corruption as evidence of its sensitivity to the scourge congress needs to strongly fight back on corruption as allegations of sweet heart deals and crony capitalism threaten to hurt its effort to pitch reforms as the need of the hour to beat a global slowdown and ensure high levels of growth to fund welfare programmes and boost employment at the same time the consensus on reforms can be shaken as sonias intervention in hiking the bar for land acquisition and a quick midnight rollback on hike in cooking gas prices makes all too clear new oil minister veerappa moily has hinted that the six cylinder cap on lpg can also be relaxed sonia is keenly conscious of her commitment to propoor schemes and her projection as a caring mother figure among the disadvantaged sections she has been skeptical of measures to exclude or prune beneficiaries of welfare programme on the grounds that such efforts only end up hurting the needy and dispossessed welfare impulses are likely to reassert themselves periodically while the pm and finance minister p chidambaram are insistent that there can be no slackening in the reforms process arguing stunted growth will cripple upa in the next general election the forceful advocacy of reforms as being needed not only to stave off a damaging sovereign downgrade at the hands of rating agencies but to also to ensure purported vote getting programmes like rural roads drinking water housing food security health and urban renewal are not strangled by lack of funds has proved effective so far