India’s ruling party lose election

NEW DELHI – The stunning election loss suffered yesterday by India’s ruling Hindu nationalists was the price paid for their focus on the surging urban economy instead of the rural masses, analysts said.

The “India Shining” campaign slogan of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) touted India’s blistering eight per cent economic growth, proliferating mobile phones and shiny highways – a vision that failed to speak to the poor still struggling for food, water and electricity. “The economic policies of BJP, which did achieve many things they had set out to achieve, alienated much of the electorate which are much too poor and marginalised to benefit from them,” said political analyst Pran Chopra.”It has cost it the support of a very large section of the population.The sympathy and concern for the hardships of the poor were not reflected in the BJP’s policies,” he said.Some two-thirds of India’s billion-plus population lives off agriculture.Chopra said the common voter was more bothered about roads in their villages, not national highways or India’s record 110 billion dollars-plus of foreign exchange reserves.The government gambled on the election five months ahead of schedule after a strong monsoon brought a bumper harvest and amid consistently high personal ratings for Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, a 79-year-old poet.But analyst B.G Verghese said the BJP miscalculated by turning the election into a popularity contest between Vajpayee and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, who the Hindu nationalists denounced as unelectable because she was born in Italy.”One of its main planks was Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin, which was a bogus issue, and their touting Vajpayee that he was a good guy and vote for him.It was personality oriented and it bombed,” Verghese said.Instead of being a liability, Gandhi, the widow of slain former premier Rajiv Gandhi, seemed to have struck a rapport with women voters, he said.”There has been a swing among women voters, the kind which Indira Gandhi had years ago,” Verghese said.Indira Gandhi, Sonia’s mother-in-law and India’s only female premier, was assassinated in 1984.He said Congress gained not only by India’s frequent voting waves against incumbents but because the opposition party cobbled together alliances with influential regional parties.”Regional parties are going to play an increasingly important role over the next 20 to 30 years.They will hold the trump card as the regional factor is going to remain strong,” he said.The BJP, the first avowedly Hindu party to rule secular India, downplayed its hardline roots in the election.It was only in the final stages of the campaign that it brought to the campaign trail firebrand Narendra Modi, who rode a wave of massive Hindu sentiment to re-election in the western state of Gujarat in 2002 after bloody religious riots killed 2 000 people, mostly Muslims.The BJP’s platform called for the construction of a Hindu temple over the ruins of a 16th century mosque torn down by Hindu zealots in 1992 setting off nation-wide riots.”They were just flogging a dead horse towards the end with the temple issue,” Verghese said.- Nampa-AFP”The economic policies of BJP, which did achieve many things they had set out to achieve, alienated much of the electorate which are much too poor and marginalised to benefit from them,” said political analyst Pran Chopra.”It has cost it the support of a very large section of the population.The sympathy and concern for the hardships of the poor were not reflected in the BJP’s policies,” he said.Some two-thirds of India’s billion-plus population lives off agriculture.Chopra said the common voter was more bothered about roads in their villages, not national highways or India’s record 110 billion dollars-plus of foreign exchange reserves.The government gambled on the election five months ahead of schedule after a strong monsoon brought a bumper harvest and amid consistently high personal ratings for Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, a 79-year-old poet.But analyst B.G Verghese said the BJP miscalculated by turning the election into a popularity contest between Vajpayee and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, who the Hindu nationalists denounced as unelectable because she was born in Italy.”One of its main planks was Sonia Gandhi’s foreign origin, which was a bogus issue, and their touting Vajpayee that he was a good guy and vote for him.It was personality oriented and it bombed,” Verghese said.Instead of being a liability, Gandhi, the widow of slain former premier Rajiv Gandhi, seemed to have struck a rapport with women voters, he said.”There has been a swing among women voters, the kind which Indira Gandhi had years ago,” Verghese said.Indira Gandhi, Sonia’s mother-in-law and India’s only female premier, was assassinated in 1984.He said Congress gained not only by India’s frequent voting waves against incumbents but because the opposition party cobbled together alliances with influential regional parties.”Regional parties are going to play an increasingly important role over the next 20 to 30 years.They will hold the trump card as the regional factor is going to remain strong,” he said.The BJP, the first avowedly Hindu party to rule secular India, downplayed its hardline roots in the election.It was only in the final stages of the campaign that it brought to the campaign trail firebrand Narendra Modi, who rode a wave of massive Hindu sentiment to re-election in the western state of Gujarat in 2002 after bloody religious riots killed 2 000 people, mostly Muslims.The BJP’s platform called for the construction of a Hindu temple over the ruins of a 16th century mosque torn down by Hindu zealots in 1992 setting off nation-wide riots.”They were just flogging a dead horse towards the end with the temple issue,” Verghese said.- Nampa-AFP