Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 1998, Pages 45, 85

The Subcontinent

As India Prepares for Another Election the Parties Look for Charismatic Leaders

By M.M. Ali

A stable government has eluded India ever since the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. Minority governments formed through coalitions have proven to be short-lived. They remained hostage to the Congress Party, whose participation provided a majority for the coalition governments. This has been the cause of the collapse of the last two administrations of Dev Gowda and I.K. Gujral when, both times, Congress withdrew its support.

India is a vast country with a population of more than 900 million. It is almost a continent in itself with a multitude of distinct and separate ethnicities, religious beliefs, languages and political loyalties. In the northern hill tracts are various ethnic groups closely resembling those on the Chinese side of the Himalayas. Northern India contains the Aryan Hindi belt. In the south are dark-skinned Dravidians who speak Tamil, Telagu or Malayalam.

Most Indians are Hindus, but different deities are favored in different areas. By contrast, the caste system or its remnants that once prevailed throughout the nation have marginalized more than 50 percent of the population, who are considered disadvantaged by birth and therefore are deprived of social dignity and equal opportunity.

Muslims, who constitute between 10 and 12 percent of India's citizens, are spread across the country and in recent years have been sliding down the economic ladder, causing them to be exploited by Hindu-dominated political parties. Their interests appear to be with the large bloc of depressed or scheduled castes, the Harijans and the Dalits. Absence of national leadership in both those and the Muslim camps, however, have left them with little or no political leverage nationally. The dictum that all politics is local has never been more applicable to India than today.

Pre-election maneuverings show that no party was ready for mid-term elections, which suddenly were forced on the country by Congress Party politicking. When Congress chief Sita Ram Kesri threatened to withdraw Congress support from Gujral's United Front government, the 82-year-old politician was only hoping to have some of his regional agendas met and was not asking for fresh national elections. However, Kesri miscalculated.

Congress, which lacks a charismatic leader who can capture national attention and respect, was forced to reach out to Rajiv's widow, Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, a private person who has been reluctant to enter politics. She has agreed to help but has refused to run personally for any seat, although Kesri has publicly said: "If she wants to be the Congress president, I will willingly vacate the office."

In fact, Congress is reaching out in search of all kinds of alliances, holy and unholy, to field winning candidates in the Feb.-March 1998 elections. Sonia is no Indira Gandhi, but she is the only card available to a desperate Congress, at least until Rajiv's and Sonia's children, daughter Priyanka and son Rahul, mature enough to become politicians themselves. Priyanka, however, at personal risk, is helping out her mother, Sonia. Mulayani Singh is trying to bring Yusuf Khan, alias Dilip Kumar, the legendary movie idol, on Congress' platform to attract the large Muslim vote. It is a strange predicament for a 112-year-old political party that operated almost unchallenged for most of India's 50 years of independence.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the other major party that has been steadily gaining political ground in recent years, is equally frantically in search of political alliances. Its union with right-wing extremists like the Rashtriya Sewak Sangh (RSS), its declared objective to establish Hindutva (Hindu rule) in this secular democracy, and its open encouragement of Hindu fanatics who destroyed the centuries-old Babri Masjid, a mosque built on a sacred Hindu site, have posed problems for the BJP in the current round of electioneering.

Nevertheless, BJP leaders L.K. Advani and Attal Bihari Vajpayee have gone the whole mile and embraced former opponents of BJP like Jayalalitha of Tamilnadu, Lakshmi Parvati of Andhra Pradesh and Naveen Patnaik of Orissa. The Hindu BJP is even willing to befriend the Muslims and the Dalits if that will produce political dividends.

BJP is strong in Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujrat and Madhya Pradesh, but that will not be enough to form a government. It needs larger support but may not be willing to abandon the policies that have produced its groundswell of hard-core Hindu backing. Unless the splintered, rudderless Congress fumbles badly between now and the election, BJP may have to reconcile itself to remaining in the opposition or being part of a coalition government one more time.

Mining an Underground Economy

A man to watch in coming years is P. Chidambaram of Tamilnadu. A Harvard-educated former commerce minister under Narasimha Rao and a finance minister in the Gujral government, Chidambaram has achieved much through an ingenuous plan which was laughed at by Indian financial wizards like Manmohan Singh. It is common knowledge that two distinct economies—one open and one hidden—exist in almost all developing countries. It is this hidden treasure trove that the minister wanted to put to work. In July 1997 he introduced the Voluntary Disclosure of Income Scheme for the 1997-98 budget, saying, "It is my faith that, given a chance, the people of India will come clean." To a large extent, he was right.

Between July and December no fewer than 350,000 people and some additional companies and firms have come forward, declaring concealed wealth that has amounted to Rs 260 million ($6,842,105), a sizeable figure for a poor country. Other inducements and amnesty offers made in the past never produced such spectacular results. This newly declared money has brought extensive new tax revenues into the government coffers.

During its first six months, the finance minister launched a national campaign through regional and area commissioners to propagate the scheme and convert skeptics to its feasibility. It even included micro-level projects like encouraging children to wear shirts with "My father pays taxes" emblazoned on their chests. India Today, the country's leading news magazine, reported that "people came from Moscow, Zurich and London to make their declarations."