Victory for Sonia

DEMOCRACY is now enjoying the most glorious moment in its long history with the almost unbelievable  victory of the Congress party in India. Nearly 380 million people, in an electorate of 675 million, voted in the three-week-long election which produced a stunning upset victory for the Congress party, ousting Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s BJP which had governed the country over the last eight years and was regarded as a shoo-in for securing another term. Viewed from every angle, to begin with, the contest and its results must be seen as remarkable. The fact that a country as vast and diverse as India could conduct the central act of its democracy in such a free, fair and peaceful manner and produce results which express the people’s will for change is something to wonder about, reinforcing in the minds of all freedom-loving societies the values of our political system.

The change in India is truly dramatic since, against all odds, it replaces the Hindu-nationalist BJP government with the Congress party thus giving a fresh lease on power to the Gandhi dynasty and raising the fascinating prospect of India having for its next Prime Minister the 57-year-old Italian-born widow of former premier Rajiv Gandhi who was assassinated in 1991. Vajpayee and his BJP government took a calculated gamble and lost. Such was their confidence of winning an even enlarged majority, that they called the elections six months early. Much was in their favour; based largely on a booming high-tech industry, growth in the Indian economy was surging; good monsoon rains had produced a bumper harvest; the prospects for a lasting peace with Pakistan seemed at hand and the party’s sophisticated public relations campaign celebrating what they called “Shining India” appeared to be paying dividends.

They also sought to write off Mrs Gandhi as a foreigner. Small wonder that all the polls had predicted an easy BJP victory. As it turned out, the BJP either overlooked or under-estimated the three major factors which eventully swept the Congress party into office; the enduring romance of the Indian people with the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty which ruled India for 35 of its 57 independent years; the intense campaign led by Mrs Gandhi among the masses of the country’s poor, and the support of the 300 million people still living below the poverty line who regard India’s technological progress as benefitting only the upper urban classes. In a special sense, the victory of the Congress party is a personal triumph for Sonia Gandhi who, ironically enough, was forced to give up her reclusive life style, after the assassination of her husband, to assume the party’s leadership.

Also the appearance on the hustings of her children, Rahul who enters the Parliament from Utta Pradesh, and fiery Priyanka — the new generation of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty — added strongly to the party’s popularity. “The credit goes almost entirely to Sonia Gandhi, her tireless campaigning, the crowds she attracted and her personal popularity,” said political commentator Pram Chopra. When she got married at the age of 21 to Rajiv who was then an airline pilot, Sonia had nothing more than the role of wife and mother in mind. In a spectacular twist of destiny, she has had greatness thrust upon her and now she faces the challenge of her life, perhaps to govern the world’s largest democracy.