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Vajpayee rides the winds of
change
By Ranjit Devraj
NEW
DELHI - India's Congress party has suffered a massive
setback with the loss to the Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP), which rules the central government, of three of
the four states that went to the polls this week to
elect new provincial assemblies.
After losing
Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh states,
Congress, founded in 1884, found itself completely wiped
out of the populous, politically dominant and
Hindi-speaking heartland of the country. As a
consolation, Congress retained Delhi state, which houses
the national capital, but is not in the same league as
provinces like Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh that have
populations of around 60 million people each.
Congress, which leads the opposition in the
national parliament, was in power in all four states and
expected to concede only Madhya Pradesh to the BJP. The
sudden loss of Rajasthan and Chattisgarh came as a major
blow. The BJP won landslide victories in all three
states. "We are disappointed - there has been some
deficiency in the campaign management," said Ashwini
Kumar, spokesman for Congress, soon after the results
became apparent.
The resounding defeat is bound
to reflect badly on the leadership of Congress by the
Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, whose projection as the
party's prime ministerial candidate for the 2004 general
elections is a hugely controversial issue. Gandhi, who
personally campaigned in the four states, focused on
such issues as secularism. But the pro-Hindu BJP steered
studiously clear of religion and stuck instead to the
issues of development and governance by state
governments led by Congress.
In Madhya Pradesh,
for example, the BJP's chief ministerial candidate Uma
Bharti was swathed in the saffron robes of a Hindu
ascetic, but focused her election campaign on the poor
state of public roads, electricity shortages and
irregular water supply. The strategy apparently produced
dividends. Analysts see the election results as a
turning point for the BJP in its attempts to transform
itself from being a party that harps on religion into a
mainstream party capable of taking on the
better-established Congress on its terms. Kumar conceded
that the focus of elections had shifted to the
development agenda, as did Salman Khurshid, another
senior Congress party leader.
Delhi state was
retained by Congress party chief minister Sheila
Dikshit, mainly on the strength of her efforts to build
better roads, improve electricity supplies through
privatization and convert the entire public transport
system of bus and taxi fleets to run on green,
compressed natural gas. An interesting feature of the
elections was the fact that it has thrown up three woman
chief ministers, including the BJP's candidate in
Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje Scindia.
In
Chattisgarh, the BJP was forced to drop its chief
ministerial candidate Dilip Singh Judeo after he was
caught on video accepting wads of currency in return for
promises of mining concessions to an agent representing
an Australian firm. But the expose did not prevent the
BJP from sweeping the polls and ousting Congress party
chief minister Ajit Jogi, who has been accused of
masterminding the sting operation against Judeo. Judeo
had to be sacked as a central minister by Prime Minister
Atal Bihari Vajpayee as part of damage control after the
tapes were aired on several television channels in the
midst of campaigning.
Vajpayee, who left for
Nigeria to attend the Commonwealth heads of government
meeting on Thursday, told reporters that he attributed
his party's victory to its focus on development issues
and avoidance of religious issues. The landslide
victories are likely to strengthen Vajpayee, who has
been criticized by party hardliners for having sidelined
the agenda of building a temple on the site in Ayodhya
town in northern Uttar Pradesh state. There, a little
more than 10 years ago, supporters of the BJP demolished
a 16th century mosque. Vajpayee has since publicly
regretted the demolition of the mosque and has preferred
to allow the courts to settle the issue of who owns the
site, rather than allow the hardliners to go ahead and
build the temple.
As a moderate, Vajpayee,
however, commands the respect of regional parties who
are partners in the ruling National Democratic Alliance
coalition that the BJP leads and are opposed to the
temple-building agenda. Vajpayee also scotched
speculation that he would call for early elections - due
in October next year - on the strength of the BJP's
victories in the provinces and an economic boom spurred
by a good monsoon and comfortable foreign exchange
reserves exceeding US$100 billion.
Winning the
elections would also indirectly help Vajpayee negotiate
peace with India's rival and neighbor Pakistan, where he
is due next month to attend the South Asian Association
for Regional Cooperation meeting. In short, this week's
elections are an indicator of which way the political
wind is blowing. And it is blowing the BJP way - but a
poor monsoon before the general elections next year
could easily change the direction.
(Inter Press
Service)
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