The Challenge to Mrs. Gandhi

...But the Prime Minister dismissed those reports as unduly pessimistic, given the enormous amount of support that had been drummed up throughout the length and breadth of India for the emergency...

...Apart from economic questions, the issue of suspending democratic rights is playing a major role in the campaign...

...And she isn't likely to interfere with the running of Parliament (where vital constitutional amendments were already pushed through during the emergency), for she needs the legitimacy that the elections and the functioning of Parliament give her...

...Gandhi certainly did not bargain for...

...Its front partner, the CPM, ought to pick up some votes in Kerala and West Bengal, the two states that are among the very few in the world where Communist governments have been brought in by the ballot...

...Similarly, while the rupee has certainly gained strength, thanks to the severe crackdown on smuggling, and foreign exchange reserves have trebled to a record $2 billion, the economy has yet to show it is free from structural defects...

...Further speculation has him eventually trying to win over enough Congress members of Parliament to call for the unseating of Mrs...

...The Janta party should win the cities and two major states, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where a combined 139 seats are at stake...

...That could place Jagjivan Ram's Congress for Democracy in a powerful position, for the Congress may need its support in the House...

...Its main source of strength is the Jana Sangh party, an unabashedly Right-wing Hindu chauvinist force with adherents in the "Hindi Darryl D'Monte is the assistant editor of the Times of India...

...Now, none of them will take any bets and some believe she has only a 50-50 chance against the united opposition, banded together as the Janta (People's) party...

...As long as there is sizable opposition in the House, any moves of that kind will be sharply contested...

...Gandhi, and perhaps even more from her newly-arrived son, Sanjay, have resulted in many veteran Congress leaders crossing over to Ram's CFD...

...Moreover, the issue is being put squarely before the electorate by Janta speakers, who are telling their audiences that the election amounts to a choice between democracy and dictatorship...

...The development is one Mrs...

...To make matters worse, no political meetings could be held without permission, and that was seldom granted...

...the Prevention of Publication of Objectionable Matter Act, giving the government the power to freely interpret what is objectionable, was passed...

...All these infringements of the democratic process have rankled in the minds of city-bred educated people...

...Gandhi and himself a national figure as a Harijan (untouchable...

...Another of Mrs...

...The foreign investment that poured into the country during the emergency (because of the complete stoppage of strikes) actually aggravated the situation by concentrating on the consumer sector catering to the urban elite (Maidenform bras, to cite just one example...

...Gandhi had 352 of the 525 seats...

...For if Janta was put in the saddle its constituent parties would surely fall out with eaoh other in next to no time over the allocation of Cabinet posts...

...Thus the opposition's claim that this election may well be the last chance for Indians to choose between freedom and terror seems mostly campaign rhetoric...

...Those appointments have always caused a great deal of heartburn in the more homogeneous Congress, so the likely chaos in the opposition front is not difficult to imagine...

...Still alert and evincing no rancor after having spent 18 months in jail (a fate that befell virtually every major opposition personality), Desai speaks confidently of forming a strong opposition in Parliament, rather than actually winning the elections...

...Last month, for instance, the consumer price index, as calculated by the Economic Times of Bombay, jumped 10 per cent over the previous month...

...Gandhi and offer himself as Prime Minister...

...hinterland" of north India...

...Gandhi by DARRYL D'MONTE Bombay When Prime Minister Indira Gandhi announced in mid-January that she had decided to hold India's sixth general elections, there wasn't a single political pundit in the country who doubted she would win with a thumping majority...

...But it is blessed with a leader of enormous charisma, 81-year-old Morarji Desai, who has been appointed chairman of Janta...

...The final constituent, the Bharatiya Lok Dal, is a hodgepodge drawn from the Right-wing Swan-tantra party to the Socialist party...

...Gandhi left behind in 1969 following a bitter intraparty feud...

...Meanwhile, slights received from Mrs...

...She must be regretting her decision, yet there is no turning back: A ver-itable political Pandora's box has been opened with the relaxation of the restrictions on public life that accompanied the decision to hold elections...

...In this case only the urban middle class was directly affected—or more precisely, just the intelligentsia—but the deprivation was considerable...

...More immediately, prices have started rising inexorably...

...Backed by such other onetime Congress stalwarts as H. N. Bahuguna and Mrs...

...Many here feel this would be the best denouncement possible...

...The multi-party system and the free press were more or less given up as permanently lost...

...Once more, though, her calculations misfired: To stem the wave of anti-Sanjay resentment, she had to allot only 20 seats to the Youth Congress, rather than the 200 it had so stridently demanded...

...The uncertainty is enhanced by the fact that Janta has gained the explicit support of the new splinter group, Congress for Democracy, and the implicit backing of the Communist party of India, Marxist (CPM...

...And experts are fearful of the usual three-year drought cycle: In the wake of two bumper monsoons, there is a strong probability that the rains will fail this year...

...In that event, despite a record 17-million ton stockpile of foodstuffs, thousands of people would starve because of transport bottlenecks that prevent the authorities from getting supplies to outlying districts...

...Faced with open revolt, Mrs...

...Morarji Desai has capitalized on this by declaring: "The emergency was the sterilization of democracy" In the cities, slum-dwellers have resented the bulldozers playing havoc with their shanty dwellings...

...Some observers maintain this is exactly what Ram, a shrewd politician, is counting on...

...the parties that make up today's opposition, a motley assortment from all over the political spectrum, together polled 32 per cent...

...According to "reliable rumors" currently making the rounds, her intelligence reports indicated that if elections were held in 1977 (she could have waited up to next March), she would only win about 300 seats in the now expanded 542-member House...

...Besides, although under the emergency laws bonus payments at 8.33 per cent of annual salary are no longer compulsory, the dividend freeze on corporations has been lifted...

...It is totally without credibility today, having emerged as the last bastion of "reactionary" elements in the Congress...

...The press was tightly controlled, first by precensorship and then by "guidelines" from the information ministry...

...All villagers who have been forcibly sterilized, or have merely heard about the coercive methods others have been subjected to, are extremely wary of the Congress party...

...The crowning injustice, though, was the curtailment of the judiciary, including the bypassing of the senior-most Supreme Court judge, known for his independent rulings, for the post of Chief Justice...

...Indeed, Congress, labeled by innumerable observers as the only '"national" party capable of encompassing India's tremendous diversity, is in danger of splitting vertically, as it did eight years ago...

...In the outgoing Lok Sabha, or Lower House of Parliament, Mrs...

...What gave the Janta party its clout was the sudden defection last month of 68-year-old Jagjivan Ram, the most respected Congress leader after Mrs...

...Gandhi will once again crack down on the opposition and reintroduce press curbs, as some people fear...

...Janta alone, as an examination of its constituent parts quickly demonstrates, might not have been all that formidable a challenge to Mrs...

...Jana Sangh's more fanatic ally, the Rash-triya Swayamsevak Sangh—an openly fascist organization claiming among its supporters Nathuram Godse, Mahatma Gandhi's assassin —was officially banned at the outset of the emergency along with a number of Maoist groups...

...In any case, the main strength of the Janta party lies in its ability to remain a strong, cohesive opposition after the elections...

...Since in addition several thousand cadre of the largely urban, middle-class Jana Sangh are languishing in jail in states like Madhya Pradesh, it lacks a strong base...

...One of the reasons she decided to hold elections, it was widely thought, was to allow Sanjay to enter the political mainstream instead of launching his organization and its five-point program from the sidelines, as it were...

...and the privilege of the press to report whatever is said in Parliament without being subject to libel (introduced, ironically enough, by none other than Indira's late husband, Feroze Gandhi, two decades ago) was withdrawn...

...But there is no doubt whatsoever that it will alter the face of Indian politics...

...the two independent news agencies were merged into one monolithic entity...

...This has stimulated discontent even among Congress-backed unions...

...But it is instructive to remember that the ruling Congress party, in power since the country gained its independence 30 years ago, has never received a majority of the popular vote...

...Nandini Sat-pathy—the erstwhile chief ministers of Uttar Pradesh and Orissa, respectively—Ram has formed the Congress for Democracy (CFD), which is putting up its own candidates but is collaborating with Janta to avoid any splitting of the opposition vote...

...At this juncture.—which is in many ways more crucial than the turbulent months before the emergency in June 1975—it appears unlikely that after the voting Mrs...

...And the opposition rallies?given a flying start in the capital by 74-year-old Jayaprakash Narayan, whose agitation precipitated the emergency—have been better attended and are receiving far more enthusiasm than the stage-managed shows of the Congress party...

...The Congress, on the other hand, will win hands down in states like Maharashtra and Assam, and will enjoy a landslide throughout the countryside, where few illiterate villagers even know about the curtailments brought on by the emergency (their democratic rights have been curtailed from birth...

...And this time, of course, the elections are taking place under dramatically different circumstances: The opposition parties, smarting from 20 months of government-imposed emergency rule, have joined together and buried their differences —at least until the balloting ends on March 20...

...Gandhi's problems is the economy, which is in poorer shape than it was supposed to have been after 20 months of the emergency...

...In recent weeks, however, both have shown signs of stirring after a 20-month hibernation...

...Gandhi has hastily restored the old bosses to their former status, thereby undercutting the threat posed to them by the Youth Congress wing of the party, headed by her 30-year-old son...

...True, the scenario requires a caveat...

...The Congress, and Youth Congress in particular, have pushed the sterilization campaign with such demoniacal zeal that it is now boom-eranging badly on them...

...Parliament itself, in the absence of many MPs who were in jail, was reduced to a mere rubber stamp for acts of the Executive...

...Nevertheless, any sober assessment of the outcome of the election must put Indira Gandhi back in power, albeit with a considerably diminished vote in Parliament, probably between 280-300 seats...

...In the last elections, in 1971, the Congress share of the total valid votes cast was only 43 per cent...

...The second constituent is the old Congress party that Mrs...

...In the meantime, industrialists have been allowed to retrench 1.2 million workers and close down plants...

...The working class, too, suffered badly during the emer--gency: It was deprived of the right to strike or hold gate meetings...

...In the past, both the government and big firms also claimed that labor unrest was responsible for rising prices, prompting people to ask how come hardly any goods have declined in cost during the emergency and some, especially food products, have risen sharply...