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Politics : World Affairs Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rrufff who wrote (3884)	5/22/2004 7:52:09 PM
From: ChinuSFO	Respond to of 3959

Democracy at work in India May 17, 2004 The stunning victory of the Congress Party and its leader, Sonia Gandhi, is a sign of health in the world's largest democracy. The demise of the government of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and his Bharatiya Janata Party, whatever nervousness it might cause on economic grounds, is not a disaster. Mr Vajpayee, campaigning under the slogan "shining India", expected voters to reward him for the new prosperity that has come from the embrace of open economic policies. He miscalculated badly. India's new wealth is distributed as unevenly as its old riches ever were. Mrs Gandhi, campaigning tirelessly in rural India, had no difficulty persuading voters there that while India might be shining in the cities, it certainly wasn't shining in the countryside, where the rural poor make up at least a third of India's billion or so people. Mrs Gandhi's reassertion of secular values also counted in the Congress victory. The Bharatiya Janata Party, shadowed by its roots in Hindu extremists, has exploited anti-Muslim feeling even when it says it does not encourage it. The party failed to rein in the state government in Gujarat, where communal riots were allowed to go unchecked with appalling loss of life, mainly among Muslims, in 2002. That cost the party the support not only of Muslim voters, who make up 12 per cent of India's total in the national elections, but of many Hindus who were concerned about a dangerous drift from the secularism of the early years of independence. Secularism is one of the pillars of Congress Party ideology developed in the first 17 years of independence under Jawaharlal Nehru, grandfather of Sonia Gandhi's late husband Rajiv, who was assassinated by a suicide bomber in 1991. Another pillar of Nehru's ideology, constitutional democracy, has been vindicated resoundingly by this election. Some will fear that a third pillar, Nehru's quasi-socialist economic policies, will now be revived. That is most unlikely. It had already been rejected in Rajiv Gandhi's time, before Mr Vajpayee came to power. It can never be restored in the form or with the emphasis it had in Nehru's day. Those driving the new Indian economy know this. Their concern, which Sonia Gandhi and her party must heed, is that above all, government should be stable. The Congress Party and its allies won 217 seats in the 545-seat parliament, considerably more than the 185 or so of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies. Government by the Congress Party, its allies and the left alliance should be more stable than the unwieldy 25-party coalition Mr Vajpayee had to deal with. The Congress Party has come a long way since Nehru's time, as have the parties in the newly powerful left alliance, which won 62 seats. They cannot allow a return to the economic controls that shackled the Indian economy until comparatively recently. At the same time Sonia Gandhi and her advisers must ensure the benefits of the new economy reach more of the people who gave her their votes. If not, she will in due course meet the same fate as Mr Vajpayee and his party. smh.com.au