National 3 (Spotlight Weekly)

INDIAN ELECTIONS
A New Beginning

The unexpected outcome of the Indian elections draws comments from far and wide while its impact may be felt in the neighbourhood

By BHAGIRATH YOGI in London

Gandhi : Challenges ahead

As unaccountable royal advisors at the Narayanhiti palace were looking for a new premier with “clean image,” Nepal’s southern neighbour’s millions of voters, including illiterates and poor, had given a clear mandate against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition.

The comeback of the grand old party of Indian politics, Congress, led by Sonia Gandhi with “clean image” is being seen as one more reason to cheer the world’s largest democracy. Interestingly, the pollsters and election pundits had hard time as the election results stunned everybody who were predicting the return of Bharatiya Janata Party at the helms of power in New Delhi amid what its spin-doctors described as “feel-good factor” among the population.

British media, which usually don’t award foreign news items with front page coverage unless it is directly related to them, gave in-depth coverage of the Indian election results and the return of Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. “Another Gandhi to lead India after election shock,” wrote The Daily Telegraph newspaper on Friday (May 14) with the smiling photo of Sonia Gandhi on its front page. The newspaper also splashed photos of India’s first premier, Jawaharlal Nehru, his daughter and prime minister Indira Gandhi and family in its two inside full pages while analyzing different shades of the Indian elections.

The Times, another leading British newspaper, wrote that “The defeat of the BJP must rank as one of the greatest election upsets of all time, matched perhaps only by the defeat of Churchill in 1945 and Truman’s victory in 1948 in wrong footing almost every political pundit.”

It was a “Shock defeat for India’s Hindu nationalists,” declared the left-to-the centre The Guardian daily. It also published an op-ed piece by noted Indian writer Arundhati Roy who claimed that “Let us hope the darkness has passed.” Roy was especially critical of the BJP-led government for, what she said “(its tendency) to use incidents to whip up communal bigotry in a haze of heightened Hindu nationalism.”

So, what may have led Indian voters to reject the glitzy estimated USD 100 million “India shining” campaign at a time when the economy is growing by over 8 percent per annum and thousands of jobs are outsourced into the country from the US and Europe.

British newspapers said that economic factors, besides the anti-incumbency wave, were equally responsible for the election results, if any. The influential Financial Times newspaper reported that (Prime Minister Atal Behari) Vajpayee was trampled by bullock cart economy.” The newspaper quoted Sundeep Waslekar, an analyst, as saying that more than 80 percent of India’s 1.05 billion people live in the “bullock cart economy”—without even the means to afford a bicycle. Another 15 percent lived in the “two-wheeler” economy. They could afford scooters and televisions. And only two percent—about 25 million people—inhabited the “business class” economy, those who can afford to fly and to dine in restaurants, he said.

Wrote The Economist magazine, “In fact, the “India shining” campaign had little resonance for the two-thirds of the 670 million voters who live in the countryside, and remember the bad years that preceded last year’s monsoon.”

India in the Region

Besides the former empire, Indian elections have been watched closely by her neighbours in the region. Pakistani foreign minister, Khurshid Kasuri, said that his country was “looking forward to seriously and closely engaging the next government of India.” His remarks had come after Congress leader, Sonia Gandhi, said that her party—after coming to power—would continue the policy of making peace with its nuclear rival that was spearheaded single-handedly by the outgoing Prime Minister Vajpayee.

South Block : Change of guard

The new Sri Lankan Prime Minister, Mahendra Rajpaksa, urged India to help in the country’s peace process as soon as he assumed office early this year. But the Tamil Tiger rebels are most likely to detest the new Indian leader whose husband had sent Indian army marching in the island to crush them in the eighties. For Bangladesh, the main priority would be to reject allegations that it is harbouring anti-India rebels in its territory.

The results of Indian elections could not have come at a better time for Nepalese parliamentary parties who have been agitating against the monarch for more than last one year. A section of intelligentsia in Kathmandu even said that King Gyanendra was awaiting the result of Indian elections even after a week of the resignation of premier Surya Bahadur Thapa.

According to them, the installation of the Congress-led coalition supported by leftist parties is likely to boost morale of the Nepalese opposition parties. Nepali Congress and CPN (UML) both have close ties with these parties that had sent their delegates to support the pro-democracy movement in Nepal in 1990. Then Indian premier, Rajiv Gandhi, had imposed economic blockade against Nepal for nearly one and half years in 1989-90 thereby accelerating the downfall of the direct rule of the King and Panchayat system.

The defeat of the Hindu nationalist, BJP, is also being seen as a setback to the world’s only Hindu monarch. Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a sister organisation of the BJP, had recently proclaimed King Gyanendra as the Hindu Samrat (Emperor of all the Hindus around the world).

Editor of newly launched SAMAY newsmagazine, Yubaraj Ghimire, who has worked with major Indian newspapers in the past, however, says that change in guards in Delhi is least likely to affect the power equations in Kathmandu. “Of course, it could have some impact on the Maoist insurgency of Nepal,” he said.

According to Ghimire, Congress governments in the past have tolerated anti-King struggles launched by the Nepalese pro-democracy leaders from Indian soil to a certain extent only. Late B. P. Koirala had returned to Nepal adopting the policy of “National Unity and Reconciliation” in 1977 after Indira Gandhi imposed tough restrictions on his party’s activities while in exile in India.

If the new Indian government imposes strict restrictions on the activities of the Maoist rebels—whom it has declared as terrorists-- in its territory, they would be forced to seek negotiated settlement with the Nepalese government, say analysts. It could finally herald the era of peace and reconstruction in the country devastated by the nine-year-old insurgency. The installation of Congress-allied governments in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal states bordering Nepal would further help coordinate India’s central and state governments’ policies towards Nepalese rebels and other issues.

Nepal could also reap benefits from the new Indian government’s likely drive to revive the country’s neglected but vast rural economy. “The first priority of the new government and of any government in India must be to tackle rural poverty and backward agriculture,” said Manmohan Singh, a senior Congress leader and former Finance Minister, after the poll results. “This is the inescapable lesson of the election,” he added.

Unfortunately, greater subsidy in fertiliser, electricity and other agricultural inputs to Indian farmers might result into inflow of cheap Indian produce into the Nepali market thereby adding woes to the Nepali farmers. The government, hence, would need to devise policies to deal with such a situation. The revival in Indian rural economy, that would further boost the country’s high economic growth, would in fact benefit Nepal in terms of expansion in bilateral trade and investment.

Says Ghimire, “A major shift in India’s Nepal policy is least likely despite the new government coming to power in Delhi. It would also depend on how we resolve our internal problems and deal with our neighbour.”

In any case, it is a new beginning for Sonia Gandhi. London-based The Times newspaper concluded its Leader saying that, “She may be inexperienced, but she is courageous, honest and dogged. She must now act wisely.”