INDIA: Buoyant Right-wing Party Set to Call Polls in April

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Jan 9 2004 (IPS) - Buoyed by a booming economy, resounding victories in recent provincial elections and a diplomatic breakthrough with neighbouring Pakistan, the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee is set to call early general elections in or around April.

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”.

On Thursday, the government announced a slew of tax cuts designed to please India’s affluent, urban middle class, from which the BJP draws its support. The move has already drawn criticism from opposition parties that the rural masses have been ignored.

General elections are due in September. But BJP leaders feel that a ”feel good factor” generated by an exceptionally good monsoon, last year, may quickly dissipate if they waited till the actual expiry of the government’s five-year term in office.

The economy is booming and for the first time in its history, India has comfortable foreign exchange reserves of over 100 billion U.S. dollars with GDP growth rate now set to rise at an unprecedented 7.5 percent.

The BJP’s regional partners in the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) have left the decision of early elections to Vajpayee.

One of them, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) that rules southern Andhra Pradesh state, has already dissolved its provincial assembly in the hope of capitalising 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 defences by building partnerships in the states with regional parties – something it has so far been reluctant to do so far.

For example, in southern Tamil Nadu state, it has tied up with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam 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 party lacks a leader with the stature of Vajpayee. Its chief, Sonia Gandhi, has found herself on the defensive against attacks centred 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 scams that implicated members of his cabinet.

For instance, BJP party president Bangaru Laxman was forced to resign after a sting operation by a news portal ‘Tehelka’ caught him on tape accepting wads of currency in exchange for help in concluding defence purchase deals and also asking for money in U.S. 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 (UTI), 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 this 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 neighbour 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 six-year-term in office, Vajpayee has never hesitated in boldly inviting Pakistan President Gen 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 party leaders.

Vajpayee can also take credit for encouraging another neighbour, 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 mosque at Ayodhya town in northern Uttar Pradesh. They believe that it had been built by Muslim invaders over a temple marking the birthplace of the Hindu deity Rama.

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.

On Friday, the Dalai Lama called on both Hindu and Muslim leaders to adopt a ”mature, far-sighted and open-minded” approach to their problems.