Whatever their political allegiance, most Indians will reflect that on balance the result of the general election is good for the country. The fear that instability would ensue if minority parties held the balance of power between the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was very real. Voters were though less than impressed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s handling of security, not least before and after the Mumbai attacks last year. Nor did they seem to have any appetite for another narrowly focused BJP government.
In the event the electorate has again chosen the Congress party, the effective status quo in Indian politics and this is to be welcomed. There are economic and diplomatic challenges enough ahead without adding the difficulty of a weak minority small-party coalition or a return of the BJP with its confrontational policies toward non-Hindus, particularly Muslims.
However, although Congress is again the largest single party, it does not have an overall majority in the new Parliament. It will have to find some 20 more MPs to back it. But this is less of a shortfall than after the 2004 election when Congress accepted the communist parties as minority partners — a partnership that only broke when the government initiated closer ties with Washington. The presence of the left-wingers for much of the term did stifle Congress plans for privatization along with liberalization of the financial sector. The communist parties are unlikely to be invited to join a new coalition, not least because their support in the heartland of West Bengal appears to have collapsed and they seem to have lost more than half their 60 seats.
The new Congress-led government which must be formed by June 2 is, therefore, likely to be free to push ahead with selling off the largely-inefficient state sector, as and when the capital markets have recovered sufficiently for government-held assets to command a reasonable price. Many may consider that the delayed reform of the financial sector has been a blessing in disguise, since Indian financial institutions were by and large avoided exposing themselves to the madness that has gripped financial markets elsewhere. Finance sector reform can probably, therefore, be informed by the regulatory lessons being learned so bitterly in other markets.
However, that the sector needs improvements in the efficient distribution of capital is clear and the reforms, therefore, should not be too long delayed. Because the Congress has won such a surprisingly clear mandate, it seems unthinkable that it will not find coalition partners whose political price will trammel its core agenda. Now that the election is out of the way, Premier Manmohan Singh, who only a few months ago was being written off as a spent political force, can readdress the issues of relations with Pakistan and a lasting settlement of the Kashmir stand off. The government of Asif Ali Zardari is currently focused completely on a serious insurgency, but the very fact that with Congress’ remarkable win, it has a stable neighbor to the east, will ease at least some pressure on it.
An exercise in sheer cynicism
Sri Lanka’s bloody civil war is being carried out with Chinese material and largesse, said The Times in an editorial yesterday. Excerpts:
Yesterday President Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka predicted that the country’s civil war would end within 48 hours. The government’s military campaign against the Tamil Tigers has resulted in the displacement of about 200,000 civilians. About 50,000 civilians are trapped amid the fighting. The United Nations estimates that 7,000 civilians have been killed in the fighting since January. A civil war lasting three decades is thus on the point of a terrifying conclusion, as efforts at diplomacy are rebuffed.
The Tigers have operated with notorious violence against political opponents among the Tamils. None of this justifies the grotesque response by government forces. Part of the responsibility for the rout of the rebel forces and the suffering of civilians caught literally in the crossfire lies with China. Despite a record of callous destruction of civilian life and property, which provoked an arms embargo by the United States, Sri Lankan forces have been able to rely on weapons shipments from China. Chinese aid to Sri Lanka has grown rapidly; it amounted to about $1 billion last year, whereas Sri Lanka has a GDP of about $27 billion.
The rulers of China are thereby extending an amoral policy adopted in Myanmar and elsewhere. Against heroic demonstrations of last year, the Myanmar military regime merely reinforced its totalitarian control. And it did so with military aid from China. Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, has also signed aid agreements with one of the few rulers whose repulsiveness bears comparison to that of Myanmar’s generals: Robert Mugabe. In return for mineral and trade concessions, China has provided economic aid to Zimbabwe — an arrangement that intensifies the suffering of a captive and beggared populace, by cementing the position of their oppressors.
