By delivering an election-year bonanza to distressed farmers, income tax payers, the middle class and consumers in general, the United Progressive Alliance has set itself on the path to winning the ensuing Assembly elections and also retaining power at the Centre. It has made a bold move to reclaim the "aam admi" plank and preserve the broad secular and development-oriented coalition, despite attempts by the supporting Left to rock the boat.

Even though it has taken several historic steps in the form of legislation to mitigate the hardships of the rural population, the bulk of which is agriculture-dependent, and tribals, it cannot afford to rest on its oars because it faces immense challenges and the Bhartiya Janata Party is hell bent on using every means to unseat it. Since the Congress Party forms the biggest component of the alliance and also leads it, the landmark Central and Railway budgets have given a boost to its sagging morale.

In the absence of a functioning and active party organisation in many states and an aggressive programme of action based on the UPA Government's achievements, Congress men have found themselves on the defensive. They have not been able to go to town with landmark legislation, such as, National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, Forest Rights Act and Right to Information Act due to negative role played by the wily Communists, who are fighting their own survival battle. They fostered the image of a government which could not be deemed stable and was prevented from functioning according to its best judgment. A very disturbing feature of the political scene is that the Left has made common cause with, what it repeatedly characterizes as, communal forces and threatened to pull the government down if it operationalised the Indo-US Nuclear deal.

The Manmohan Singh Government was placed in a situation where, besides shielding itself against the hostile BJP, which is still unreconciled to its defeat in 2004 because Indian did not "shine" on command, it has to protect itself from the destabilizing moves of the supportive Left. Still more disturbing is the Left's determination to prevent a Congress or Congress-led government from coming to power again by taking a leading part in the formation of the no-called United National Progressive Alliance backed by the "capitalist" lobby, most of whose partners are constituents of Vajpayee's NDA which has all but disintegrated.

There is not much time left for the Congress Party to gear itself up for the ensuing Assembly elections and parliamentary elections later this year or early next year. Though the Party has now decided to organize nation-wide rallies in support of the Budget and the Government's many unspoken achievements, its revitalization, as proposed by Mrs. Sonia Gandhi is still a long-way off. It is still not in good and fighting shape to take on its rivals. Much precious time has been lost and the Party has still to agree on a strategy and practical course of action to win the next parliamentary election. It is simplistic to argue that the Finance Minister Mr. P. Chidambaram has provided the forceful push to the party's campaign and all that he has left unsaid are the election dates. One commentator even went to the extent of saying that with the Budget, the Congress Party had already pocketed 14 crore votes. His calculation is that the Finance Minister has made pitch for four crore farmers and over three crore tax payers.

Assuming that each one of them can influence at least one voter in their households, that makes 14 crore votes. As the Congress had polled 10.3 crore votes in the 2004 elections, it is an excellent bargain. But, politics is a complicated business, particularly in a country like India and good policies, or sops, do not necessarily garner votes. The Indian voter is subject to diverse pulls and pressures and motivated appeals to his religious sentiments and caste affiliation and is often swept off his feet. The BJP sees nothing good in the Budget which, according to its Prime Ministerial candidate and Ram chariot driver LK Advani is full of "communal overtones." What has hurt his religious sentiments is, perhaps, a party provision of Rs. 100 crores for scholarships to students of minority communities. Reacting to this Jamaat-e-Islami Hind leader Mohammad Salim said Advani's connecting the budget to pre-partition politics "smacked of his communal mindset that refuses to see the need for bringing minorities to the mainstream of development".

Each good and popular step that the UPA Government takes sees Advani's chances of becoming prime minister receding. Communalism of the minority or majority communities has been the bane of Indian politics and even sixty years after Independence, leaders of religion-based parties do not hesitate to play it. Apart from the BJP playing its communal card, the rest of the opposition too has been unnerved by shrewdness of the maneuver. It gave a setback to plans to use farm distress as main weapon in the opposition's arsenal. The opposition blocked proceedings in both houses of Parliament for three days over this issue. The UNPA had made plans for agitation and must feel cheated. The BJP also has to rework its plans for the Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan assembly polls where it faces the anti-incumbency factor. Even though it has denounced the farmers loan waiver scheme, it will be the first to take credit for it when it comes to implementation and project it as the direct outcome of its pro-farmer agitation.

A UPA ally, NCP leader Sharad Pawar is already taking credit for it through full-page advertisements in leading newspapers. It is also expected to take note of the sops to the urban middle class with the help of income-tax relief in the post-delimitation scene where urban vote will count for more than it did ever before. The sincerity of the Finance Minister's announcements will be judged by the manner of their implementation. The debt burden of small and margi farmers owning upto 2 hectares will vanish but they are those who had taken loans from commercial and cooperative banks. Those who have borrowed from the village money-lender and unauthorized agencies have been left untouched, and they constitute a sizeable segment of the farming community. The lenders charge appropriately high interest rates and even mange to take over their meager holdings through the mortgage route when they default on payment, which they usually do.

Chidambaram's suggestion that the states should enact laws to write off such loans is impractical because institutional finance is not available in all villages and does not take care of small loans often taken for non-agricultural purposes, such as, marriages, therefore, something needs to be done to mitigate their hardship, such as, issuing them Smart Card to get essential inputs like seeds and fertilizer at low or no cost. It is well known that the outlay-outcome relationship has been deteriorating in the farm sector due to lack of synergy among many programmes of both Central and State governments. Hence the need for careful and honest monitoring of the outcome from substantial outlays in the farm, as well as, other sectors.

The reasons for the dismal growth of the farm sector, which has forced the country (which had emerged as a net exporter of food grains) to again import food to feed its people, are well known, but precious little has been done to provide irrigation, inputs, credit, insurance and income security through multiple livelihood opportunities. Land reforms have also not been properly implemented and the plight of the landless has been steadily worsening. With inflation again starting to rise and food grains, pulses and edible oils availability becoming costlier, the feel good atmosphere generated by the Budget might dissipate, and the opposition will ensure that happens. The euphoria would mean little in electoral terms if the party organisation does not tell the beneficiaries about the Congress hand behind it.

The UPA needs to imprint its pro-farmer image on the minds of the 3 crore small and marginal farmers and another one crore who would benefit from the one-time settlement scheme. As young Congress leaders like Rahul Gandhi realize, the Congress Party had done enough to win over the rural poor, but failed to encase it due to organizational failure to take it to the people. The party now plans to hold rallies and conventions at the state and district levels on the "aam admi" measures. But they should also ensure that the developmental schemes and welfare measures are properly implemented on the ground in the states under their control and launch mass movements in non-Congress ruled states whose performance is lagging and where the people continue to suffer. It needs to reassert party imprimatur on the "aam admi" measures of the UPA Government.

The only hope for the UPA and the Congress lies in their ability to wean the people from religious, caste and sectarian pulls and put them firmly on the path of development, social empowerment and material enrichment in a democratic dispensation.