Vajpayee prepares India for
polls By Ranjit Devraj
NEW
DELHI - Buoyed by a booming economy, resounding
victories in recent provincial elections and a
diplomatic breakthrough with neighboring Pakistan, the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Atal
Bihari Vajpayee is likely to call early general
elections in or around April rather than wait until
September as scheduled.
Though yet to be
officially announced, the government gave the game away
by indicating that it would not be presenting a regular
annual budget at the end of February as scheduled, but
go in for a parliamentary "vote-on-account".
Late last week, the government also announced a
slew of tax cuts designed to please India's affluent,
urban middle class, from which the BJP draws most of its
support. The move has already drawn criticism from
opposition parties that the rural masses have been
ignored.
BJP leaders obviously believe that a
"feel good factor" generated by an exceptionally good
monsoon last year may quickly dissipate if they wait
until the actual expiry of the government's five-year
term in office in September.
The economy is
robust and for the first time in its history, India has
comfortable foreign exchange reserves of over US$100
billion, with the GDP growth rate now set to rise at an
unprecedented 7.5 percent.
The BJP's regional
partners in the ruling National Democratic Alliance have
left the decision of early elections to Vajpayee. One of
them, the Telugu Desam Party, which rules southern
Andhra Pradesh state, has already dissolved its
provincial assembly in the hope of capitalizing on a
sympathy wave for Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, who
survived an assassination attempt in October.
In
contrast to the buoyant mood in the BJP camp, the
opposition Congress party appears to be in disarray
after suffering shock defeats to the ruling party in the
three major states in provincial elections last month.
The monolithic Congress party, which led the
country to independence in 1947 and dominated national
politics subsequently, is now shoring up its defenses by
building partnerships in the states with regional
parties - something it has been reluctant to do so far.
For example, in southern Tamil Nadu state it has tied up
with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) party, which
was once accused of complicity in the 1991 assassination
of Congress party leader Rajiv Gandhi.
In fact,
veteran DMK leader Karunanidhi has been declared leader
of a new coalition of "secular" parties that is now
taking shape and which will include the Congress party
and other "like-minded" political formations or
individual politicians. "We do not want to go into the
past - Karunanidhi is a big leader and we will work
together to defeat communal forces," said Congress
leader and former finance minister Manmohan Singh.
But the Congress lacks a leader with the stature
of Vajpayee. Its chief, Sonia Gandhi, has found herself
on the defensive against attacks centered around her
Italian birth from both within and outside her party.
In contrast, Vajpayee seems during his five-year
term in power to have only enhanced his personal
popularity, despite several major scandals that
implicated members of his cabinet. For instance, BJP
party president Bangaru Laxman was forced to resign
after a sting operation by news portal Tehelka which
caught him on tape accepting wads of currency in
exchange for help in concluding defense purchase deals
and also asking for money in US dollars.
Other
major scams include the diversion into the stock markets
of vast sums of money held in a government-controlled
mutual fund, called the Unit Trust of India, which
resulted in losses to millions of small investors in
2001. Vajpayee rode through the scam unscathed and
slipped back to writing poetry, which charitable critics
have described as passable.
The brightest
feather in Vajpayee's cap is the diplomatic breakthrough
he achieved last week by getting Pakistan to agree to
crack down on militant groups that have been crossing
into disputed Kashmir. That breakthrough has silenced
critics who have blamed him for a policy toward India's
neighbor that has oscillated from a bus ride to
Pakistan, to signing a peace accord to open warfare, to
pushing back an armed incursion across the Line of
Control that runs through divided Kashmir. This
precipitated a dangerous military confrontation by
moving 700,000 troops to the border for a showdown.
But during his term in office, Vajpayee has
never hesitated in boldly inviting Pakistan President
General Pervez Musharraf for talks. And although that
failed, he again extended a "hand of friendship",
braving criticism from pro-Hindu hardliners in his party
as well as from top Congress leaders.
Vajpayee
can also take credit for encouraging another neighbor,
Bhutan, to finally use its army to flush out Indian
militant groups that had been operating from across the
border in the Himalayan kingdom for more than 10 years.
Easily, Vajpayee's biggest blot during his term
in office has been his party's record in western Gujarat
state, where a pogrom against the minority Muslim
community resulted in the deaths of more than 2,000
people and, by his own confession, made him hang his
head in shame.
Relations between India's two
main religious groups soured after BJP supporters tore
down the 16th century Babri Masjid at Ayodhya town in
northern Uttar Pradesh. They believe it had been built
by Muslim invaders over a temple marking the birthplace
of the Hindu deity Ram.
Never lacking for ideas,
Vajpayee has now roped in the exiled Tibetan leader and
Nobel Peace Prize winner the Dalai Lama, who commands
enormous respect in a country with deeply religious
people, to find a solution acceptable to both
communities. The Dalai Lama subsequently called on both
Hindu and Muslim leaders to adopt a "mature, far-sighted
and open-minded" approach to their problems.
(Inter Press Service)
Jan 13, 2004
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