The honest answer is, the Congress did some uncharacteristic introspection and attempted course correction; this has made it more united, coherent, and confident. But it must do much more if it wants to perform well in next year's elections.

Nainital saw the Congress attempt a measure of co-ordination between its organisational wing and its 14 state governments. It also tried to reconcile internal differences on some policy issues.

On organisational matters, party president Sonia Gandhi emphatically and categorically ruled out the appointment of a deputy prime minister. She expressed complete confidence in Dr Manmohan Singh.

She was clearly keen to scotch rumours that Mr Pranab Mukherjee was being considered for the deputy PM post. The rumours' source was none other than Mr Mukherjee himself, who has become super-ambitious even though he has emerged as the Cabinet's number two.

Ms Gandhi's statement was only appropriate given the division of labour between her and Dr Singh. Although there's a widespread impression that Ms Gandhi stands on Dr Singh's left on policy issues and is more averse to neo-liberal economics and a pro-United States foreign policy, she has decided to be discreet on these differences.

She trusts Dr Singh as a loyal died-in-the-wool bureaucrat who knows how to "work the system," but who is also aware of his limitations as a political leader.

She obviously doesn't share that level of comfort with Mr Mukherjee: he's far more Machiavellian and cynical than the average Congressman. He's also pro-US and hawkish towards Pakistan.

Ms Gandhi's clarification on the deputy PM issue is an internal matter of the Congress. Of greater public interest was her questioning of policies: on Special Economic Zones; and pursuit of counter-terrorism at the expense of innocent people. Ms Gandhi initiated a discussion on these, although Dr Singh carried it further on the second.

Ms Gandhi acknowledged India's acute agrarian crisis. She underscored farmers' suicides -- 100,000 over a decade, a number unprecedented anywhere -- as "a challenge to our collective conscience [which] beckon us to immediate action."

The party adopted a paper which recommends a "farmer-friendly" agricultural policy as opposed to the National Democratic Alliance's "corporate-friendly" policy. Even as this was said, 11 farmers killed themselves in Maharashtra's Vidarbha region. Since Dr Singh's July visit there, a frightening 298 farmers have committed suicide.

The Congress must go further than implement changes likely to be recommended by National Commission on Farmers, including lowering the farm credit interest rate from 7 to 4 percent and promoting crop insurance.

What's essential is land reform, higher public investment, and emphases on dryland-centred low-energy-input farming, and on hardy natural seeds rather than manufactured or genetically manipulated ones like BT cotton.

Implementing this alone can save the Congress from being branded "anti-farmer."

The Congress has wisely decided to go slow on SEZs. Ms Gandhi said: "Prime agriculture land should not be diverted to non-agricultural uses. Farmers must get proper compensation [and] become stakeholders in [SEZs] projects."

Commerce Minister Kamal Nath wrote to the states saying that SEZs should have no more than one-tenth of their area on farmland (although he exempted single-cropped land from this). Agricultural Minister Sharad Pawar wants farmers to be given 12.5 percent of the land developed by SEZ promoters.

SEZs have become synonymous with a massive land grab and generated huge protests. These threaten to become a mass movement. The UPA must reverse the sanction granted to 181 SEZs.

What the Congress does on the issue of terrorism will have an even greater impact on India. Its leadership has done well to admit that innocent people, especially innocent Muslims, are often harassed for their suspected involvement in terrorist violence --without evidence.

This admission comes within barely two weeks of Dr Singh's urgent call for "a proactive policy to ensure that a few individual acts do not result in tarnishing the image of an entire community, and remove any feelings of persecution and alienation from the minds of the minorities."

At Nainital, Dr Singh was blunter. He bemoaned the fact that our "law enforcing mechanism… lines up the entire population in a locality for questioning." He traced the "communal sensitivities" of the police to the "erroneous linkage -- made by the West -- of treating actions of a few as typical of the community as a whole."

Dr Singh called for more minority representation in police and intelligence agencies: "We can at least try and re-deploy capable officers of minority communities to sensitive areas in large numbers."

This reform is long overdue. The Mumbai and Malegaon attacks underscore its urgency. The police rounded up scores of Muslims in both, although Muslims were the terrorists' sole target in Malegaon.

Even in Mumbai, the presumption is that a "foreign agency" (read, Pakistani) was involved because RDX was used -- a material which governments alone possess. This presumption is utterly, dangerously, false. RDX is regularly smuggled through Bangladesh, Burma, Pakistan, and across the two seaboards.

Outlook magazine's latest cover story shows that RDX is easily available near the West Bengal border for Rs 80 per gram. Two reporters bought 250 grams of it, without any special introduction, password, or determination of its intended use.

We must own up to an unpleasant truth. There are enough grievances in India, which, deplorably, provoke extremism. The Indian state has aggravated many grievances through its prejudiced or communal behaviour.

The "Western" framework that Dr Singh criticised views terrorism as "Islamic" and advocates an Islamophobic approach to counter it. This framework worsens the problem. It'll make our citizens more insecure.

The existing approach will further communalise security and police agencies and accelerate the cycle of violence and counter-violence. The Congress must discard the approach -- as quickly as it revised the SEZ policy.

Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.