A banner depicting Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi at an election rally at Allahabad in 2009. A banner depicting Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi at an election rally at Allahabad in 2009.

Between blowing hot and blowing cold on the Anna Hazare movement, the Congress leadership has lost its breath. The sheer absence of leadership has ripped apart the credibility of the Government and raised questions about whether the prime minister can continue. Rahul Gandhi has been unable to fill the vacuum. Sonia Gandhi is abroad recovering from surgery. The Opposition parties are delighted to see the Government twisting in the wind. The seemingly perfect division of power between Sonia Gandhi, the politician, and Manmohan Singh, the policy wonk, has imploded, exposing a party riven by indecision and miscommunication.

The trouble starts from the top. On August 17, speaking in Parliament, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh defended his Government's decision to arrest Hazare. He called Hazare's protest 'misconceived'. On August 23, he did an about-turn by writing a letter of surrender to Hazare. It caught a number of senior Congress leaders by surprise, including the party's most powerful General Secretary, Janardan Dwivedi, who learnt of it through the media. Dwivedi is Sonia's speechwriter, a member of the four-member "core group" appointed by her to look after the party's affairs in her absence, and chairman of the party's media cell. Clearly, in Sonia's absence, nobody bothered to inform her team at the party headquarters about the reversal of the Government's position. There was disquiet among senior ministers as well. Said a Cabinet minister, "If he had to write such a honey-tinged note, why didn't he do this in the first place and save us all this trouble?"

The lack of communication between different wings of party and Government was evident as early as August 16, when Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni was briefing the media. When asked where Hazare would be taken after his arrest, she categorically stated that he would not be going to Delhi's Tihar Jail. A few minutes after her press conference ended, Anna was on his way to Tihar.

Pranab Mukherjee Pranab Mukherjee

Disarray became total in the week after Anna's arrest and release. On August 22, even as the Government continued to contest Team Anna's Jan Lokpal Bill, Congress MP Praveen Singh Aron decided to introduce Team Anna's bill in Parliament as a private member's bill. Priya Dutt, a Congress MP from Mumbai, publicly stated that the Government's version of the Lokpal Bill was weak. Other young Congress MPs representing urban areas, such as Sandeep Dikshit and Milind Deora, used various forums including Twitter to argue that the points Hazare was raising were perfectly reasonable. They were responding to pressure from the ground.

There was speculation that Rahul may have instructed the young MPs to distance themselves from the Government. One young Congress MP said there was no such diktat. "We have not been advised by Rahul to say anything in support of Anna, but when we are asked specific questions, how can we keep quiet?" The vocal Sanjay Nirupam appeared on a television show wearing an 'I am Anna' cap. With a government already on the backfoot, the party seemed in a shambles. Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi sought to clarify talk of a rift in the party, "Let me make it clear that these things, which you describe as dissenting views, are not so. What you have heard are diverse views converging on the basic principle that the anti-corruption campaign must receive primacy." From Rahul, the de facto leader of the Congress youth brigade, there was only deafening silence.

Some Congressmen, anxious to protect their leader's reputation, said that it was an exasperated Sonia who finally directed the prime minister to appoint Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee as interlocutor between the Government and Team Anna. His presence restored some level of sanity. That Mukherjee, the most politically astute minister among the big five in the UPA, was completely out of the loop on the Hazare crisis until then was evident on August 21 when, in response to a question on the Government's strategy for Team Anna from a reporter in Kolkata, he said, "The prime minister and home minister have made the Government's stand about the Lokpal Bill clear. I have nothing more to add."

Mukherjee was upset at the manner in which his views had been ignored by the Prime Minister in the flurry of events leading to Hazare's arrest. At a meeting in the Prime Minister's house on August 14, a group of senior ministers had gathered to decide the strategy to deal with Hazare's proposed fast. In that meeting, Home Minister P. Chidambaram came armed with a detailed brief from the Intelligence Bureau, which unambiguously suggested that the Government arrest Hazare. Both Mukherjee and Defence Minister A.K. Antony are learnt to have disagreed with Chidambaram, and argued that arresting Hazare would be "politically unwise". The Prime Minister, more in tune with bureaucratic process than the pulse of popular politics, opted to side with Chidambaram, who also had the support of hrd Minister Kapil Sibal. The consequence was a political disaster for the Congress.

Said an angry Congress member, "If Sonia Gandhi had been around, Antony's and Mukherjee's views would have found greater support." Mukherjee later clashed with Chidambaram on the latter's handling of the protest in a meeting held at 7, Race Course Road soon after Hazare's arrest. According to a source, Chidambaram continued to defend his ministry's decision. Mukherjee interrupted him and angrily accused the home minister of messing up and then trying to exonerate himself by using logic. Mukherjee was firm that politics cannot be done in this manner.

On the fateful days of August 15 and August 16, the Prime Minister depended entirely on the advice of Chidambaram and Sibal, both better known for their legal and administrative skills than a feel for mass politics. The lawyer-minister duo was convinced that Hazare could be dealt with in the same manner as Baba Ramdev. They underestimated his credibility, public support and the mood of a people who want to reclaim their nation. The arrest of Hazare, its subsequent reversal and Hazare's insistence on not leaving Delhi's Tihar Jail until all pre-conditions for his fast were removed, gravely damaged the Government's credibility while winning Hazare greater public support.

People wait for Hazare's release at the Ramlila Maidan in Delhi on August 18. People wait for Hazare's release at the Ramlila Maidan in Delhi on August 18.

Incredibly, an inept political leadership in the Government, through its arrest of Hazare, switched the discourse from corruption to the fundamental right to free speech. According to Congress party sources, it was Rahul's intervention which forced the prime minister to order Hazare's release from jail. The Congress general secretary, however, did not make any public statement on the Hazare movement. On August 18, when the Government was still negotiating the terms of Hazare's release from prison, bizarrely, Rahul went to Pune to express solidarity with the families of farmers killed in police firing. His absence from Delhi was a complete misjudgment of the national mood. The Hazare movement could have been Rahul's moment to step up and be counted for the party his family considers its own. This was a crisis that involves his core constituency-the aam admi and the youth. Some eager Congress MPs told the media that Rahul would go to the Ramlila Maidan with a glass of juice and a promise to raise Hazare's concerns with the Government. But it didn't happen.

Instead, Rahul has done his best to distance himself from the crisis. On August 20, at a function at the party headquarters in Delhi, he was asked by the media to comment on Hazare's demands. He refused. He has had three one-on-one meetings with the Prime Minister on the issue where he is believed to have expressed his reservations on the Government's original decision to arrest Hazare. The four-member Congress "core group" appointed by Sonia Gandhi, of which Rahul is a member, has not met even once during the crisis. The turmoil is breeding rabid ambitions with small-time Congress worker Jagdish Sharma even organising posters of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra hailing her as Waqt ki Pukaar (Need of the hour).

In another signal of a vacuum in top leadership, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh took his Cabinet colleagues by surprise on August 22 when he held a press conference and announced he would be drafting a grievance redressal bill which would soon be on his ministry's website. Ramesh was speaking on a subject that did not fall in the domain of his ministry.

On the same afternoon when Law Minister Salman Khurshid, Congress MP Sandeep Dikshit and Pawan Khera, political adviser to Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, were hammering out a negotiation with Team Anna-Arvind Kejriwal, Prashant Bhushan and Kiran Bedi-Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Bansal briefed the media about six non-negotiable points where the Government could not give in. Later that evening, Mukherjee met Team Anna and worked out a compromise on some of these 'non-negotiable' points. The party was talking in different voices with no single authority at the top.

Finally, on August 25, the Prime Minister spoke in Parliament, asking Hazare to end his fast now that "he has made his point. It has registered with us". His appeal was echoed by Leader of Opposition Sushma Swaraj. What also bolstered the Government was the unofficial resolve at the all-party meeting on August 24, to safeguard the supremacy of the Parliament in framing laws. The Government has now adopted a two-pronged approach to convince Hazare to break his fast by deputing a senior leader from Maharashtra to speak to Hazare in Marathi, while Khursheed, Dikshit and Khera engage his team on the details.

But the disarray in the party and Government is taking a serious toll on governance. Critical legislation, including the one on land acquisition, has been stalled. Things have reached a point where a distracted Government is unable to decide even routine but crucial appointments. The National Highways Authority of India has been headless for seven months. This has put a spanner in the Rs 3 lakh crore that the Government wants invested in the National Highways Development Programme, more than half of which is to come from the private sector. The UPA's record on building roads has been poor since 2004. It is set to get worse.

The lack of a firm central leadership is taking a toll on the Congress party in key states. In Maharashtra, a Congress stronghold in the general elections of 2004 and 2009, the party has split into various factions led by heavyweights such as Ashok Chavan, Vilasrao Deshmukh and Narayan Rane. In the recently concluded monsoon session of the state Assembly, seven MLAs who support Ashok Chavan left the House whenever the former chief minister did. State Industries Minister Rane is particularly unhappy with Prithviraj's "slow pace of functioning". A Marathi newspaper, Prahaar, owned by Rane, recently published a story stating that almost 8,000 files were pending because the Chief Minister does not take decisions. Alliance partner NCP holds key portfolios such as Home, Finance, Energy and Rural Development, at least some of which Prithviraj believes should be with the Congress if the party is to expand its base in the state. He is, however, unable to muster any support from a leaderless Delhi high command and bargain hard with NCP.

In Andhra Pradesh, which provided the Congress with more than 30 MPs in the Lok Sabha in 2004 and 2009, the party has been in self-destruct mode since Chidambaram's unilateral announcement in 2009 favouring the creation of Telangana. Chidambaram later softened his stand but the damage had been done. Things got worse for the Congress in Andhra after the high command in Delhi decided against appointing Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, son of popular late chief minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, as chief minister. He split from the Congress to form his own ysr Congress party. Jagan is confident of victory. In an exclusive interview to India Today while on a tour of rural Andhra Pradesh, Jagan said, "If elections were held today, I would get 240 seats in the state. This is not my arrogance, this is my confidence."

The Congress has responded to Jagan's rising popularity in the state with an 'administrative' tactic. The Union Government has initiated a CBI probe into his vast wealth. The move may yet backfire. Twenty-six Congress MLAs and two MPs have already quit in protest against the CBI's actions. The naming of Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy as a co-conspirator by the CBI has had an even worse impact than the perceived persecution of Jagan. Says a confident and belligerent Jagan, "The more Congress insults me, my father and my family, the more it will lose MLAs." He adds, "Name one leader (in the Congress) capable of pulling crowds." Jagan is confident of garnering support even in Telangana. He says, "I am sympathetic to the Telangana cause." And he adds, "I do not need the CBI to rattle a political opponent. I have God and the masses on my side." Jagan has thrown down the gauntlet. Nobody from the Congress's local or central leadership has a political answer to the Jagan challenge.

The Congress had projected the trinity of Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Manmohan Singh as its leadership in the general elections of 2009. That leadership was given an impressive mandate by the people of India, the best for the Congress in two decades. Two years on, all the goodwill and hope has disappeared only to be replaced by public anger at what is perceived as a Government without credibility. Yet, none of the three top leaders is speaking to the people of India, ceding the mainstream discourse almost completely to Team Anna. Sonia is of course indisposed. But the bumbling Manmohan and the evasive Rahul are greatly damaging the Congress cause. If the party is to revive even a shred of its lost credibility, one of them needs to begin to lead.

- With Shantanu Guha Ray and Kiran Tare