Congress president Sonia Gandhi said: Our Chintan Shivir in this historic city with such a glorious heritage has as its theme Nav Sankalp.

It gives us an opportunity to discuss amongst ourselves the numerous challenges that the country is facing as a result of the policies of the BJP and of the RSS and its affiliates.

It is also an occasion to deliberate on the many tasks ahead of us.

So it is both a chintan about national issues and a meaningful atma-chintan about our party organization.

I am well aware that many of our colleagues wanted to be here but we had to limit participation for a variety of reasons. I am sure they will all understand. Not being here does not in any way devalue the role they are playing in our organization. 

By now it has become abundantly and most painfully clear what Prime Minister Modi and his colleagues really mean by their frequently repeated slogan: maximum governance, minimum government.

It means keeping the country in a state of permanent polarization, compelling our people to live in a constant state of fear and insecurity. 

It means viciously targeting, victimizing and often brutalising minorities who are an integral part of our society and are equal citizens of our republic.

It means using our society’s age-old pluralities to divide us and subverting the carefully nurtured idea of unity in diversity.

It means threatening and intimidating political opponents, maligning their reputations, jailing them on flimsy pretexts, misusing investigative agencies against them.

It means eroding the independence and professionalism of all institutions of democracy. 

It means the wholesale reinvention of history, constant denigration of our leaders especially Jawaharlal Nehru and systematic moves to distort, deny and destroy their contributions, achievements and sacrifices.

It means glorifying killers of Mahatma Gandhi and their ideologues. 

It means blatant undermining of principles and provisions of our Constitution, of its pillars of justice, liberty, equality, fraternity and secularism.

It means turning a blind eye to continued atrocities on weaker sections, especially dalits, adivasis and women.

It means using fear to make the bureaucracy, corporate India, civil society and sections of the media fall in line.