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Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister in 1966 but it was in 1971 that she exploded on the national political scene — thanks to a single slogan that captured the mass aspiration of the time. Garibi Hatao (abolish poverty) fetched the post-split Congress an overpowering majority in the mid-term general election of 1971 as well as stunning victories in the State Assembly elections of 1972. Thirty-five years later, the Congress, unrecognisably shrunken, has set out to attempt a similar leap of the imagination with the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. Can the initiative do for Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi what Garibi Hatao did for Indira Gandhi? Potentially, the NREGA is a bigger winner. Garibi Hatao worked because the political will of the Indira regime was evident in the bold measures she adopted — abolishing privy purses and princely titles, nationalising banks and the wholesale trade in foodgrains, and so forth. But soon Garibi Hatao became a caricature slogan, more sound than substance, as the reverses suffered by the Congress from the mid-1970s showed. On the other hand, the NREGA is a progressive rights-based approach to development conceptualised in the National Common Minimum Programme of the United Progressive Alliance: a first-of-its-kind legal entitlement guaranteeing 100 days of minimum wage employment to rural households.

The NREGA's socio-political value is obvious: it has the sweep and the scope to reach the farthest corners of India and, if properly implemented, to transform the countryside. So why has the Congress not seized the opportunity in the manner of an Indira Gandhi? Why has it not gone on the offensive? The party leadership was confronted with these questions at a conference of district-level functionaries convened by the All India Congress Committee to review the implementation of the NREGA. In their speeches to district Congress chiefs, the Prime Minister and the Congress president stressed the political nature of the NREGA. As Sonia Gandhi put it: "The issue figured only in the Congress manifesto, it is part of the National Common Minimum Programme of the United Progressive Alliance, and it has been enforced by our Central Government." Manmohan Singh noted that "the message has to reach every corner that this right has been conferred by Soniaji, by the Congress party." Yet for all the posturing, the NREGA is a long way from capturing the imagination of the masses. This is, in part, because the Congress machinery is virtually defunct except in the party's traditional strongholds. Crucially, the AICC review highlighted better implementation of the NREGA by Opposition-ruled States. Among Congress-ruled States, Andhra Pradesh posted the best results. Worryingly for the Congress, the NREGA appeared to be a non-starter in Uttar Pradesh, due for election in February 2007.Why has the Congress leadership failed to show the political will to go for broke on a project it has extolled as `historic' and `revolutionary'?

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