SOME 420 million Indian voters, on an estimated 60 per cent turnout, have delivered a decisive victory to the National Congress Party in India’s five-week general elections. It is the largest ever democratic exercise, and in political terms potentially one of the most strategically important for any developing state.
By voting so clearly in this way Indians have put their prolonged experiment with caste, religious and regional identity politics behind them and returned to more national themes concerned with economic growth and social infrastructure. In doing so they delivered a sharp rebuke to the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party. Its Hindu nationalist agenda has lost appeal among a younger generation of voters, compared to the revival of the secular and cross-community Congress Party, which has also revived its attraction for most Indian Muslims.
This victory leaves Congress just a few seats short of a working majority, giving outgoing prime minister Manmohan Singh the relatively easy task of forming a government with independents or small parties. Compared to his outgoing coalition of 13 parties, relying on the communists for external support, this is a great liberation. It will allow him concentrate on a new domestic agenda of economic development, poverty reduction, fiscal and labour market reforms and building up rural education, health and social services. His party’s campaign for these changes resonated with voters, especially in several key states like Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, where their fortunes revived sharply even if they did not win outright majorities.
Much of this success is being attributed to a strong election performance by Rahul Gandhi, son of Mrs Sonia Gandhi and her late husband Rajiv Gandhi and through them heir to the powerful Nehru-Gandhi family. In Uttar Pradesh he fought a campaign opposed to traditional broad coalitions with other parties. This result shows his strategy has a national appeal, and he is now tipped as a future Indian leader.
In foreign policy terms India will now be in a stronger position to pursue its objectives in a turbulent region and to manage its emergence as a world power more effectively in coming years. There was comparatively little nationalist resentment of last year’s Mumbai atrocities at play during the campaign, despite the attackers’ Pakistani origins. Mr Singh’s programme of co-operation with the United States can now proceed more smoothly. India suddenly looks more appealing.