Row over migrant travel fares: Sonia Gandhi hits the right political note, unnerves BJP

There was more than just recall and nostalgia when Sonia Gandhi, the Congress’s interim president, responded with clarity and sharpness to the plight of distressed migrant workers who are returning home on designated trains and buses after being asked to pay specified fares.

Sonia had tried hard to leave her imprint on the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s programmes and policies as the chairman of the National Advisory Council (NAC). The NAC cast as an “advisory” body, was helmed by Sonia, who was also the UPA chairperson. Its clout in the coalition government was enormous although its endeavour to privilege welfare and inclusiveness over economic conservatism and social moderation was occasionally thwarted by the government.

Sonia’s astute move leaves BJP scrambling for explanations

As reports poured in of how the hapless and cashless migrants were allegedly forced to cough up money for the tickets on the Shramik Special trains, carrying them back home, Sonia stepped in. She asked if the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government could spend Rs 100 crore to ferry people to a Gujarat event (Donald Trump’s reception at Ahmedabad) and the railways could donate Rs 151 crore to the PM-CARES corpus, then “why can’t these essential members of our nation’s fabric be given a fraction of the same courtesy, especially free rail travel, at this hour of acute distress?”

Ahmed Patel, Sonia’s long-time political aide, and general secretary KC Venugopal, directed the Congress’s state units to mobilise the funds and work with the railways and the state administration to underwrite the travel costs. Earlier, D K Shivakumar, the Karnataka state Congress chief, took the lead when he donated Rs 1 crore to the state-run Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation to bail out workers, left stranded because they had no money for the fare.

Karnataka wasn’t the only one to exacerbate the pain suffered by the migrant workers. A railway official in Maharashtra’s Bhiwandi said on a video that the workers had to pay Rs 800 to go back to their hometown, Gorakhpur. Those journeying from Gujarat’s Nadiad to Ballia in Uttar Pradesh were charged the full amount of Rs 645. The norms stipulated for the special trains stated in rule 11, clause (c) that “the local state government authority shall hand over the tickets to the passengers cleared by them and collect the ticket fare and hand over the total amount to railways”. The railways had unambiguously decided the “special” facility was not a freebie.

However, the political salience of Sonia’s entreaty to the Congress registered fast on the government/Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that for all of yesterday, insisted that it was the host and home states at whose requests the trains were organised and they would have to incur 15 percent of the costs while the railways would pick up the rest 85 percent tab. Obviously, it was a post-facto explanation that was not borne out by real-life accounts from the travellers.

What also apparently hurt the BJP was a tweet from its MP, Subramanian Swamy, posted minutes after Sonia’s exhortation. Swamy, though on the BJP’s fringes, habitually disconcerts the leadership that sees him as a contrarian voice with a following in its larger Hindutva constituency. He said, “Migrant labour will go free.” But the Centre adhered to its purported ‘85-15’ formula that was of a piece with the Narendra Modi government’s overall approach to the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic: Shift the onus on the states for relief and repair. The Centre’s around as some sort of a guardian angel.

But there was no denying that Sonia’s intervention—indeed the first substantive mediation from the Opposition that largely remained silent, afraid that a reaction might be construed as “anti-national” in the midst of a crisis—nudged the government to sit up.

Congress ‘Old Guard’ strike back?

The Congress’s traducers might be tempted to interpret Sonia’s move as an attempt by the sidelined “Old Guard” to regain its relevance. Those sniffing out conspiracies don’t have to look afar because Rahul Gandhi had flagged the migrants’ issue in an online dialogue he had with Raghuram Rajan, the former RBI Governor, last week. Rajan, who is a member of a high-level IMF external advisory group constituted to think up perspectives on key global developments and policy matters, stressed the need to put in place a safety net to mitigate the adverse impact of the inevitable job losses, especially in the unorganised sector. Rajan gave a ballpark estimate of Rs 65,000 crore funds for this purpose.

Indeed, the video chat was seen as the start of the Congress’s exercise to pull itself out of a state of seeming confusion and political restrictiveness to a position of focus on the economy, with a slant towards the poor and the under-empowered.

Opportunity for Congress to rediscover its ‘aam aadmi’ roots

Notwithstanding the BJP’s obsession with its core agenda, aimed constantly at enlarging a Hindu base, the government will be forced to grapple with the terrible economic fallout of the pandemic sooner than later. The Centre cannot pass the buck to the cash-strapped states. Nor can it leave it to a line-up of its chosen bureaucrats, principally from the Gujarat cadre, to straighten out the mess because India is not Gujarat.

Perhaps the Congress intends to amplify the class theme, evident in Sonia’s point-counterpoint use of the money spent on the Trump jamboree versus the parsimony shown towards the poor. Of course, the political landscape transformed almost unrecognisably since the Congress was voted out of power in 2014. Under Modi, the BJP’s discourse and mobilisation tactics were tailored to bring the poor, across the caste and class divide, under the Hindutva umbrella. The direct and collateral damage wrought by COVID-19 is ironically a godsend to the Congress to rediscover its ‘aam aadmi’ roots and refashion itself as a party of the have-nots.

Ironic too, Sonia must rue not forcing the Manmohan Singh dispensation to legislate the NAC’s version of a law enshrining a security net for the unorganised workers who in its estimate made up 93 percent of India’s workforce, contributed 60 percent of the GDP and have insecure jobs and low incomes.

(Radhika Ramaseshan is a Delhi based political analyst and columnist)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author’s own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.