Congress rocking itself to sleep on a high horse

Here is the news, in tricolour: the good, the bad, and the problematic.

First, naturally, the good news.

The Congress is three percentage points ahead of the BJP, 32 to 29, across the nation among voters asked which of the two parties could solve their problems better.

Now for the bad news. For the first time in the history of the Congress, a leader from the Nehru-Gandhi family is less popular than the party. Alter that to significantly less popular. Sonia Gandhi's approval rating is just 20 per cent, making her in effect a negative presence for 12 per cent of Congress voters.

One can imagine how negative she must be for non-Congress voters, who still constitute 68 per cent of the electorate. This is particularly startling in view of the common Congress conviction that a leader from this family adds his or her own weight to the party strength. In Sonia Gandhi's case, she is subtracting from the party's appeal.

Leadership in any democracy is about adding to the vote. George Bush and Tony Blair have personal approval ratings that are higher than the support that the Republicans and Labour have in the United States and Britain. This is normal. When that equation changes the party sits up and asks questions.

Now to the problem. No Congress man, or woman, has the courage to ask this simple question of Sonia Gandhi. The word courage may seem an anomaly, but it is apt because under Sonia Gandhi the Congress has become a quasi-dictatorship, run by a small and very obedient oligarchy.

The BJP therefore, instead of struggling in the pits, continues to smile, if not to laugh, as it continues its leisurely progress towards its vote banks. With Sonia Gandhi as an enemy, who needs a friend?

Opinion polls become far more agreeable when they agree with your own opinions. I am happy to report that by such non-objective standards, the latest India Today survey of 17,776 registered voters across 98 parliamentary constituencies, all of them presumably with proper identity cards, is an excellent snapshot of the contemporary political mood.

Since we are a highly leader-oriented democracy, the biggest of the big questions in the poll was clearly the comparison between the Prime Minister

Atal Behari Vajpayee and the Prime Minister-in-waiting Sonia Gandhi. How do they compare?

Statistical fact: Vajpayee's popularity has slipped by five per cent since January, from 38 to 33. Actually you don't have to read India Today to find this out. This statistic is written on the face of every BJP leader in Delhi.

Statistical fact: Sonia Gandhi's approval ratings have risen by just one per cent in the same period, from 19 to 20. Curiously both Vajpayee and Sonia Gandhi are at their lowest ebb.

The only comfort that the government can draw is in the fact that at his lowest Vajpayee is still 13 per cent ahead of Sonia Gandhi.

The Prime Minister may be in decline, but Sonia Gandhi is not growing. Or growing up. Once again, you don't have to read India Today to confirm this. This too is written on the face of every Congress leader in Delhi, except that no one will admit it in public – or indeed deny it in private.

One of the more remarkable findings of this survey is that Sonia Gandhi's approval ratings have been in perpetual decline, or stagnant, ever since she touched a high of 32 per cent in May 1999.

In August that year it came down to 26 per cent, in October to 24 per cent, in January 2001 to 28 per cent, in August to 22 per cent; in January this year to 19 per cent and is now a meaningless one per cent better to 20 per cent.

This is the situation when the BJP is in power, and when it has done enough to resurrect any Opposition. Why has Sonia Gandhi been unable to benefit from the BJP's decline?

The answer lies in the beginning of this table. What happened after May 1999 when she had 32 per cent of the country with her? It was then that she made her famous remark in Italian-English that she had "272" MPs with her in her bid to become Prime Minister of India by defeating Vajpayee in Parliament rather than in a general election.

She has not recovered from that remark. The prospect of Sonia Gandhi becoming Prime Minister of India freezes voters in their tracks.

Further analysis of the statistics indicates that a significant portion of Sonia Gandhi's approval comes from Muslims and Christians, and this has evidently more to do with the minorities' fear of the BJP than with any particular fondness for Sonia Gandhi.

Sonia Gandhi has 33 per cent support among Muslims against 15 per cent for Vajpayee. Frankly the surprise here is that 15 per cent Muslims still support Vajpayee; after Gujarat that figure should have gone down to zero.

But Vajpayee's clear distance from Narendra Modi has left him with some personal support in the community. Christians have some empathy for Sonia (her highest support, 35 per cent, is from them), but Vajpayee gets 22 per cent of the Christian vote as well.

It is transparent that Sonia Gandhi has been unable to make any headway among Hindus. She has only 16 per cent of the upper caste vote against Vajpayee's 40 per cent. Clearly the upper castes do not believe that she has become an Indian because she once dipped her toe in the Ganga.

What is astonishing that a lady who claims to be the heir of Indira Gandhi cannot claim even 20 per cent of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes vote; she got only 19 per cent.

Vajpayee, who leads a party that has been seen as traditionally hostile to the lowest rungs of the caste system, gets 28 per cent of their vote in comparison.

The situation is similar among the Other Backward Castes. Sonia has only 19 per cent support here, against Vajpayee's 33 per cent.

What should worry the Congress is that despite being much younger Sonia Gandhi has not been able to connect with the 18-24 age group; she gets only 20 per cent here against Vajpayee's 37 per cent. As for the +45s, they are starting to care for neither.

If the Prime Minister has 32 per cent support here, Sonia has only 18. So far, the poll indicates only negative pleasure for the BJP, of the I-am-bad-but-you-are-worse variety.

There is one positive element for the Prime Minister, though. Both the major decisions with which he is personally associated have received applause from the voters.

He pushed through the surprising nomination of President Abdul Kalam, and there is overwhelming approval for this decision: 54 per cent are delighted and only 8 per cent unhappy. But this 8 per cent were probably born unhappy and refuse to change.

That the BJP may live to regret the choice of President Kalam is another story, and will doubtless grace these columns anon.

Much more significant, politically, is the public reaction to the manner in which the government has handled Pakistan over the last year, a long, difficult, delicate and painful exercise.

A definitive 41 per cent believes that India has "won" in this confrontation, and 33 per cent say that the government has managed the face-off "very well". This is Kargil in slow motion.

How would the same voters react to the prospect of Sonia Gandhi