Indian people were not conscious in seeking their political liberation or economic salvation for nearly four thousand years. They were indifferent to the political authority in a belief that seeking political liberty might end their proximity with divine power as such seeking might result in accepting the superior role to the human as a ruler. Many dynasties came and were lost in oblivion of time. The British intellectuals as opponent of the empire pricked their political conscious with establishment of Indian National Congress to seek self rule for Indian people. It remained a forum for discussions and demands in radical words till 1918 when Mohandas Gandhi took mike at the Congress session at Lucknow to deride the intellectuals indulging in radical words without follow up in action. Unless other classes, less fortunate are involved in the struggle, the self rule demand may remain elusive objective. In two years he proved through his noncooperation movement that his reading was correct. The Chouri Choura violent incident tempted him to withdraw but other leaders from elite class persuaded him not to. For three decades he made Indians to bear blows of the British bludgeons, silently, without raising their arms even to protect their bodies or their minds shouting for stoppage.

His salt agitation, and a grand success of it, clearly indicated his efforts to convert the political liberation from the British Empire into a yearning for every ordinary Indian. He adopted half naked posture as his apparel to be one of poverty ridden Indians. He converted the party into a political instrument that did not draw blood and yet left deep wounds on the ruling class. He preferred Nehru to steer independent India to Sardar Patel as Nehru was dreamer and Patel was capable implementer. India, subjected to poverty for thousand years, needed a dreamer to guide her destiny.

There were wide differences in approach to and solution for poverty-ridden India after independence. Gandhi recommended man to be the centre of all development activities with villages convert into independent units to stand on their own. Nehru was in hurry to modernize India and perhaps perceived a great hindrance to his dream in the Gandhian solution. He was shown in 1928 by Joseph Stalin the giant plants of Russia in eight years of communist regime. Eight years later he saw poverty-ridden villages in Uttar Pradesh on his first ever visit to villages of India.

In the planned economic model of Nehru, he adopted the restrictive model for the economic model to prevent exploitation by capitalist mentality and yet did not adopt the communist approach of eliminating all private economic activities. The prohibitive approach generated more corruption than growth. No one could question him or his model. Nehru could not recover from the deep shock of the Chinese adventure in October 1962. Gandhi insisted on dissolution of the Congress party immediately after independence for he believed that the Congress cadre had acquired mentality of fighting force during the freedom struggle. It may become hindrance for the establishment on independent nation. Nehru did not agree nor could he prevent the seeping in of desire for advantage of status as political workers.

His daughter Indira Gandhi suffering from sense of insecurity not only drove the party to division to eliminate the rightist old guard. Her turn to the Indian economy to the leftist orientation was not to improve lot of poor but to consolidate them as her vote bank. The grand victory in 1971 led her to believe she did not need the party machine to reach people. She may not have seen the usage of the party mechanism for commoner to reach the power holders. But her prescription induced redundancy to the Congress as the political machinery and drove ambitious souls to seek her pleasure and avoid at any cost her displeasure. By the time she gave her life to retain unity and integrity of India, she had reduced the party as the instrument of seeking and giving favours. Rajiv Gandhi had no hesitation to condemn the party as the group of power brokers without open remedial measures to eliminate power brokers from the party.

Even though the Gandhi family was not active participant from 1991 to 1998, Narsimha Rao could not be without its overcast shadows. Sonia Gandhi entered politics in 1998 and also took over the party reigns in her hands without learning Indian social and psychological traditions. She felt no need as the party was nothing more than an estate of the family that she had inherited and as such she was governing it as the family estate without the necessary transitional transformation called for by the modernization of Indian society. She could not comprehend the radical change in the importance of education or in acceptance of small family norms.

She could not visualize that Indian poor were also not craving for cheap food but quality education for their next generations. Instead she remained stuck to concepts of throwing crumbs of charity at the poor like her mother in law had done fifty years ago. Sonia Gandhi did not grow with the changing times. Instead of educating her son to know Indian mind in transit and consequently earn their admiration, she struggled hard to leave the party to him as the family heritage. Modern minds do not subscribe to the old and discarded theory that thrones come as heritage. Disasters were written in her lack of comprehension of the transit. 44 seats in the 2014 election was the gift to the Gandhi family for her thinking of their meals.