TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/121189/12118900.034

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                                                                                WORLD, Page 57

INDIA

The Fall of the House of Nehru


For only the second time since independence, the electorate
votes the Congress Party out of power

By Lisa Beyer


    In the history of modern dynasties, the House of Nehru
rates one of the heftier chapters. Since India gained
independence in 1947, its political destiny has been
inextricably linked with this powerful family, whose scions have
ruled the country with only two brief interruptions. There was
Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister and an early
leader of the durable Congress Party, his daughter Indira
Gandhi, and her son Rajiv. Such was the family's sway that when
Indira was assassinated in 1984, the 40-year-old Rajiv, a
reluctant and unproven politician, was rocketed into high office
on the strength of one credential: his name.

    Suddenly that dynasty is in disrepute. In parliamentary
elections late last month, the Congress (I) Party, as it is now
called, was routed from power for only the second time in
independent India's history. Several corruption scandals, as
well as Gandhi's accelerating isolation from his people, helped
squander the reserves of public support that in 1984 had given
his party an unprecedented 415 of the 542 seats in the Lok
Sabha, the lower house of Parliament. Congress has been reduced
to a sorry 192 seats, having lost power to a disparate
opposition led by Gandhi's archrival, Vishwanath Pratap Singh.

    With an estimated 60% of India's 498 million voters taking
part, the balloting was the biggest democratic exercise in
world history -- and the bloodiest and most contemptible ever
held in India. At least 134 people died in election-related
violence. Because of widespread rigging, new voting was ordered
in 1,485 polling stations, including 97 in Amethi, Rajiv
Gandhi's constituency in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
Ultimately, Gandhi was declared the winner over Rajmohan Gandhi,
a grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and no relation to Rajiv. But 20
of Rajiv's 59 ministers were defeated, a measure of the Congress
Party's steep decline.

    Gandhi's political enemies owed much of their success to
the pertinacity of V.P. Singh, India's new Prime Minister. The
unassuming Singh, 58, served in Indira's governments and as
Minister of Finance and Defense under Rajiv, but in 1987 he
resigned, claiming that he had been blocked in his efforts to
unearth graft related to defense contracts. Soon after, Singh
launched a dogged national crusade against corruption. For the
elections, he persuaded several of India's opposition groups to
quit fighting one another and work together to defeat Congress.
As a result, they were able to avoid facing each other and thus
splitting the opposition vote in 387 of the 525 parliamentary
contests last month.

    The opposition's strategy paid off handsomely. Although
Congress remained the largest party in Parliament, it fell 71
seats shy of a majority. Three days after the third and final
day of polling, Gandhi, looking fresh-faced and unperturbed,
appeared on television to tell the nation, "The people have
given their verdict. In all humility, we respect that verdict."

    Since Singh's Janata Dal (People's Party) and its four
allies in the National Front coalition gained a total of only
144 seats, the anti-Congress forces had to settle for a minority
government. During the campaign, the National Front cooperated
with the Bharatiya Janata Party, a right-wing Hindu nationalist
group, and with the country's two Communist parties to avoid
three-cornered races. At the polls the Communists took a total
of 44 seats while the B.J.P. won 88, an extraordinary leap from
the two seats it held before. But as ideological opposites, the
B.J.P. and the Communists refused to join any coalition that
included the other, so a loose entente was arranged: the
rightists and leftists would stay out of the National Front's
coalition but would back it in Parliament. With two smaller
parties pledging support, Singh could count on 283 votes, a
score more than the 263 he needed for a majority.

    Given the fragile underpinnings of the new regime, there is
intense speculation that it might soon collapse, as did the
only previous non-Congress government, which fell apart in 1979
after 212 years in power. If anything will hold the National
Front and its allies together, however, it will be their
collective determination to avoid a rerun of that debacle and
to prevent Rajiv Gandhi from returning to power. Says B.J.P.
president L.K. Advani: "Our objective is to end dynastic rule
in New Delhi."

    Among the challenges facing the new government are a
foreign debt of $63 billion, spiraling consumer prices and
continuing unrest in the states of Punjab, Assam, and Jammu and
Kashmir. In addressing these woes, the National Front will be
painfully hamstrung by the need to keep its allies of both the
left and the right satisfied.

    That reality may account for Gandhi's equanimity in defeat.
While some members of his party initially urged him to try to
forge a coalition, he concluded that it was wiser to sit back
and hope that the National Front would soon disintegrate. Says
a colleague of Gandhi's: "I told him the people want a change.
If you try to form a government, we will be out of power for 25
years. This way, it won't be 25 months." That remains to be
seen, of course. But for the moment, given the chaotic nature
of India's parliamentary democracy, an obituary for the
Nehru-Gandhi dynasty seems premature.


-- Edward W. Desmond and Anita Pratap/New Delhi