NEW DELHI, Jan 24, Reuter: India is around 300 days away from general elections and counting.
After assembly elections in three states and the undignified exits of two senior figures all in the space of two days Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and his Congress (I) Party have a lot of work to do, Congress won overall majorities in the northeastern states of Nagaland and Mizoram in weekend elections. But these victories, announced on Tuesday, were cold comfort after a humiliating defeat in Tamil Nadu, where congress came a distant third behind the regional DMK party.
Nagaland and Mizoram have a combined population of around two million. Tamil Nadu has 50 million people.
With disastrous timing, Arjun Singh, Congress Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh State, was forced to step down on Sunday as an inquiry began into the running of a lottery in which members of his family were involved.
Only hours later, the Governor and assembly speaker of Bihar state, also congress nominees, quit after losing out in a highly public power struggle with the State Chief Minister.
Gandhi won a huge majority at the 1984 general elections eight weeks after the assassination of his mother Indira Gandhi.
The sympathy vote has long since evaporated and his record in by-elections and assembly polls in the past two years has been dismal.
In the latest fiasco, Gandhi made a dozen trips to Tamil Nadu, where he promised voters huge benefits and offended local feelings by disparaging his Tamil opponents and put his own prestige on the line in a highly personal campaign.
As national elections approach, congress faces the dilemma that Gandhi is increasingly seen in the party as a vote loser.
Most commentators believe Congress will lose many seats though few are convinced that the opposition can overturn its majority.
The best known opposition figure, Vishwanatrh Pratap Singh, “has not shown himself an effective or even a credible alternative to Rajiv Gandhi,” said a diplomat.
The Chief threat to party and Prime Minister, said one analyst, is that a sizeable body of congress members of parliament facing the prospect of losing their seats might feel they had nothing to lose by defecting to the opposition or staging a party revolt against Gandhi.
To ensure his survival, commentators agreed that Gandhi’s first priority in the remaining 300 days must be to reorganize and revitalize the party at state level.
“Not only in Tamil Nadu, has the Congress become a distant party, an inefficient organization that is energized only at election times. It is showing all the symptoms of decay… general debility, lack of will and incapacity to get up and do something,” said the independent Hindustan Times.
As corruption is likely to be a major election issue, Gandhi also needs to make more public examples of suspect leaders like Arjun Singh, said a western diplomat. The question was whether he had the will or elbowroom to do so.
Despite his glossy international image, Gandhi is seen at home as weak and wishy-washy, said the times of India.
Worse, he is believed to be in thrall to advisers who lack the courage to tell him the unpleasant truth that his personal brand of campaigning loses rather than gains votes.
“Out of Gandhi’s earshot they must wonder how they can keep him under control,” said a diplomat.
Article extracted from this publication >> January 27, 1989
