MEETING OF THE ALL INDIA CONGRESS COMMITTEE

SIRIFORT AUDITORIUM, NEW DELHI, 6 APRIL, 1998

OPENING REMARKS

BY THE

CONGRESS PRESIDENT

Distinguished Members of the Congress Working Committee, Fellow-Members of the AICC,

May I extend to each one of you a very warm welcome to this session of the All India Congress Committee. You have elected me President of this great organization. I am aware of the awesome responsibility you have placed upon me. It is with deep humility that I accept this privilege. I pledge myself to serving the Party with sincerity and dedication.

Men and women of very high eminence have held this office. For a century and more they have defined the destiny of this great nation. It is they who brought us our freedom. It is they who have built modern India. They have moulded the Congress into the prime instrument and expression of our national consciousness. It is through the Congress that the nation has rediscovered its sense of purpose. It is through the Congress that we as a people have forged our unity. It is the Congress that has developed the dynamics of people's action.

From the very inception the Congress has stood for a free, democratic, just and secular India. I pay homage to Mahatma Gandhi, who ensured that the 20th century would be for India - and the world - the century of national liberation.

I pay tribute to his team of noble disciples who brought us to freedom - Motilal Nehru, Chittaranjan Das, Sardar Patel, Rajaji, Maulana Azad, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajendra Prasad, Sarojini Naidu, Subhas Chandra Bose. I pay tribute also to the Congress Prime Ministers of Independent India, who between them gave our country for and a half decades of democratic governance, raising prosperity and stable governments. I pay special tribute to Indiraji and Rajivji who have become martyrs in the service of our country. I salute all my other distinguished predecessors and pray that I shall prove worthy of them.

I have come to this office at a critical point in the history of Party. Our numbers in Parliament have dwindled. Our support base among the electorate has been seriously eroded. Some segments of the voters - including our tribals, dalits and minorities - have drifted from us. We are in danger of losing our central place in the polity of our country as the natural party of governance. At the centenary session of the Congress back in 1985 Rajiv Gandhi had pointed out certain weakness in the working of the Congress Party.

He asked; "What has become of our great organization? Instead of a party that fired the imagination of the masses throughout the length and breadth of India, we have shrunk, losing touch with the masses." It was by firing the imagination of our people that Gandhiji won us our freedom. It was by firing the imagination of the people that Panditji and indiraji built an India of which the nation was proud. And it was through what he called "a politics of service to the poor" that my husband sought to ignite the imagination of the people.

In his centenary speech, he etched the outlines of the programme he had in mind: "The power to shape their own lives must lie with the people .... Vibrant village panchayats must discuss, deliberate and decide the choices to be made." unquote He called this the "challenge to the Congress cadres". "It is up to us, the workers of this great organization," he said: "to spread in every village and every hamlet of India, to mobilize the people, to guide them, to stand by their side when they are denied their due..." To this rejuvenate the Congress, Rajiv Gandhi emphasized two key issues. One, the role of ideology, policies and programmes in the everyday life of the Party. He said: "The ideology of the Congress has acquired the status of an heirloom, to be polished and brought out on special occasions. It must be a living force to animate the Congress workers in their day-to-day activity. Our ideology of nationalism, secularism, democracy and socialism is the only relevant ideology for our great country." And the instrument for carrying the Congress policies to the people had, of course, to be the humble Congress worker. But the genuine Congress worker remains unheeded and unrecognised. He is not only the last to be heard but also the least heard. I see it as my primary task as Congress President to restore to the Congress the vision of the Congress centenary - Power to the People through the panchayats; and Power to the Congress worker through democracy within the Party.

I am no saviour, as some of you might want to believe. We must be realistic in our expectations. The revival of our Party is going to be a long drawn process, involving sincere hardwork, from each and everyone of us. But I do have an abiding faith in the path shown to us by our leaders in the past. It is the only path that will lead us to our goal. And I believe we can attain it if we act together and hold together. In practical terms, our task is to give the people of India an organization that stands form them, that fights for their rights and is anchored to the principles on which our nationhood is founded. We must shun what is expedient and stand by what is right. That is what Gandhiji taught us. This simple truth wrested for our Independence from the mightiest military power then known to history.

This simple truth is what Panditji practised - and made India a role model for other emerging national, a voice heard with respect around the world.

Our is the oldest, most venerated Party in the country. It is the only Party with adherents in, literally, every village, every mohalla, every basti. Ours is still, notwithstanding recent reverses, the most representative Party in the country, the only political mirror which reflects all the glorious diversity of this vast and wonderful land. It is, therefore, a national imperative, not merely a partisan requirement, that we store the Congress to its former primacy. It is the only Party whose fundamental adherence to secularism has never been diluted.

Gandhiji said all great political parties needed faithful agents to implement their policies and programmes. We have in our ranks lakhs of dedicated, efficient, talented men and women. They combine the energy of youth with the wisdom of age. We are the one Party that excludes none and includes all - both genders, all ages, every caste, every creed, every class, every region. For our workers to fulfil the role of faithful agents of the Party, they cannot be mere playthings of the leadership. Our leadership must in fact emerge from the grassroots. It must reflect the aspirations of the grassroots. It must be sensitive to the demands of the grassroots.

My priority will be reinforce the role of the ordinary worker in the organization of the Party. I appeal to all office holders from panchayat and block level upwards to be mindful of the grievances of grassroot workers and ensure that they are heard with courtesy and understanding. This alone will give us an organizational structure representative of the Party, responsible to the Party, and therefore, responsive to the Party. It is our immediate task to reverse these trends. To my mind, this can be achieved only through a radical programme of introspection and reflection. We need nothing less than the complete revitalization of the Congress, a return to the time when the Congress was the instinctive first choice of the electorate. I have set in motion a process by which appropriate committees have been appointed and asked to visit the States where we have done badly.

The findings and conclusions of these committees will be carefully studied, analyzed and acted upon by the Working Committee. In the next few months there will be Vidhan Sabha elections in several States. It is imperative that our Party starts preparing for them from now. But cutting across States are some broader issues that deserve our immediate attention and require concrete and corrective action. Our Party has to renew itself by attracting the best and the brightest of the young to join and contribute to its growth. Youth needs encouragement; youth needs opportunity; youth needs training.

Youth is idealistic. It is wary of the unsavoury. It is inspired by the moral high ground. We will spot promising young talent; we will nurture it; we will promote it. We will identify with the aspirations of the new generation and make them feel that, establishment though we are for over a century, we are conscious of their concerns and responsive to their quest for answers. Ours will be a Party which gives real responsibility to the youth. Ours must also be the Party which gives real responsibility to women. Tokenism will not do and is, indeed, offensive. Women must not find themselves shelved and marginalised into just their frontal organization.

It is my purpose to bring them to the Party's mainstream. At the grassroots, reservations for women in the panchayats have opened vast opportunities for their political empowerment and active participation in governance. We must however give much higher priority than we have done to identifying and readying women candidates for election to the panchayats and nagarpalikas at all levels. In the State Assemblies and Parliament, we will be unflinching and resolutely committed to reservations for women in our legislatures. We must so comport ourselves that the women of India identify with the Congress as their Party of preference. We have not made sufficient efforts to engage community leaders in serious dialogue or win them over to our way of thinking.

All our political energies seem to be concentrated on elections. In between lethargy overtake us. We must resist this. Indiscipline and indifferent performance should have no place in our Party. We must be in constant touch with our constituents. For Party workers, this means living and moving among the people. Four our parliamentary and legislative representatives, it means spending a significant part of every month travelling to every corner of their respective constituencies. And our emphasis should not only be on elections but on pressing social, economic and political issues of the day. Through this we will be able to fulfil or broader social and political agenda. Thus will we restore our links with the society and communities we serve. The AICC, the PCCs, the DCCs, the Block Committees and the primary units all need streamlining and toning up.

I intend to apply my mind to administrative restructuring so that our Party becomes an effective instrument for mobilizing the people and translating our policies and programmes into action. I plan to travel extensively to see for myself how this is unfolding on the ground. To be systematic in our approach, I propose to appoint a Monitoring Committee which will supervise programme implementation and report directly to me. It will charge immediate goals and ensure that we keep track of our progress. Immediately after this session of the AICC, I will address myself to the working of our frontal organizations which need effective and purposeful leadership and orient their role to what the people of our country need.

The NSUI, the Youth Congress, the Seva Dal and the Mahila Congress must become active agents for the betterment of society. They can no longer remain, as they have tended to be, the closed preserves of special self-perpetuating groups. They ought to welcome all those who are interested in the welfare and improvement of the lives of our people, especially the poor and disadvantaged. They should not be mere stepping stones to a political career; rather, they should be instruments for the propagation of our policies and programmes. These bodies should be examples of sustained and dynamic action. They should be in the forefront of campaigns on such social issues as female infanticide, child marriage, dowry deaths, atrocities on women, the exploitation of the underprivileged, caste and communal violence, and discrimination in any form. They must be in the vanguard of the promotion of literacy, the legal rights of women, gender equality and family planning. This is a vast agenda and it will constructively absorb the energies of our active workers. We have slipped perilously in the esteem of the educated, the urban and the young voter. It was our party which lowered the voting age to 18 from 21; yet, as the average Indian voter gets younger and more educated, it is our Party which has suffered reverses. To this large and influential segment of the electorate, some of their disenchantment with us arises from our Party being seen as soft on corruption and criminalization. The impression has gained ground among them that we want to cling to power or achieve it at any cost.

We need to build bridges with the intelligentsia, with young professionals, with educated voters, with universities and institutions of higher learning and research where opinion makers are reared. We must revive the culture of informed discussion in the Congress Party. We will chart changes and new courses as the situation requires by holding Narora-type camps. We cannot represent the diversity of India and shy away from frank discussion. At such camps we should aim to strive for consensus if not unanimity. At these camps the participants should also reflect on the more uplifting and enduring aspects of our political activity. We must raise fundamental questions which should be of relevance to the party in the next century. We will also strengthen our Parliamentary wing and the legislature parties. They need analytical expertise and sound intellectual support.

To this end, I am constituting committees which will meet regularly and provide inputs to our parliamentarians for use in debates in both Houses. These committees will also track the performance of the government in vital areas, and help formulate bills that the Congress will table. They will also interact with scholars, intellectuals, business groups, NGOs and others.

To eliminate certain misgivings, we need to put in place a transparent and accountable system of party financing. The people of our country are no longer willing to forgive trespass in this area. We need reform at a wider, national level involving all political parties. But while we will need a broader consensus, we must be prepared to put our own house in order. In my judgement it is essential to ensure a clean, transparent and accountable system of financing. It is an acknowledged fact that donations are made to all political parties, including the Congress party. We cannot single-handedly change this system. But to make a beginning, we should change our election oriented emphasis towards raising financial resources on a sustained, on-going basis.

I would like to commend the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee in this regard and use its funds raising drive from the public as an example for others to follow. I also appeal to the elected representatives at the district, pradesh and national levels to give a portion of their income for party work. There is no reason why at the end of the year we cannot have a balance sheet that acknowledges the source and utilization of such funds. In this context I would like to draw your attention to the decision taken by the Congress Working Committee in November `96 and September `97 where all office holders of the Party are expected to submit annually a statement of their assets and liabilities to their respective PCCs, and AICC as the case may be.

Another area of people's dissatisfaction is related to the manner in which some of us conduct ourselves both in and out of legislative bodies. There has been a marked deterioration in this regard. Our democracy has no room for rowdyism and disruption. We must honour the traditions of our Parliament and gain the confidence of the people by setting high standards of moral and political behaviour. Having said that I must stress that our members will be expected to severely and relentlessly oppose any attempt at diluting policies and programmes central to the well-being of our people. For this our members must be at all times fully prepared with facts and data to effectively expose the Government.

I now draw your attention to a subject which has aroused some controversy. This relates to the programmes of liberalization and globalisation. We have been told that we have compromised with our basic economic ideology. It was at a time of grave economic reforms. It was a path charted out by my husband and carried forward by Shri PV Narasimha Rao. Rajiv Gandhi had set the economy on the road to rapid growth and transformation while keeping at the forefront the need to protect the poor and disadvantaged from any ill-effects of social change. First of all, we need to build a strong resurgent economy which can grow annually at 7-8 percent. We need this order of growth to create new job opportunities for our expanding labour force and to increase the resource base of our economy so as to devote more resources for poverty alleviation Programmes.

Economic reforms- liberalization and measured opening out to the rest of the world are essential for this purpose. At the same time, we need well designed strategies to empower the poor to benefit more effectively from processes of development. To ensure its sustainability, the reform ought to be seen as making a substantial difference in the daily lives of ordinary citizens, Particularly those who live in destitution and deprivation. I am aware of the doubts and fears about liberalisation and globalisation. It is our duty to dispel them. It is our task to reassure the people in this regard. We must make sure that the government in office does not betray their interests in any way. We must insist on a much greater emphasis on basic social services, such as, education, health, implementation of land reforms and improvement of credit delivery systems for the poor.

While it is true to say that in the nineties economics, finance and trade occupy centre space, it must at the same time be remembered that the economy exists to serve the people and to meet their basic needs. We cannot lose sight of wider ethical issues and concerns such as equity and the environment. Gandhiji emphasised this time and again. Nehru's concept of mixed economy has stood the test of time even though the nature of the mix must vary with the changing needs of the time. However, State intervention can be effective only if politics recaptures the high moral ground and its role as a purposeful instrument of social change.

For generations past, it has been the policy of the Congress Party to work for international peace and harmony, for justice and equality among people and nations. This approach was charted by Jawaharlal Nehru, and evolved by Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. Congress party policies gave the world Non-alignment,opposition to nuclear weapons and a voice to hundreds of millions the world over fighting for their liberation. We cannot allow such a great legacy to be squandered.

Our foreign Policy framework created by Jawaharlal Nehru , nurtured and strengthened by Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi has stood the test of time It is a tribute to his foresight and wisdom that a broad consensus on foreign policy issues has existed for the past 50 years with some satisfaction. But there is great change and movement around us. we have to learn from the experience of the past and apply it to the emerging future. Nothing remains still, nothing remains unchanging. That goes for us too. The Congress Party will adapt to the needs of the future.

Yet, even as we do so, we must never forget why we are here, why we are assembled and why we exist as a Party. And that is to serve the people of our great country and t fulfil their dreams. We will be able to do this only as a united, rejuvenated and invigorated Congress Party.

As Rajiv Gandhi said :

"As we build today
so will be the tomorrow.
Together we will build
for an India
of the 21st century.
Together we will transform
What needs transformation.
Together we will face
challenges and obstacles
to progress.
Together we will create
an India that is strong, wise
and great -
a flame of peace and tolerance."

Let us dedicate ourselves to this task.

Thank you!

Jai Hind.