Sonia Gandhi abandons private plane in austerity drive

India's ruling party makes symbolic gestures to show it is in touch with the suffering masses
Sonia Gandhi
Congress party president Sonia Gandhi: taking commercial flight to party rally. Photograph: Gurinder Osan/AP GURINDER OSAN/AP

Sonia Gandhi, the president of India's ruling Congress party, underlined her government's austerity drive today by forgoing her private army plane and taking a commercial flight to a party rally in Mumbai.

Gandhi has been leading a campaign to make symbolic gestures of solidarity with India's teeming millions who are coping with the worst drought in 20 years as well as an under-performing economy.

The Congress leader has already intervened to ban ministers from staying in five-star hotels in the capital and to scale down the security of 50 ministers who, up until now, have been trailed by armed soldiers.

Such is the sway of the 62-year-old political leader and grandmother that the cabinet has been scrambling to don proverbial hair shirts. On Saturday, the finance minister took a budget airline to Kolkata.

Not to be outdone, India's external affairs minister, SM Krishna, announced his next trip to central Asia will be on a commercial flight and will include three, rather than 20, accompanying officials. The foreign minister usually travels by private jet.

Prime minister Manmohan Singh, a noted economist who has frequently drawn attention to the excessive consumption of India's elite, has reportedly agreed to make some "exceptions" ‑ for business class tickets.

With a growing divide between rich and poor, some Congress ministers have taken to public displays of solidarity with ordinary people. Shashi Tharoor, a noted author and former deputy to United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan who is now a minister, was pictured eating Indian sweets in a local cafe and chatting to voters.

The moves are part of the Congress party's strategy to build support among the rural masses who have been largely left behind by the country's economic rise yet have borne the brunt of the economy's deceleration. India is expected to grow at 6% this year, some way off the 8% it has clocked in the last five years.

It is widely accepted that the party's populist measures, such as guaranteeing employment to the rural poor and fattening the pay packets of government servants, helped the Congress return to power in general elections earlier this year.

Experts say however that rising inequality is a potential "time bomb" that could explode under the Congress party.

A study earlier this year showed India, where more than 300 million people live in dire poverty, had 50 billionaires who together controlled wealth that was equivalent to 20% of gross domestic product and, reportedly, 80% of stock market capitalisation.

"This concentration of wealth and influence could be a hidden time bomb under India's social fabric," warned the authors of the US-based Emerging Markets Forum.

Gandhi's decision is not without risks. Her mother-in-law and husband were both assassinated and, since then, the Gandhi family has been protected by a thick cordon of guards. On her flight, it is understood her security personnel took up two rows of seats.