Two-Party Politics Comes to India

...That is why Ram, the Defense Minister in the new government, quit the Congress to form a splinter opposition group that was essential to Jan-ata's victory...

...In fact, the charismatic Mrs...

...Prices have already started to rise, and if the rains fail this year—as predicted—much of the present euphoria will quickly evaporate...

...It did this despite a steady barrage of insipid propaganda from the state-owned broadcasting services...

...Under the influence of Dr...

...Nevertheless, the tumultuous rejection of Mrs...

...Gandhi's personal performance contributed to her downfall...

...AFTER 30 YEARS OF CONGRESS RULE Two-Party Politics Comes to India BY DARRY D'MONTE The clean sweep last month of India's sixth general election by the hastily assembled Janata (People's) party was almost as much of a shock to the victorious coalition as it was to Indira Gandhi's Congress, the party in control since independence three long decades ago...

...Although pollsters had written off the cities for the Congress because of unhappiness over the curtailment of civil liberties, the countryside—where some 80 per cent of the population lives —was still considered safe for the ruling party...

...As for the People's party, it has started with a clean slate and an unprecedented mandate...

...Gandhi," NL, March 14) quickly tapped the mounting popular wrath against the Congress...

...Such idealism is to be applauded, yet it may come at the expense of much-needed Soviet investment in the public sector...

...The slum "improvement" drive in the capital was equally barbaric: Nearly 600,000 people were forcibly evicted from their dilapidated homes...

...Gandhi's 21 -month-long government-imposed emergency actually had a beneficial, if unintended, effect: It succeeded in raising the consciousness of an entire country, bringing home the tyranny of authoritarian rule as vividly as the oppressiveness of British domination once did...

...The people saw through the Goebbels game largely because they intuitively realized that what was being directed at them was eons away from the grim reality they faced...

...Subrama-nian Swamy, a brash, 37-year-old party theoretician who fled the country during the emergency and taught economics at Harvard, Janata has proposed restricting multinational corporations from entering consumer goods industries here...

...goaded by him, officials vied with each other in coercing or cajoling even young unmarried men to the operating table as government vans scoured the countryside to clock up vasectomies...

...And in a country where two thirds of all voters are illiterate, the role of the electronic media is especially significant: Compared to a combined circulation of only 7 million for all newspapers and periodicals, radio alone reaches more than 500 million...

...Gandhi's 11-year-old regime sprang precisely from the populous and mainly rural northern states...

...Coteries made the decisions, leaving men like Foreign Minister Y. B. Chavan and Agriculture Minister Jagjivan Ram out in the cold...

...Indeed, many here see the Congress defeat as the culmination of a second, equally significant, struggle for freedom...

...Moslem residents attacked the police when it was announced that new housing sites would be available only to those who produced sterilization certificates...

...Similarly, bonuses of 8.33 per cent of annual salaries?quite justifiably regarded by workers as deferred wages—are likely to be restored...

...The ignominious exit of Mrs...

...Second, Prime Minister Desai has made it clear that his government will be less favorably inclined than Mrs...

...Industrialists, as might be expected, do not relish either prospect...

...And she surrounded herself with a kind of mafia, made up of men like Defense Minister Bansi Lai—who had been the strongman of the state of Haryana—and Information Minister V. C. Shukla—who bullied the press, forced the "voluntary" amalgamation of news agencies, and commandeered the services of pliable film stars for the Congress bandwagon...

...Two of Mrs...

...Indira's 30-year-old son, Sanjay, guided the plan with a demoniacal zeal (it was part of his five-point "blueprint for progress...

...It should be remembered, too, that many of Janata's leaders are highly experienced in the business of governing...

...The previously all-embracing Congress—containing Communists and comoiunalists, Socialists and sectarian interests—currently retains sizable support only in the South and parts of the West...

...Gandhi's public career may not be finished...

...more of a hand in her downfall than anything else...

...Of the two, forced family planning provoked the greater outrage...

...moreover, moving cost most of the slum-dwellers their jobs as domestics and menials in the old neighborhoods...

...But with 153 seats in Parliament it remains big enough to keep the Janata party, which captured 297 seats, on its toes...

...She allowed her upstart son free rein in overthrowing and enthroning central Cabinet officers and chief ministers of states...

...Two Janata policies in particular, if enacted, are bound to place further stress on the Indian economy...

...Still, it would be churlish not to be optimistic about the Janata party's prospects, at least for the time being...

...In Uttar Pradesh and Bihar (which command 139 of the 542 seats in the Lok Sabha, or Lower House) not a single Congress candidate was elected...

...The reaction against this policy was dramatically demonstrated by the spontaneous rebellion last year at Turkman Gate in old Delhi...

...No fewer than 7.5 million sterilizations were performed last year (almost double the target of 4.3 million), bringing India's total for the last two decades to over 19 million—more than anywhere else in the world...

...A remarkably resilient politician, she would surprise no one if she regained a parliamentary seat and came to figure prominently on the opposition benches...

...Gandhi's schemes—the sterilization and slum clearance campaigns—were particularly egregious in their violation of human rights, and probably had Darryl D'Monte, a frequent New Leader contributor, is the assistant editor of the Times of India...

...One indication of the political problems it will face, though, was the trouble experienced by newly-appointed Prime Minister Morar-ji R. Desai in putting together his Cabinet...

...They may be right, for it is difficult to overstate Janata's achievement...

...The extent of the opposition's triumph suggests that Mrs...

...It is doubtful that the huge corporations will react kindly to the suggested arrangements...

...Finally, with the people of India in firm possession of their newly-found power, Janata must realize that if it fails to improve living standards and protect civil liberties, it will suffer the same fate Congress has just experienced in the world's largest democracy...

...While curbs on foreign investments in nonessential industries are admittedly long overdue, the government needs the multinationals' technology in such areas as off-shore oil drilling...

...Organized in two short months following the lifting of the emergency on January 18, when many of its leaders were freed from jail, the four-party opposition grouping (see "The Challenge to Mrs...

...Gandhi's loss in her own Uttar Pradesh district of Rae Bareli was the ultimate blow...

...Most importantly, the changing of the guard will also usher in—for the first time ever in India—two-party politics...

...They were given alternative housing, but the new sites were in poor locations...

...Along with her oppressive programs, Mrs...

...Thus the Prime Minister not only cut herself off from the popular resentment against her, but contributed to the erosion of the entire system of cabinet government as well...

...In addition, now that the emergency has been lifted those who work in the cities are sure to demand salary increases...

...Gandhi's toward the Soviet Union...

...Gandhi will presumably give India's democratic structure a new lease on life...

...And the economic problems looming on the horizon pose a more difficult challenge...

...The news filtered down to relatives in surrounding rural states, and the bulldozer became a symbol of despotic rule in village India, too...

...True, its members profess widely divergent ideologies, but so did Congress...