Asia Times: Regional allies ensure Vajpayee's return to power



	October 08, 1999	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Regional allies ensure Vajpayee's return to power
By Ranjit Dev Raj

NEW DELHI - Piggybacking on its numerous regional allies, Atal Bihari Vajpayee's right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is set for another turbulent term in power.

With Vajpayee's 24-member National Democratic Alliance (NDA) assured 295 of the 544 seats in the Lok Sabha, or lower house of parliament, it is evident that the monolithic Congress party has once again paid heavily for its reluctance to share power with regional parties.

The elections, stretched between September 5 and October 3, were precipitated after Vajpayee's earlier BJP-led coalition government was ousted by the Congress party and its secular and left-wing allies in a parliamentary confidence vote on April 17. But when it came to forming an alternate government the Congress party balked at sharing power with its allies and at the thought of anyone other than its leader, Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, becoming prime minister.

As a result, Vajpayee, who had by then completed 13 months in power, continued as caretaker prime minister and is now preparing to lead a new coalition in which regional parties are certain to play a greater role than ever before.

The BJP, which shot to power at the beginning of the decade through a pro-Hindu campaign centered in north India, now derives its strength from powerful regional allies in southern Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu states. In fact, in this election, the BJP was defeated heavily in northern Uttar Pradesh, from which it launched itself by whipping up religious sentiment over the razing of a medieval mosque it said was built over a Hindu temple by Muslim rulers.

BJP strategists realized early that the key to power in such a vast country lay in co-opting regional parties which have been chafing at the virtual monopoly of power enjoyed by the Congress party since independence in 1947. For most regional parties, such as the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, the unbending centerism of the Congress party was a bigger issue than the religious ideology of the BJP.

The TDP, once a part of the United Front government, opposed both the Congress party and the BJP, moved to an ''equidistant'' stance in the previous election and has now emerged as the biggest partner of the BJP-led NDA.

Analysts note that regional parties which have insisted on maintaining their distinct identities have done well in the present elections, especially the Samajwadi Party (SP) of former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav. Though staunchly opposed to the pro-Hindu ideology of the BJP, Yadav was determined that he would not support a minority Congress government as a secular alternative to a Vajpayee coalition.

The Congress party's insistence that its leader and candidate for prime minister could only come from the dynastic Nehru-Gandhi family also contributed to its failure. Indeed, the attempt to install Sonia Gandhi as prime minister at the head of an alternative minority Congress government after the ousting of the BJP resulted in a split which proved disastrous for its prospects in the present elections.

That split was felt greatly in western Maharashtra where the dissident Congress leader Sharad Pawar, who was expelled from the party, hived away a large chunk of precious votes for his new National Congress Party (NCP). Pawar, a powerful regional chieftain from Maharashtra, found his ambitions thwarted by a powerful coterie in the Congress party which advises the relatively inexperienced Sonia Gandhi but has little grassroots following.

Another splinter from the Congress party, the Trinamul Congress led by Mamata Bannerjee, a member of the NDA, has also done well in the Marxist stronghold of West Bengal by stressing local issues in the state.

Congress fared badly in all the four states where it scored spectacular victories in state assembly elections last December - central Madhya Pradesh, western Rajasthan, the former Portuguese enclave of Goa on the west coast, and Delhi state. According to Purno Sangma, former Lok Sabha speaker and member of the NCP, the reversal was the direct result of the projection of Sonia Gandhi as future prime minister.

However, Gandhi herself did well, easily winning the Bellary seat in southern Karnataka state and leading by over 90,000 votes in the other seat she contested - Amethi in Uttar Pradesh, long nurtured by the dynasty into which she married. Gandhi's personal victories also seemed to prove that for ordinary voters the issue of her foreign origins, harped on by both Pawar's NCP and Vajpayee's NDA, meant very little.

But the real winners of the elections were the regional parties and those that stressed the interests of specific groups, such as the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) which represents castes on the lowest rungs of the Hindu social order. Such regional or caste-based parties have been steadily nibbling away at the power and influence of both the BJP and Congress and need fear only regional rivals.

A good example of regional rivlary is that of the DMK and the AIADMK parties in southern Tamil Nadu state. Both swear by promoting Dravidian interests against the ''Aryan'' Hindi-speaking north but are not averse to aligning themselves with the essentially north-Indian BJP. Thus, the while the AIADMK was a partner in the last BJP-led coalition government, its regional arch-rival, the DMK of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, has now taken its place in the coalition.

Though strongly opposed to the pro-Hindu ideology of the BJP, the DMK had little choice but to enter the NDA after AIADMK leader J Jayalalitha helped bring down Vajpayee's last government by deserting it and reducing it to a minority.

Jayalalitha, famous for driving a hard bargain in the last coalition, may have set a trend for other regional parties to follow. The latest projections indicate that regional allies of the BJP could command 120 of the roughly 300 seats that the NDA is expected to end up with when final results are known late Thursday or early Friday. In such a setup, the regional allies can be expected to exert considerable influence on policies and issues and also demand a greater share of power.

(Inter Press Service)

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