Barack Obama continues to be on a winning spree and America seems to be in the midst of much change and excitement, with fresh aspirations for a different future, in which people would come together in an effort the bridge disparities, both cultural and economic.

There is a sense of exhilaration and optimism that overwhelms even some of us in India as we watch the dramatic events and the fiery competition to get nominated for the final lap. In contrast, we continue to wait, in frustration, because there is no apparent action or any passion to move away from the boring and failed status quo. So we watch our leaders, of all hues, hang on to frayed threads of power with zero intellectual innovation or any desire to risk committed action.

Here in Delhi, Mayavati continues to ride the wave that she virtually moulded for herself, single-handed, and one of two things could happen after her meetings with Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh. If the Congress is aspiring for yet another myopic, low-numbers and short-term game, only to survive a trifle longer before the end, they will come to some kind of arrangement with the Bahujan Samaj Party in a desperate attempt to retain weakened power at the Centre, post-2008.

The strong arm, comprised of failed and limited men at 24 Akbar Road, referred to by many as the enemy within the sanctum sanctorum, may well be giving wrong advice, based on mere numbers, and alas, not on political, secular values and realities, as well as inclusive policy-initiatives that are imperative for India’s emergence as a great regional power. Only this kind of non-risk politics, based on superficial manoeuvring, will allow for their survival and nurture their personal gain, for a little longer.

Devices and desires

An alignment of this kind will sound the death knell for the Grand Old Party. The reason is simple and obvious. Mayavati has romped ahead because she has usurped the space and ideology of the Congress when it was supreme. As the Congress descended into playing petty, personalized politics, a shrewd Mayavati silently, without endless media interventions, established her foundation and is now moving deftly on, looking for her place in the sun. She can deal firmly with the Congress leaders, who think they can handle her. They simply cannot, for love or for money. Those days are over. The patience of an earlier generation has passed into oblivion. There is a rumbling beneath the immediate surface that the smug Congress leaders are refusing to recognize because it upsets their personal apple cart.

If the Congress wants to reinvent itself to deal with a rapidly-transforming India, it will have to reassess its desperation to embrace Mayavati. The party, in such an eventuality, will, sooner rather than later, have to dissolve into the BSP! Mayavati will have it no other way and the strong-arm men in the Congress may well have done a deal with her for their future. That is politics. And, to a voyeur like me, who watches the scene unfold each day, it will be Mayavati’s call. She is one face of the coin.

The other, positive face of the coin could well be Sonia Gandhi. Since the Congress has nothing to lose as it slides into becoming a party of the past, she could undo the degradation and take risks to rebuild a secular, liberal party which is what the Congress was meant to be. She could do away with the parochial nonsense that has infiltrated the leadership and the ranks, order a change of attitude and positions since the members of the party only react when whipped, or dropped unceremoniously. All the senior parasites, known well to the public, must be prevented from calling the shots. Give them all Padma awards and send them into retirement or, better still, into the private sector, where they will have to work for their personal gain and not gain from mere favour.