The Italianization of Indian Politics

...Each claims to represent the true aspirations of the Tamil people...

...Indeed, it is a strange coincidence that precisely when polls show many Indians questioning the desirability of having Italian-born Sonia Gandhi in the race for Prime Minister, the country is experiencing electoral upheavals along the lines of Italy, which has had 56 governments since World War II...

...This was a feat of agility even by Indian politicians' standards...

...Darryl D'monte, a longtime contributor to these pages, is a journalist and editor who specializes in Indian affairs...

...For those less involved in political maneuvering the problem is not that Sonia is Italian but that she has absolutely no inkling of what it takes to be a national leader...

...Thousands of Congress members gathered outside her residence daily to plead with her to reconsider her decision, the three rebels were expelled from the party, and finally Sonia bowed to the entreaties of the faithful...

...The BJP, under Vajpayee, will try to cash in on the accomplishments of its short-lived regime...

...Various other coalitions, including one headed by the veteran Communist party leader of West Bengal State, Jyoti Basu, failed to get off the ground as well...

...Extremists even refer darkly to control by the Pope...

...On both counts, it looks as if the nod will go to the BJP...

...The country will simply have to learn to live with mercurial coalitions and unprincipled defections...

...Sonia has come in handy: The choice the BJP poses —a more inflammatory version of the concern some in the Congress Party have now raised—is that of "Rome-rajya" (rule by Rome) versus swarajya (self-rule...

...After visiting Gujarat, where converts to Christianity have borne the brunt of the attacks, Vajpayee himself called for a national debate on conversions, thereby implicitly legitirnizingthepogrorns...

...NO ONE is talking about it yet, but the real issue in the upcoming election is going to be the choice between corruption, as manifest in Jayalalitha and others of her ilk, and the "communalism" that is a euphemism for the BJP's aggressive proHindu stance...

...But he took a grave risk by seeking her allegiance...

...Every mention of the political situation among the "chatterati" draws painful sighs...

...At the same time, the very fact that desperately poor India still retains the trappings of democracy, in sharp contrast to South and East Asia, speaks volumes about how deeply democratic norms have succeeded in taking hold here...

...The BJP-led coalition had ruled the country for only 13 months when the AllIndian Dravidian Progressive Federation (AIADMK), headed by the redoubtable former actress Jayalalitha Jayaram, pulled out...

...In addition, countlessmore rupees will be spent by the parties on their campaigns...

...I agree that the parliamentary system is going through a period of crisis," Anselmi said...

...The argument has an economic appeal, too, promising as it does a sharply reduced number of national electoral contests...

...Significantly, the recent launch of an Indian-made missile did not provoke the same nationwide celebrations...

...As head of the Congress Party, she set about forming an alternative coalition and soon claimed to have the backing of 272 MPs...

...people have realized nuclear bombs do not provide bread, they lead to economic sanctions...

...An unfazed Pawar, who is thought to have his eye on the Prime Minister's post, has said he will form his own party...

...In the fall 15 million voters have to be added to the 600 million already on the rolls, and 800,000 polling booths will be required...

...Spouting amity and enmity in the same breath won't persuade anyone much has changed...

...Nor will the confrontation that has been heating up on the frozen heights of the Himalayas, in disputed Kashmir territory...

...The DMK can similarly be expected to benefit from a reaction to the former actress' misdeeds and probably will take most of the Lok Sabha seats for Tamil Nadu...

...It began sliding downhill after her husband —who succeeded his mother in office and also was assassinated—became embroiled in a fierce controversy involving kickbacks from the Swedish armaments firm Bofors...

...Apprehension is not limited to the pessimistic...

...Nevertheless, it is now resorting to that most feudal of all gimmicks—an appeal to vote for the Gandhi dynasty...

...Given India's tremendous linguistic and cultural diversity, it is often said the country is made up of many small nations and is more of a federation than a homogeneous entity...

...The cost of the whole process, according to official estimates, will be some $70 million...

...Mindful of the fact that the public is fed up with petty politicking and wary of the "unfaithfulness" of small regional groups, the BJP has announced that its campaign will focus not on a party platform but on a national agenda...

...The heinousness of the crime notwithstanding, Home Minister Lal Kishan Advani exonerated the Hindu zealots who were the perpetrators without a proper inquiry...

...The era of coalitions ought to ensure that the smallest parties pull their weight...

...At best it can be said that the BJP performed a holding operation and prevented the growth rate and the rupee from declining any further...

...Out of power since 1996, it ruled India for 45 of its 51 years of independence, mainly under Rajiv, his mother Indira, and his grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru...

...Moreover, the BJP has continued to charge that Pakistan incites India's Muslim population to swear allegiance to Islamabad, rather than New Delhi...

...Indians could do worse than study how Italy has coped with its political turmoil over the last half century...

...Sonia herself always played the role of the typical Indian housewife content to be at her husband's side, and of the obedient daughter-in-law before Indira Gandhi's assassination in 1984...

...An angry Sonia Gandhi then announced she was standing down and went into seclusion for what proved to be a tumultuous week...

...It does lead to the destabilization of the economy and electoral flux, but the system can contain these aberrations...

...The BJP's subsequent wooing of her was roundly criticized: It meant that the Hindu party, despite always priding itself on its morality—unlike the decrepit Congress Party—was prepared to get into bed with a leader who had been found guilty of corruption...

...By the time people go to the polls in September—candidates and their entourages can't cope with the summer heat or the torrential monsoons—the BJP will surely be stressing that it is the one force in Indian politics capable of welding together a viable alliance...

...It is as if the nation has plumbed the very depths of its being, its parliamentary nadir, and there is no one who will lift it out of the morass...

...Vajpayee knew full well what he was getting into, and once in power he obligingly transferred judges and investigating officials to lighten her legal burdens...

...The stock market, for its part, responded badly to the news of another round of balloting, underscoring the nervousness of the business community—and especially of foreign investors—about the country's chaotic politics...

...Domestically, it will cite the secondround of nuclear tests that briefly triggered a great wave of chauvinism...

...Under the guise of an anticonversion drive targeting foreign and Indian missionaries, it has shored up its Hindu identity by questioning the loyalty of the Christian minority...

...While the BJP has calculatedly given the Muslim population a reprieve from "Hindutva," its Hindu hate campaign, it has turned its guns on India's tiny Christian population...

...The 18 seats held by her party, one of the two main "anti-Brahmin" parties in the southern Tamil Nadu State, had enabled the BJP coalition to come up with the 272 seats it required for a majority in the 543-memberLok Sabha, Parliament's Lower House...

...Even though Rajiv's openness and charm disarmed many people, there was no mistaking his political ineptitude...

...A downturn in the wake of the East Asian recession has left India barely able to afford the cost of holding its gargantuan elections...

...Even if she was wrongly advised by Congress stalwarts, the fiasco demonstrated her sheer inexperience...

...The Indian people are dreading this because they know the outcome will saddle them with an unstable government, just like the eight that have come and gone since 1989...

...Graham Staines, and his two young sons...

...So come September the primary question will be: Who can put together a government capable of lasting all or at least most of a full five-year term, and of initiating effective, achievable programs...

...Communalism, on the other hand, is like the spread of a cancer that destroys the body politic...

...In the end, it turned out that she could only muster 233...

...In effect, it will form a coalition before the election...

...Atal Behari Vajpayee, the respected 72-year-old BJP Prime Minister who is widely regarded as the "liberal" face of Hindu chauvinism, may now wax eloquent on Jayalalitha's perfidy...

...Almost immediately the Dravidian Progressive Federation (DMK) did an about face and offered its allegiance to the BJP...

...The only remotely possible alternative, astonishingly, is Soma Gandhi's Congress Party...

...What drives her is the desire to protect the family name from the odium of corruption threatened by the protracted Bofors case, which every party not dependent on Congress support is eager to pursue...

...With the lack of a dominant party making it necessary to depend on volatile regional political organizations to form a central government many feel there is nothing but chaos ahead...

...With gestures like these his government has set relations among Indians back more than any previous one over the past 51 years...

...The party that won India its independence has already paid a heavy price for its reluctance to observe democratic norms...

...The low point of this anti-Christian vendetta to date was the gruesome immolation of an Australian missionary...

...Once the BJP government fell, Sonia Gandhi, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's widow, took the plunge after months of vacillation...

...On foreign policy, Vajpayee will brandish his much-publicized bus trip last February to the Pakistani capital of Lahore, and the hand of friendship he extended to his counterpart there, Nawaz Sharif...

...That euphoria has died down, though...

...The Election Commission has, to be sure, imposed expenditure limits, but these have their inevitable loopholes...

...This was certainly a bold thrust, defusing years of antagonism between two countries often said to have more similarities of language and culture than any other neighboring nations in the world...

...her antics could be the stuff of a Salman Rushdie novel...

...This shrewd strategy should defuse the critics who contend that present-day coalitions are hastily cobbled together marriages of convenience, prone to equally hasty disintegration...

...I would argue that corruption, defined in its broadest sense to include pecuniary gains as well as shortterm political manipulation, is an evil we can live with...

...She is said, for instance, to wear a bullet-proof vest under the yards-long sari she wraps around her voluminous person...

...It may have been the prospect of continued one-family rule that prompted three prominent Congress figures to openly rebel against Sonia...

...The DMK and AIADMK have been locked in nearly mortal combat since the late actor, M. G. Ramachandran (who was Jayalalitha's lover), broke away from the DMK many years ago to form a rival party...

...Jayalalitha will probably receive much of the blame fortoppling Vajpayee, and that is bound to help gain the BJP public sympathy, for without her it at least represents a shaky semblance of order...

...That was the signal for yet another midterm election...

...But some will recall that the BJP insisted Pakistani (and Chinese) belligerence was the reason for India's conducting last year's tests...

...By making a foolish bid to form a government and preventing others from staking their claim, she has not only postponed the inevitable but probably has ensured her party's descent into a divisive power struggle and its loss of more Lok Sabha seats...

...The AIADMK was ousted from power locally in the 1996 State Assembly elections because of Jayalalitha's dishonest practices and overbearing style...

...But I strongly believe that democracy is the most efficient and effective way to improve the quality of life...

...ANOTHER ELECTION The Italianization Indian Politics By Darryl D'monte Bombay Political doomsayers here and abroad see last month's ouster of India's 12th government since independence as heralding the end of stability in the world's largest democracy...

...It all adds up to a truly staggering undertaking, particularly in a country where one out of every two people can'tread or write...

...That India's departing 13party coalition, led by the Hindu Rightwing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), lost an April 17 confidence test in Parliament by a single vote only seems to confirm the worst suspicions about "the Italianization of India...

...In the 1998 general elections her party trounced the DMK, however, winning nearly half the state's 39 parliamentary seats...

...The rise of regional power bases could be viewed as a blessing in disguise, since the Jayalalithas and Jyoti Basus keep the central government from exercising excessive control, as it did during the Congress years...

...Inexperience likewise plagued her husband, an Indian Airlines pilot until his younger, politically ambitious brother, Sanjay, was killed in a plane crash while flying recklessly...

...The actress' penchant for running Tamil Nadu as her fiefdom was not merely legendary...

...Recently Tina Anselmi—a minister in several Italian cabinets whose possible selection as the first woman President there had been mentioned—told an Indian interviewer she is now used to having 30 parties living in peaceful coexistence, even if governments don't last for more than a year...

...Ultimately, though, he refused to withdraw cases pending against her in court and he paid the price when she brought him down...

...In all probability, therefore, the BJP will win a larger number of seats than it did last year, although it will still be well short of a majority...

...Glaring as its faults may be, it benefits from maintaining an appearance of discipline...

...To expect Soma to pose any threat to the BJP borders on the ludicrous...

...Spearheaded by Sharad Pawar, a powerful Congress leader from Maharashtra State who headed the opposition in the Lok Sabha, they called for a constitutional amendment that would require the President, the Vice President and the Prime Minister to be native-born Indians...

...Overall, economic gains have been somewhat illusory...