POWER POINT: Sonia impressed on her 14 chief ministers the need to ensure social harmony and law and order in order to win the trust of the masses

After independence, the Congress has faithfully adopted the ideals of its Gandhi-Nehru leader as a political manifesto. Jawaharlal Nehru made the mushrooming state enterprises-"the temples of modern India"-his party's mascot. Indira Gandhi led the Congress to victory on the Garibi hatao slogan. Rajiv Gandhi started his only term as prime minister with a call for change. Sonia Gandhi too understands the bellwether role of her family in the party, and is preparing ground to position the Congress for the next general elections, be it in 2004 as scheduled or earlier.

When Sonia took over as the Congress president in 1998, the party had not only gone downhill electorally but was suffering from a serious identity crisis. In the successive general elections of 1998 and 1999, Sonia was too new at the job to be able to change the party's fortunes. Her time has now come.

It was Sonia's hunt for a decisive strategy that marked the conclave of 14 Congress chief ministers last week in Guwahati. Four years ago, at a congregation of Congress leaders at the Madhya Pradesh hill station of Pachmarhi, the political outlook was not so promising. The Congress was out of power at the Centre and in most states. The Guwahati meeting, on the other hand, had an upbeat tone: the 14 chief ministers implied a revival of the Congress across the country and demonstrated that the party could offer a new pool of administrative talent.

During the two-day conclave at the Brahmaputra Ashok hotel, the television screen crackled with news of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's offer to resign, and its subsequent "rejection" by the National Executive of the BJP. Amid all this, Sonia hardly shifted her focus from the conclave's chief agenda, that of positioning the party for the next Lok Sabha elections. If there was an underlying purpose for Sonia to sit through hours of PowerPoint presentations by the chief ministers in the conference hall, it was to distill out of their experiences a way of redefining the Congress. As AICC spokesman S. Jaipal Reddy pointed out, "With nearly 40 per cent of the country's population now under state-level Congress rule, it is time for the party to say what it wants to project as its central national agenda."

The agenda, it seems, is good governance. While the party has dug its heels in the "secular" space, the Congress realises that to tilt public opinion in its favour, it needs to focus on not just what it purports to abhor-such as communalism-but also on positive elements. Sonia in her inaugural speech declared, "Good governance has many dimensions. Ensuring that legislated minimum wages are paid is good governance. Assuring the welfare of the unorganised sector is good governance. Vigorous implementation of legislation to curb atrocities on the weaker sections of society is good governance. In recent months, we have been made painfully aware of a simple truth-that, at its most fundamental level, ensuring law and order, maintaining social peace and harmony is good governance."

The presentations were divided into four segments: rural development and decentralisation; education and health; weaker sections and poverty alleviation; and good governance. Among the 20 presentations, big and small, made by the chief ministers, what caught the Congress president's attention were:

Kerala Chief Minister A.K. Antony's decentralisation, which resulted in transfer of substantial resources to local self-government institutions. Sonia repeatedly referred to it as the "model" for maximum decentralisation.

Karnataka Chief Minister S.M. Krishna's mantra of adding quality to quantity in school education. The Congress president was quite taken with the concept.

Antony's move to distribute surplus land among Kerala tribals, who constitute only 1 per cent of the state's population and are thus considered "below electoral significance", got a big hand from delegates for its ethical correctness.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh's Education Guarantee Scheme that has pushed the literacy level from 45 to 65 per cent in the 1990s after the government assiduously provided funds for any local body offering 25 willing students. Sonia made specific reference to it in connection with economically advanced Congress states like Maharashtra and Karnataka which still have pockets of very low human development indices.

Chhattisgarh's Indira Aheli Saheli scheme for which Chief Minister Ajit Jogi secured the Supreme Court's approval to distribute cultivation rights for 12.5 lakh hectare of forest land.

Maharashtra's Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS) that has provided employment (Rs 50 a day) to thousands, the funds coming from state tax revenues. The party leadership is trying to figure out if the EGS can be implemented in Karnataka.

Other than these developmental highlights, the conclave had its share of hot discussions, particularly in the last session. West Bengal Congress chief Pranab Mukherjee sought a uniform guideline on anti-terror legislations like the Prevention of Terrorism Act. After forcing a vote on POTO at a joint session of Parliament, Sonia is still not certain if her chief ministers are unanimous in opposing it. Maharashtra has its own law against organised crime, and the suggestions of state Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh that the central law be made stricter were cited by Union Law Minister Arun Jaitley in his defence of the legislation at the joint session. Besides, Karnataka too has envisaged a similar law as a fallout of the abduction of film star Raj Kumar by the fugitive Veerappan.

Though the north-eastern Congress states of Assam, Manipur and Nagaland have their share of militancy woes, Sonia refused to abandon her stand that states under Congress rule should not adopt laws along the lines of POTA. "It is a draconian law, and the Congress chief ministers have agreed that the existing laws are adequate to meet the new challenges," she said at the press conference. For her, a "draconian" law quite clearly means plain bad governance.

During the breaks from their discussions-packed schedule at the hotel's lawns, the Congress chief ministers seemed to agree that the next general elections would be a mandate on the quality of governance. "If the BJP is routed in the Gujarat assembly polls it will be because of Modi's failure to govern the state well," says Jogi, Whether Modi survives or not, the governance card is the Congress's lifeline to survival and success.