Book traces Cong journey from Indira to Sonia

New Delhi, Sept 24: During the heady days of Congress resurgence, it was famously said that when one went by train from Howrah to Delhi, all the states would be Congress-ruled state.

In today's changed political configuration, however, such a pompous proclamation doesn't hold water.

''Today the party means differently to vast sections of observers and analysts. The Congress lacks the ability to conjure dreams for the masses. That is its tragedy because it has come to rely more on personalities rather than on the dreams that the 'Aam Aadmi' is looking for,'' argues journalist-author Vijay Sanghvi in his just-released 'The Congress: Indira to Sonia Gandhi.' The halcyon days of 'the Congress system' ended with a hitherto unknown aspect of the Indira politics, which did not like any challenge to the authority of the leader from anyone.

In the long run, Indira Gandhi's ''cynical manipulation'' led to political unrest sowing the seeds for imposition of the Emergency and bred protagonists like Jai Prakash Narayan of the anti-establishment upsurge, says the book.

The imposition of the Emergency brought about irreversible changes in Indira Gandhi's career as a power woman. The book highlights all the aspects of the Emergency and the consequences she had to face.

On January 18, 1977, she dissolved the Lok Sabha and set the election schedule for March 1977 leading to the electoral debacle of the Congress party. A series of tactical errors starting from the Emergency to advancing general election by a year left the 'Iron Lady' dejected and dispirited, a mood poignantly captured by the book.

The book traces the events, decisions, disasters and triumphs that have shaped the party. From the Chinese aggression to the infamous Bofors deal, it provides an analysis of scandals and blunders which rocked the party.

It also discusses the 'larger-than-life-image' of its leaders to the changes the 'Young Turks' envisaged to bring into the party. The book is a mix of personal observations and interactions with senior leaders of the party.

The need of the hour for most within the party is to restore its secular image, says Sanghvi. It is here that the Congress, charged with the responsibility of providing leadership in this task, finds itself so utterly clueless in ''a blunder land of its own making'', says the newest book on the history of the country's oldest party.

Sanghvi says the current Congress chief, Sonia Gandhi, has ''by example if not intention'', drawn attention to the massive moral resources that the party has inherited, but ''continuously disregarded or squandered'' its liberal democratic and secular ideals and a deeply humanistic civilisation ethos.

UNI