- DELHI -- The day after India's
stunning political reversal, in which voters ousted the ruling BJP from
power, even the 43C temperatures could not stifle the air of amazement
in New Delhi.
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- "Shock and awesome", trumpeted the banner headline
in the Hindustan Times, and the Asian Age newspaper said, "Topsy Turns
Turvy".
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- As the defeated Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee packed
his bags at his lavish colonial residence, the opposition Congress Party
gathered its allies and prepared to create a government for the first time
in eight years. It is being called the biggest political upset since India's
independence, one that no opinion poll predicted.
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- "All our assessments have gone wrong, sir,"
the BJP President, Venkaiah Naidu, said at a news conference today. "These
results were not expected by anybody in the country."
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- The result has left not only the BJP, but analysts and
the media scratching their heads about what went wrong. The answer most
come up with is that they did not listen to the rural poor. The Hindu nationalist
BJP ran its campaign on a "Shining India" plank, touting India's
soaring economic growth mostly due to a good monsoon year.
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- But hundreds of thousands of India's farmers and labourers
clearly did not agree that the BJP's rule meant growth and stability for
all. That is why the Congress win is being called a poor man's verdict.
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- "See, the middle class certainly feels good, and
for them India is shining," Kalpana Sharma, the author says. "The
rest of India, 800 million of them, for them India is not shining. And
for at least 400 million it's like despair because they have been forgotten."
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- Sonia Gandhi, the leader of the Congress Party, made
sure to capitalise on that despair as she travelled thousands of miles
across India. Today, Mrs Gandhi held a hectic round of meetings to appease
the unease of many of her political colleagues about her leadership.
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- Mrs Gandhi, the Italian-born widow of the former Prime
Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, is a default member of India's most famous political
dynasty who led her party to its worst electoral defeat in 1999, when the
BJP swept to power. The BJP spearheaded a campaign against her foreign
origin, saying her Italian birth makes her incapable of becoming prime
minister.
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- Despite what Congress leaders call a clear mandate for
Mrs Gandhi's leadership, the campaign continues to plague her. But who
will become India's next Prime Minister? Today, Mrs Gandhi met a former
Congress ally who split from the party, saying he could not accept a foreign-born
citizen as prime minister of India. Congress will elect its parliamentary
leader tomorrow, a post she now holds. The meeting will decide who is likely
to be Prime Minister.
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- Yesterday's 5 per cent plunge on the Bombay Stock Exchange
pointed to fears that the Congress-led coalition will slow the BJP's economic
reforms that include privatisations and elimination of some guaranteed
government jobs. Those fears come from Congress's key allies in any new
government: the Left parties, especially the Communist Party of India.
The Left gained a critical bloc of more than 60 seats in Parliament, their
highest score since Independence.
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- The Congress and the Left are scrambling to prove they
will not oppose reforms considered essential to India's economic progress.
But Communist leaders have said they are against many of the bullish BJP-led
privatisations of India's state firms. It was enough to send the markets
crashing. But that does not matter to rural India, where there is a tenuous
hope that the mandate given to the Congress Party will improve their lives.
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- In Orbassano, the small Italian Alpine town where Sonia
Gandhi went to school, locals are waking up to the achievement of their
most famous compatriot. She left for India more than 35 years ago and became
an Indian citizen in 1983. She returned home only rarely.
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- Mrs Gandhi, 57, was born Sonia Maino in this town of
22,000 people outside Turin. Her father was a building contractor. Locals
think of her with great pride. "She was very beautiful," said
55-year-old Liliana Paviolo, who was at Mrs Gandhi's private Roman Catholic
school. "She stood out from the others." Her entire family was
modest, Mrs Paviolo added. "They are very normal, very down-to-earth
people, who talked to everyone."
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- She went to India as the 21-year-old bride of Rajiv Gandhi,
who was elected prime minister in 1984 and assassinated in 1991. Years
later, his wife entered politics and now appears likely to become India's
first foreign-born prime minister.
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- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=521444
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