India’s ruling coalition may go for early elections by April, five months ahead of schedule. Parliament is likely to be dissolved by Feb. 5 or 6 to pave the way for the April vote, according to a government spokesman in New Delhi yesterday.
Of course there is nothing surprising in yesterday’s announcement. The talk of an early election has been in the air ever since the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance won three out of the four states which went to polls recently. All the states were Congress-ruled. A healthy economic performance in recent months and a thaw in relations with Pakistan have also added to the NDA’s confidence. All the indicators show that the Indian economy is on a roll. And last week’s handshake between Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistan President Musharraf has shaken many of the assumptions about the intractability of Indo-Pak problems.
So the NDA has no doubt it will cruise to victory in an election that will pit the charismatic Vajpayee against whoever the fractured opposition manages to put as their prime ministerial candidate.
The disarray in the opposition camp, especially the Congress party, the largest after the BJP, is not entirely out of the BJP’s calculations. Until recently nobody was in any doubt as to who would be the opposition candidate for prime minister. Now the people of India know it will not be Congress President Sonia Gandhi.
Gandhi herself has decided to keep out of the race. This is not only because of voices of dissent from prospective allies or because of her foreign origin. The main factor seems to be a realization within her party and outside that she has proven unequal to the task of leading Congress, India’s natural party of government until recently. There was a time, not long ago, when a mere nod from Sonia Gandhi that she was ready to form an alternative non-BJP government would have been received without question in New Delhi. That moment is gone. The Congress under her leadership is not only fading but shrinking. So much so that many people in India believe that she is the BJP’s main electoral asset after Vajpayee. The BJP, of course, is not without its share of problems. It is still a north Indian party, largely shunned by the minorities. It has on its ranks people like Narendra Modi who gave every impression that, had he not been the chief minister, he would have led the Hindu rioters when Gujarat was burning two years ago. Its front organizations like the VHP and the RSS still spew anti-Muslim hate, and zealots, big and small, abound in the party. But the BJP fought the last assembly elections largely on an economic plank, not on divisive issues like the construction of the Ram temple and Ayodhya. All the indications from their recent party plenary are that they will repeat this act on the larger stage. One hopes that contentious issues will be kept out of the upcoming Lok Sabha contest. Vajpayee, who has gone out of his way to defuse tension with Pakistan, must shun sectarian forces and policies that want to disrupt internal peace and tranquillity.
