The Sonia Years - Implosion: India's Tryst with Reality - page 166

al Advisory Council (NAC) that was created to give her the status of a minister of state
with an office staffed and paid for by the government to monitor the implementation of the
UPA's Common Minimum Programme manifesto and, as it turned out later, push pro-poor
policies.
The dynasty was back where it had been in the days of Nehru and his daughter and
grandson - with a member of the family in charge of the government, and with a new gen-
eration in the wings.
The Good Years
The 2004-09 UPA coalition government was stable and worked because there was empathy
between the Congress and a communist-led Left Front that gave parliamentary support
from outside the coalition. There was also an effective coalition coordination committee.
Sonia Gandhi found it easy to deal with some of the Left leaders, as the American Embassy
in New Delhi noted in a 2005 cable to the State Department in Washington that WikiLeaks
publicized in 2011, accurately noting that she seemed 'more comfortable working with the
often high-caste and well-educated Communists than with regional satraps'. 12 This was
despite the fact that the Left blocked many economic reforms and other policies. The chem-
istry between Sonia and Manmohan Singh also worked well, with her running the party and
politics and him the government, despite efforts by some ministers to undermine Singh by
reporting primarily to Sonia. Singh had frequent frustrations with the Left, especially over
opposition to a civil nuclear deal with the US. 'How can I run the government like this?' he
asked rhetorically in 2007, hinting, some thought (wrongly, as it turned out), that he might
resign. 13
Sonia made her mark mostly by insisting on the government introducing policies that
would help the poor and by using a virtual power of veto on policies she considered bad -
usually on economic reforms and development. This often displayed her empathy with the
Left and the liberal economists and social activists she appointed to her National Advisory
Council.
The extent of her interventions were revealed in 2012, when The Economic Times suc-
cessfully filed a right to information application with the National Advisory Council sec-
retariat and found she had written 25 letters to Manmohan Singh and 17 to various cabin-
et ministers from the time the council was constituted for a second time in 2010. 14 These
mostly pushed her social reforms agenda on issues - some major and some minor - such as
a rural employment guarantee scheme, legislation on food security and tribals' forest rights
and enforcement of environmental regulations on controversial mining and other projects.
Between 2010 and 2012, she ensured that domestic workers were included in legislation on