India Without an Opposition

...Rajiv must deliver, or the people may very well drop him five years down the road...

...On the other hand, the opinion pollsters— a new breed in India, using computers to juggle the political complexities of caste and class—consistently predicted that Congress-I would take a two-thirds majority in the Lok Sabha...

...With almost indecent haste, Rajiv was bundled into office, and he promptly called an early contest to exploit the upsurge of sympathy his mother's murder had evoked...

...A second, similar problem that the Prime Minister has to confront is the discontent in the Northeast...

...At the moment, in any case, he has room to maneuver, and not merely on domestic crises...

...The Prime Minister has made no secret of his desire to go on modernizing and liberalizing the Indian economy—a process that commenced in 1980 —and the U.S., Western Europe and Japan can help him do so...

...Rajiv's "coronation," only two months after Mrs...

...Nonetheless, electoral landslides have their disadvantages: They create huge expectations that, if not fulfilled, haunt those who inspired them...

...In the area of foreign relations, for example, notwithstanding the difficulty of eliminating Soviet involvement in India's trade and military affairs, his government is expected to tilt somewhat more toward the West in general and the United States in particular...

...Since they alone can help defuse the situation, they must be freed and granted a chance to come to the peace table...

...Her demise put an end to such speculation...

...Unfortunately, discord continues to fester in the beleaguered state...

...Upon returning to power, Mrs...

...Anyone else might have sought retirement at that point, especially with a jail sentence threatened for the emergency misdeeds...

...Gandhi was gunned down in retaliation, one of the bloodiest communal holocausts in the country's history ensued in New Delhi and elsewhere, exacerbating tensions...

...Darryl D'Monte frequently writes on Indian affairs for The New Leader...

...The negotiations will be difficult at best, because the Sikhs know Congress-I bureaucrats either actively encouraged or simply ignored the post-assassination massacre that just in the nation's capital is unofficially reported to have snuffed out 7,000-9,000 lives...

...There is no other way to explain her son Rajiv's stunning triumph in India's eighth general election...

...Gandhi's murder by Sikh bodyguards avenging her decision to have the Army flush out extremists hiding in the sect's Golden Temple, marks the start of a new era in Indian politics...

...How Rajiv Gandhi handles them will be the testing point of his regime...

...Crack military units could have been summoned within hours and given shoot-at-sight orders to stem the violence, yet no such instructions were issued for a full three days...

...Up to now, the opposition has always been a force to be reckoned with...

...Gandhi's jailing of responsible Sikh leaders in the course of her self-serving political maneuverings has complicated the restoration of confidence in the central government...

...But even apolitical adherents of the tiny religious minority (its 16 million members account for approximately 2 per cent of the population) bitterly resented the assault on the Golden Temple...

...others feel that Indira Gandhi's ghost hovers too close to permit any drastic rejection of her authoritarian and centralizing ways...

...If these aging gerontocrats could not get together to improve their own prospects of survival, the electorate must have thought, how could they direct the affairs of a dangerously divided nation...

...Then, when Mrs...

...The "computer boys," as they have been dubbed, emphasize technological efficiency and corruption-free management...

...In 1977, however, when Mrs...

...Moreover, the troubles at these two extremities have together exerted an intolerable strain on the nation's fabric...

...Their message, deceptive though it may be, seems to have reached the farthest corners of this vast nation, j udging by the avalanche that confirmed Congress-I in power...

...The very inexperience of her 40-year-old former airline pilot son appears to have worked in his favor: Untried in the murky waters of Indian politics, he stands in sharp contrast to time-servers who shift party and personal loyalties as easily as they change from Gan-dhian handspun outfits into polyester safari suits and back again...

...She had a heady success in 1971, getting a two-thirds majority in the Lok Sabha following the Bangladesh liberation struggle...

...As it turned out, the psephologists also underestimated the extent to which Indians were about to vote for the "hand," the Congress-I symbol in this land where two out of three citizens can't read or write...

...The hard truth is that half its men, women and children live below the poverty line, and improving their lot will require radical changes at the bottom, not merely the top...

...In fact, this happened to Mrs...

...Of course, the opposition did not hurt Rajiv's cause by failing to put up a common list...

...Speculation about the prospects of the reluctant crown prince and brief caretaker who is now India's full-fledged leader runs the gamut: Many Indian intellectuals are prepared to give the Prime Minister a chance to prove himself...

...To some extent, the virtual absence of opposition in Parliament will make his task easier...

...Under his leadership the Congress-I (for Indira) Party has won the support of half the nation's 300-odd million voters and taken over three quarters of the 508 seats in the Lok Sabha, or lower house of Parliament...

...Rajtv Gandhi's first challenge as he attempts to usher in a new era of stability and honest government is finding a political solution to the Sikh imbroglio...

...No amount of technological tinkering, though, will absorb India's millions of unemployed hands...

...Gandhi's death...

...The first general election, in 1952, saw the then-undivided Communists come out a surprising second to Nehru's then-undivided Congress, although the Pandit's personal charisma and role in steering the country to independence insured his party's towering over all of its rivals until he died in 1964...

...Initial talk of unity foundered without getting off the ground...

...Two years later, Mrs...

...Instead, she bounced back in 1980, trouncing the Janata at the polls...

...Indeed his victory, a mandate for order and stability, was more sweeping than any his mother or illustrious grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, ever achieved...

...More fundamentally, the world's biggest democracy has pushed aside considerations of caste and community and voted virtually as one to end the hatred and turmoil that precipitated Mrs...

...This had been brewing in the Punjab, the sect's home state, for three years, with indiscriminate attacks by fanatic separatists taking a toll of Hindus and moderate Sikhs alike...

...The Parliamentary elections could not be held there...

...Gandhi called for national balloting intended to legitimize the hated "emergency" rule she had declared, the opposition Janata coalition ousted her...

...And Mrs...

...Gandhi after she announced her "Quit Poverty" movement in 1969...

...His new aides are different as well: Plucked out of marketing and advertising positions —some with multinationals—they share a school, Cambridge University, or class background...

...Many middle-class Sikhs who in times past had left the Punjab, and today rank among the most prosperous in India, are contemplating going back to its relative safety...

...Perhaps the only thing that can be said for certain at this point is that despite his massive mandate, Rajiv Gandhi's troubles are just starting...

...The regional-ist rebellion there, while far less intransigent than Punjab's in the Northwest, has been smoldering longer...

...Gandhi became Prime Minister and started to consolidate her hold on Congress through a curious mixture of guile and statesmanship...

...If the Army were removed, the place would go up in flames...

...Gandhi criticized the parliamentary approach and praised the presidential form of government so regularly that there was some doubt whether the next elections would ever be held under the existing system...

...The only democratic forces he and his colleagues will have to contend with are the press and the courts —probably in that order...

...Some commentators thought this had begun to subside before the voting...