Mon, May 17, 2004 page9

• India's revolutionary restoration

  The message from the electors was clear; they are far more interested in getting rid of poverty, than in the BJP's xenophobic promise of a pure Hindu state

  • By Satyabrata Rai Chowdhuri
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  The day before India's stunning election results were announced was the quiet before the storm. Instead of bold pronouncements by the parties there were quiet calculations about possible alliances, because everyone was predicting a hung Parliament.

  But May 12 saw a tandava, an Indian dance form that turns everything topsy-turvy in a dance of doom.

  India's politics were turned upside down, with the Congress Party, seemingly lifeless and leaderless, suddenly rebounding to claim victory.

  

  ILLUSTRATION: YU SHA

  With that victory comes a restoration of the Nehru-Gandhi family that dominated Indian politics since independence a half-century ago.

  The biggest factor in this stunning upset was voter anger at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The ruling BJP, the major partner of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), had brought the country unprecedented rates of growth. Yet its policies and, more importantly, its language seemed to ignore the vast majority of poor Indians who had benefited little from the country's new high-tech economy.

  The BJP campaigned as if it deserved a coronation for the many changes they brought. But instead of a coronation, India's voters preferred a restoration.

  The emergence of Congress as the largest single party and of its 219-seat alliance as the biggest grouping is the most astonishing result in the history of Indian electoral politics, as was the Left's stunning tally of 63. With outside support from the Left -- if not its participation in the government -- Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born widow of one prime minister (her murdered husband Rajiv) and the daughter-in-law of another (Indira) looks set to become India's prime minister within days.

  There is no doubt that the result makes a mockery of the jibe that Sonia Gandhi's foreign origin make her unfit to rule, a charge NDA leaders had built their campaign on.

  But the lady who unleashed the tsunami on India's politics retained her legendary composure throughout. Her calm and focus on the poor convinced those left behind by India's new economy that she was with them.

  Congress, though making no promises to undo any of the BJP reforms, had relocated its soul as the voice of India's impoverished masses. Sonia's victory, indeed, was a near-unanimous verdict for the politics of inclusiveness -- economic, social and cultural -- over the BJP's divisiveness and xenophobia.

  Indeed, it was the BJP's relentless hype about its economic success, its Hindu chauvinism and its anti-Sonia videshi (foreign) invective that ultimately pushed the other India, the old India of poverty, toward the underdog and long-written-off Congress Party.

  Nowhere was this more evident than in Gujarat in the west and Tamil Nadu in the south, where the two chief ministers ran virulent campaigns against the Italian bahu (wife). Rising from political wilderness, the Sonia-led Congress showed that it had the grit and gumption to be an engine of change. But why did the NDA, which had changed India so much, suffer such an electoral debacle, getting drubbed almost everywhere in the country?

  One reason is the resentment of India's 100 million Muslims. This huge minority will never forget the Gujarat massacre of just a few years ago, where a BJP governor seemed to wink and connive in the slaughter of countless Muslims.

  Government employees also grew to loathe the BJP. They feared for their jobs, and also feared an underpaid and premature retirement. Retirees also did not back the BJP, because their financial security was threatened by lower interest rates.

  The BJP leaders hyped the Hindi issue of the Hindutva and Ram temple to such a ridiculous extent that secular-minded people turned away from the party despite their appreciation of the country's economic progress. The middle class and poor villagers alike became frustrated because the BJP's "feel-good" budget did not benefit them in any way.

  Throw in any number of financial scams by BJP politicians, and it is no surprise that an angry electorate threw the government out. People wanted change and Sonia Gandhi promised change.

  What changes she will bring are anyone's guess. Her victory came on the politics of resentment, and on her possession of a name that remains magical with India's rural and urban poor.

  She will need to be as effective a policy magician as she proved to be magician in campaigning to make this Gandhi restoration succeed.

  Satyabrata Rai Chowdhuri is research coordinator at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Copyright: Project Syndicate
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