``Yes, I am in hurry, but it's not the hurry of an old man hankering for power!'' The Congress Party's octogenarian President, Sitaram Kesri, was heard shouting in his bedroom as he rehearsed his historic address to the three-day plenary session of the party, which begins in Calcutta on August 8.The jibe is aimed at former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda, whom Kesri had dislodged by withdrawing support to the United Front Government a few months ago and repledging it only after the UF constituents, including the high and mighty Left, were forced to replace him with I.K. Gujral.

Apparently, Kesri has not forgotten the way Deve Gowda lampooned him in Parliament, during the discussion on the vote of confidence, before bowing out. Describing Kesri as `an old man in hurry', Deve Gowda had suggested that Kesri's sole objective was to grab the Prime Ministership of the country by hook or crook.

Having established his hegemony over the country's oldest, if somewhat decaying, political party, Kesri is now faced with two major problems. He has to give reasonable hope to his uneasy flock, that regaining the reigns at the Raisina Hills is not only possible but probable in the near future. At the same time he has to give the party an agenda which would enable it to lure back large sections of the society in different parts of the country which have been weaned away from it.

``Yes I am in a hurry. But I am in a hurry to ensure that the Dalits get their dues, that the minorities again feel secure and satisfied with the Congress and that the weaker sections and the women realise that the Congress is their only ray of hope in this dark age,'' Kesri's draft speech runs on.

At the tactical level, Kesri will aim his guns not only at the BJP but also the Left, which is contending with the Congress to retain its moral authority to have the final say in the shape of the secular block that will emerge after the next Lok Sabha polls. And since the Left has been taking pot shots at him and the Congress-friendly I.K. Gujral through H.D. Deve Gowda, the latter cannot be spared either.

AICC spokesman V.N. Gadgil gave a clear indication of it when he took a leaf from former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's accusation that Deve Gowda himself had attended an RSS rally and praised the organisation which is guiding the Hindutva forces with a remote control. Only Gadgil went a step ahead and charged that Deve Gowda was still hobnobbing with the BJP.

And Kesri knows his partymen only too well. That even though he has managed to outwit and outflank the likes of Sharad Pawar and Rajesh Pilot for the time being, his potential challengers are only waiting in the wings. And they could be from among his present set of friends also.

This explains his decision of not getting involved in any of the panels being floated on the eve of the crucial election of the Congress Working Committee members. When the election to the CWC members were last held at Tirupathi during P.V. Narasimha Rao's dispensation, Arjun Singh had won by securing the largest number of votes and later started using this to forge an anti-Rao front within the party.

Kesri's decision to appoint Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee chief Jitendra Prasada as the party president was part of this strategy. Prasada had not only helped him in countering the threat from Pawar during the elections for the party presidentship, but also taken on Pawar for openly advocating a Congress-Samajwadi Party alliance without consulting the UPCC headed by it. Prasada, whose State accounts for the largest number of AICC delegates, can be depended upon not only to keep Pawar and N.D. Tiwari out of reckoning but also to discourage other ambitious heavyweights like Arjun Singh, K. Vijaya Bhaskara Reddy and K. Karunakaran.

On the eve of the Calcutta session, the idea of pushing up younger, comparatively untried leaders to key positions in the Congress Party establishment was floated by Kesri's political managers themselves. Even as Kesri is all set to convince the world that he is not an `old man in a hurry', he knows that his party is full of old men in a hurry. And any of them could jump at the first opportunity to question the wisdom of his ways the moment things start going wrong. Had this not happened with P.V. Narasimha Rao?

Setting up a new political agenda confronts Kesri with another set of problems. He may hope that the ultimate collapse of the mark II version of the UF Government at the Centre would somewhat drive away the support base of quite a few UF constituents from them. But he cannot be sure that these disenchanted sections would automatically turn to the Congress.

In Orissa, for instance, the splinters from Biju Patnaik's Janata Dal are gravitating towards the BJP. In Maharashtra, the Muslims are still not convinced that a Congress under Pawar offers them an alternative to the Shiva Sena-BJP rule. They have shown signs of backing a leader like Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav from far away Uttar Pradesh.

Ironically, it is West Bengal, the venue of the Congress plenary session, which epitomises the type of problems Kesri faces in regaining the party's lost paradise. Though the Left Front there seems to be losing some of the ground it held during its 20-years rule, the principle gainer could well be the BJP if the latest election results are any indication. And with the State's angry young congresswoman Mamata Banerjee -- one of the few with an established mass following in the State -- still sulking, the party organisation can hardly be said to be in a combat-ready condition.

Then there are other problematic States like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. In Bihar, Kesri appears to have almost worked out a tie-up with Laloo Prasad's Rashirtya Janata Dal. But in Uttar Pradesh, where it has had tactical alliances with first the Samajwadi Party and then the Bahujan Samaj Party, its gameplan is far from clear as sections of the party's rank and file are opposed to both Mulayam and Mayawati.

In Tamil Nadu, Tamil Maanila Congress leaders are even now distrustful of Kesri's strategy in the background of his known proximity with AIADMK leader J. Jayalalitha. And by installing a Jayalalitha acolyte like K.V. Thangkabalu as the TNCC chief, Kesri has strengthened their apprehensions.The Calcutta plenary will thus present a stiff challenge to Kesri, for he will not only have to pack the party's resolutions on political, economic and foreign policy with new catchy slogans, but also take hard, pragmatic decisions about the party's future electoral allies in the times to come.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.