hair has many grey streaks. At 62, she looks the grandmother that she is. But a prim, well turned-out grandmother. She reads her speeches with greater facility now, albeit with a European accent. More importantly, the very private person who once hated politics and politicians now enjoys popular adulation.Indira Gandhi, her mother-in-law, had a benign direct gaze. Sonia reserves this only when she meets faceless crowds. At conferences and meetings with known people, her look is distant.

Besides heading the Congress, the longest tenure in the 122-year-old party, she served as leader of the opposition for six years and the last four as the chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance. These make her the most powerful Indian. Globally, her ranking has changed from third to sixth by Forbes' Fortune magazine. Her rapid rise highlights two interesting aspects of Indian politics.

Where Hindus account for 85 per cent of the population, voters have not hesitated to embrace a Roman Catholic. A decade in public life has put to rest the controversy about her being a "foreigner". Although she is the eighth foreigner to head the Congress, her quick rise illustrates the party's weakness and indeed the Indian political system. As political scientists like Samuel Huntington have written, in mature political systems, the path to the top often takes decades during which the leader gains experience in lesser positions. Sonia parachuted into Indian public life. She has almost no experience in governance. This raises questions of how effective she can be as head of the ruling party of a complex nation with its castes and religions and multitude of problems.

She has displayed a lack of either vision or foresight, and is no political strategist. She took long to realise that she cannot do business without aligning with others who can be pitted against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the "Hindutva" forces. The "foreigner" tag, it seems, has made her cautious. She has been a good political manager, though, who has kept a dialogue going with the allies while all but ignoring the BJP. Wary of the communists, she, however, does not hesitate to consult them. Her closest adviser, who rarely meets her publicly but talks to her on the phone, is Jyoti Basu, the Marxist patriarch. He is "uncle" to her, insiders say. Basu, on his part, has kept great discretion while maintaining ties that go back to his close friendship with Firoze and Indira Gandhi as students in Britain in the early 1940s. It turns out, too, that many of the government's pro-poor policies and programmes are based on input from Basu and A.B. Bardhan. This bypasses all the criticism, threats and warnings that the communists frequently issue.

About Congress affairs, no one knows who Sonia's advisers are. Some credit her decision-making to son Rahul. She does consult partymen. But it is well nigh impossible to determine whose advice prevails on any given issue. Under her, the government has been de-politicised, but the Congress has become "governmentalised". Corruption and nepotism prevail. The economy is looking up as never before. But many targets have not been achieved. Sonia has not been able to shake off the charge of shielding Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocci in the Bofors gun deal.

To be fair to her, she pays due respect to the post of the prime minister and to Manmohan Singh, who is 13 years her senior, and has maintained a graceful distance from the Government. Not known to be meddling in its day-to-day running, she is not into postings and appointments.

In the decade she has led the Congress, the party has not really turned around. Sonia is no vote-getter, something her peers were. She has lost eight states, recording the lowest-ever tally in three of them. More losses are likely this year. She has failed to rejuvenate the party, a task admittedly difficult for anyone. Rahul, as his late father Rajiv used to do, decries "power-brokers" and "middlemen". Obviously, this trend has accelerated in the last two decades.

The Congress victory in the 2004 election was a political accident. It scored only 20 seats more than the BJP. But it consolidated power by smart alignments, both before and after the polls, arranged almost single-handedly by Sonia. She then sprang a surprise by refusing to head the government. She attributed it to her "inner voice" and fended off huge pressure. It was renunciation, and in India nothing works better than this. It was an extraordinary opportunity for the Congress that, four years later, has been frittered away. The most symbolic of failures is one of an antidote to Narendra Modi in Gujarat that saw communal carnage in 2002. Today, L.K. Advani, BJP's prime minister-in-waiting, has all but anointed Modi as his successor.

The new charge against Sonia and Congress is one of promoting Rahul. If Rahul keeps quiet, he is condemned as a political failure. Now that he is vocal, the "dynasty" card is played by the BJP. Others will soon join in. Polls are near-certain for November. The slowdown in the government's momentum will not help it going into 2009. P. Chidambaram's please-all budget is Sonia's best bet. She can hope for a bountiful monsoon to advance the elections. The bigger question is, can she convert her US$30 billion (RM100 billion) rural employment guarantee schemes to political advantage? These polls will be Sonia's toughest test.

The rumpus over the dowry death law

By Aditi Singh

A happy married life for daughters is a dream for all parents for which they are forced to pay dowry. If grooms' party is not satisfied the young bride is burnt to death. Every day sees at least 18 dowry deaths in the country. Nevertheless, this case is of immense importance as it highlights the fact that the existing law on dowry death-Section 304-B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC)-needs amendment.

According to Section 304-B, a death can be categorised as a "dowry death" and a woman's husband and in-laws deemed to have caused her death only if certain conditions are met. First, if the death of a woman is caused by any burns or bodily injury or occurs unnaturally. Secondly, if the death occurs within seven years of her marriage. Thirdly, the woman is subjected to cruelty or harassment by her husband or in-laws just before her death. And fourthly, cruelty or harassment has been for, or in connection with, any demand for dowry. The section further states that the offence is a non-bailable one and that the guilty would get not less than seven years of rigorous imprisonment, which could be extended to life imprisonment or death penalty, depending on the nature of the case.

Noting the brutality of Urmila's murder, Allahabad High Court judge M. Katju J. sent a copy of his statement along with the case details to the Law Minister and the Home Minister of India, seeking an amendment to the law. He said in his forwarding letter, "In my opinion dowry death is worse than murder but surprisingly there is no death penalty for it whereas death penalty can be given for murder. In my opinion the time has come to amend the law and death sentences should also be permitted in cases of dowry deaths." The National Commission for Women (NCW), too, backed this demand. Following this, in 2003, the Law Commission of India was assigned the task of drafting a recommendation to initiate an amendment.

The commission had two options before it. First, to examine the subject of dowry death and frame new laws related to it. Second, to confine its consideration only to the point that was referred to it-the amendment of Section 304-B of the IPC.

"We chose the second as the issue was of making death penalty compulsory. Had we chosen the first, the issue would have lost its importance," explains D.P. Sharma, member secretary, Law Commission of India, New Delhi. The Commission finally concluded that Section 304-B of the IPC didn't need to be amended. However, it raised the tenure of punishment from seven to 10-years of rigorous imprisonment. This judgement has left the legal fraternity divided and sparked off a debate.

"Section 304-B was created to deal with cases where a bride met an unnatural death within seven years of marriage. It's an exhaustive section taking all details into account and offers apt punishment, with proper consideration being given to the facts available," says Sharma. However, if a case of dowry death falls in the ambit of murder, the death penalty is legally permissible, as per the guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court, he explains.

Delhi High Court advocate Ramesh Handa is of the same opinion. "If the Law Commission says no to the amendment, it must have valid reasons for saying so. The existing section (304-B) is good enough to tackle the menace and requires no amendment," he says.

Asha Gaurisaria, advocate, Calcutta High Court, also seems content with the report. She says, "I am relieved that no amendment has been made to Section 304-B of the IPC." However, she didn't seem to be pleased with the report in totality. "The tenure of punishment shouldn't have been raised. We shouldn't forget the fact that these laws are often misused to harass in-laws," she complained. But has Section 304-B of the IPC ever been misused?

The Law Commission has also been criticised for its conclusion. Some prosecutors seem a bit ruffled by it. Section 304-B of the IPC is a comprehensive law and many would say that it need not be amended. But many prosecutors would have definitely liked it had the punishment been extended to life imprisonment.

If the death penalty or life imprisonment is the punishment for murder cases, why not the same for a dowry death? How can a person get away with only 10-years of punishment for a dowry death?

But people like Gaurisaria beg to differ. "Section 304-B is a dangerous law, because one doesn't need to prove one's crime. It's presumed that the accused is guilty. So if an innocent is framed, any extension of imprisonment would mean more injustice," she argues.

A number of laws like the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961 (often touted as toothless) and Section 113-A and Section 113-B in the Evidence Act exist to tackle the problem of dowry. But none of them is good enough. For proof, look at National Crimes Record Bureau (NCRB) statistics. According to the NCRB's annual report, there were 6,787 dowry death cases in 2005, a number large enough to make any civilised society hang its head in shame. Bihar and Madhya Pradesh topped the list, the State Crimes Record Bureau.

One needs to remember that these crimes are generally committed in the privacy of residential homes. So getting independent or direct evidence is not an easy task. Often this lack of evidence is used by the defence to bail out the accused with less punishment. Don't you think that the lack of any direct link between the husband and the woman's death indicates that the act is a more planned and calculated one? Even the motive is clear-demand for dowry. So why not a more rigorous punishment?

Only stringent implementation of the existing laws can restrain people from committing such crimes. There are parents who seek financial compensation to withdraw a case, but for the sake of those seeking justice punishment needs to be increased to a life sentence.

Whatever the debate may be-in favour or against the decision of the commission-perhaps it's only fair that the state shouldn't be entrusted with taking the life of an accused, though the law of the land approves of it in certain cases. Nevertheless, those found guilty need to be punished in such a way that others learn a lesson and are forced to think a thousand times before striking a matchstick to set ablaze young, innocent married women. INAV