India's New Regionalism
D'MONTE, DARRYL
MRS. GANDHI'S PROBLEM India's New Regionalism by darryl d'monte New Delhi Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is now engaged in an uphill battle to reverse the sharp decline of her political fortunes....
...The regionalist rumblings, finally, underline the fact that the Congress (I) itself is not really the " national" party it has always claimed to be...
...Yet the voting in the capital can hardly be seen as countering the enormous symbolic blow of the defeat in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka...
...Nor is "states rights" advocacy confined to the south...
...Appearing in the coarse homespun sari of a Hindu widow, she would implicitly appeal to the tradition-minded rural electorate to help a lone woman fight against wily opponents...
...Rajiv Gandhi has been overseeing government effort to stave off the Sikhs, his latest ploy being the formation of a coalition between Congress and the more moderate of the secessionist parties...
...The next day she accepted seven of these outright, and shifted eight officials to new posts...
...It too is a disparate, often bitterly divided amalgamation, held together only by a Prime Minister whose charisma may be on the wane...
...Not only did Rajiv come off badly in the Andhra Pradesh debacle, but his late brother Sanjay's feisty widow, Maneka, whom Indira has been at great pains to discredit, emerged triumphant there...
...If Congress had not behaved so self-de-structively, however, it is inconceivable that he could have won a two-thirds majority in the State Legislature...
...She would frequently cite them as proof that the Janata regime was an exclusively northern phenomenon, owing its success to "excesses" during her 1975-77 state of emergency that she claimed not to know about...
...Since returning to power three years ago, Gandhi's government has been shielded from massive popular discontent by a fairly stable economy...
...Gandhi has rejected this and the situation is stalemated...
...This time NTR beat the Prime Minister at her own game, presenting himself as the personification of a renascent Andhra in revolt against the Delhi big shots...
...In Karnataka, where the election results were more surprising still, Congress was undone by another vice that has become something of a party trademark—corruption...
...And the most egregious of these—the forced sterilization, and the ruthless slum clearance—were indeed felt most severely in the politically crucial northern states of Ut-tar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh...
...Mobs of 100,000 or more assembled on short notice to see the campaigning actor, even at 3 a.m...
...Thus on January 28, Gandhi dramatically asked all 60 members of her Council of Ministers, which includes the entire Cabinet, to submit their resignations...
...In the northeastern state of Assam, native Hindu students demanding the expulsion, or at least disenfranchisement, of several million Moslem Bangladeshi immigrants have prevented the government from holding elections since 1979...
...At this writing, the campaign has been marked by sectarian violence that has claimed some 70 lives...
...Tamil's dominant Anna DMK Party, which is also headed by two retired movie stars who have both proved tremendously popular Chief Ministers, has always espoused above all else fierce opposition to Delhi's diktat...
...If India comes to be thought of as more a confederation than a homogeneous union, theCPM's role will be reduced to regional rather than national dimensions...
...And until the next general election, scheduled for January 1985, their mood is unlikely to change...
...Any doubt about the need for such an undertaking was removed by the unexpected trouncing her Congress (I) Party sustained last January 5 in state elections in two of its long-time strongholds, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka...
...A potentially more explosive matter is the prospect of widespread drought and deprivation in India this summer, raised by the failure of last year's seasonal rains throughout the nation...
...In this, he is following the precedent established in neighboring Tamil Nadu, formerly Madras...
...Anjiah was subjected to the humiliation of a public dressing down when, contrary to orders, he went to meet Rajiv at the airport in Hyderabad, the state capital...
...In Bombay, some 200,000 textile workers have been on strike for over a year, probably the world's largest and longest job action since the 1930s...
...In Andhra, chronic infighting marked by New Delhi's heavy-handed efforts to stifle disgruntled local elements cost Congress the respect of the voters...
...The purge appeared to have some immediate positive effect, for on February 5 Congress won convincingly in New Delhi's municipal elections...
...Whether or not the Prime Minister's personal popularity rebounds from January's travails, she is unlikely to reverse the overriding current of regional pride and assertiveness now running through Indian politics...
...Darryl D'Monte frequently writes on Indian affairs for The New Leader...
...To be sure, NTR, as Rao is most commonly referred to, is a magnetic figure and a talented demagogue...
...This sort of imperiousness on the part of the central authorities, perhaps more than anything else, accounts for the stunning coup accomplished by former film star N.T...
...But the figleaf is gone...
...The basic issue is not wages, it is the workers' demand to decertify their own corrupt, inefficient government-affiliated union...
...Congress had ruled the two adjoining southern states uninterruptedly since their creation, and during Gandhi's years out of power, 1977-80, they were virtually her last bastions of support...
...International issues—such as Afghanistan—and domestic problems alike are being badly neglected...
...The victories gave Gandhi a political foothold in those precarious days...
...Anjiah, an honest if inefficient administrator...
...Most observers expect further shakeups, with the replacement of Chief Ministers in several states where Congress retains control...
...Rama Rao and his nine-month-old Telegu Desam Party (Telegu is the mother tongue of Andhra Pradesh...
...One key advantage would be a diminution in the stature of the Communist Party (Marxist...
...The central government seems paralyzed by inertia or indecision...
...The Chief Minister in that state, Gundu Rao (dubbed "Goonda," or Mafioso, by critics) had come to be regarded as a symbol of the unbridled license indulged in by many of Gandhi's provincial appointees...
...Frantically maneuvering to enforce order in the ranks, Gandhi had appointed four Chief Ministers in the past two years...
...In any case, the voters at this point appear determined to curtail Indira Gandhi's style of centralism, even at the risk of some instability...
...The perils of disunity are apparent, yet India could in some ways benefit from a greater degree of autonomy in the individual states...
...The one project Gandhi has pursued with unflagging zeal, grooming Rajiv for the succession, seems for the moment to be a bust...
...But electoral setbacks are not Indira Gandhi's only cause for concern...
...Moreover, the weaknesses that brought down the Congress governments in Andhra and Karnataka plague the party nationwide...
...Attempts at a compromise have made no headway, and Delhi has decided to try to open the polls once more on February 20...
...Her fledgling party won four out of five seats it was allotted on NTR's slate...
...During the Janata interregnum, the Congress leader was sustained by the throngs she drew in the countryside...
...Last month he paid the price for his arrogance when he was easily toppled by an alliance—albeit an unsteady one?between Janata and a party called Kranti Ranga, led by Congress dissident S. Bangarappa...
...His ultimate success is at present in doubt...
...Faced in recent years with charges of misdoings raised against him and some of his office-holding colleagues, Rao made it clear that he answered to no one save "Madam" in New Delhi...
...Though Gandhi threw herself into the Andhra campaign, visiting 240 of the state's 296 constituencies, her usual crowd-gathering ability seemed to desert her...
...In the northwest, the key agricultural state of Punjab is in danger of being split asunder by the Sikh secessionist movement (see "India's Pliant New President," NL, August 9-23, 1982...
...The Prime Minister dispatched her son, "Crown Prince" Rajiv, to deposeT...
...They returned large Congress majorities in the March '77 general election that brought the Janata Party coalition to power, and again in local balloting the following year, despite an energetic Janata campaign...
...If serious shortages develop and the ruling party, in its disordered state, is unable to cope with them, there will be no containing the tide of indignation...
...The last shuffle was carried out in a manner particularly offensiveto inhabitants of the state...
...NTR's first significant action in office was a proclamation that Andhra Pradesh would be renamed Telegu Nadu, and Telegu made the official language...
...NTR successfully carried off a role that Indira Gandhi herself has played often in the past: the underdog / outsider er fighting against unsavory entrenched interests...
...The CPM currently rules the states of West Bengal and Tripura (where it was re-elected on the same day Congress lost Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka), and it may soon retake unstable Kerala...
Vol. 66 • February 1983 • No. 3
