The Pakistani Spectator

Manmohan Singh will lead India again, marking the return of competence. India’s prime minister will also have a freer hand to put in place his economic reforms, after the Congress ended up less dependent on its allies.

The party won four dozen seats more than last time. The people who opposed it, the BJP and the Communists, both lost seats.

L K Advani, 82 this year, will not lead the BJP in the next election.

Mayawati (whom I voted for), the Dalit leader who had a chance of becoming prime minister in case the Third Front did well, did poorly.

She will remain chief minister of India’s biggest state and must await her time.

Manmohan Singh has been India’s best leader. He is our most qualified, and also our most far-thinking. His restraint after the November attacks by the Lashkar-e-Taiba in Bombay has paid off for him. The Congress candidate from South Bombay, the geography where the attack happened, actually won by a wide margin.

He is one of the few intellectuals in Indian politics and able to think strategically.

Manmohan did not back off from his nuclear deal with America though the Communists withdrew support over the issue, and his government had been threatened.

Now the deal will go through, and that will be a good thing for India.

Under this deal, some of India’s nuclear power plants will be put under international inspection. The other plants will not be, and the output of these reactors India can use for its nuclear weapons programme. There is nothing wrong with this deal. The Communists opposed it because of their reaction to America. The regional parties opposed it because of their Muslim voters. Advani opposed it because America did not treat India ‘as equals’.

None of them saw the deal in terms of benefit to India.

Under Manmohan Singh India had two great periods. The first was his five years as finance minister (1991-1996) when he began liberalising India’s economy. The second period was 2004-2009 when India became the second fastest growing economy in the world, reducing poverty at the rate of one per cent a year, and put a coherent strategic policy in place.

The reason that Manmohan has had this chance to run the country is the faith in him shown by Sonia Gandhi. There are two things that made Manmohan the right choice for the Congress. The first clearly was his quality: he’s a world class leader.

It is true that in his time India’s fiscal deficit has ballooned as the global economic crisis has affected government’s income.

But he remains the man most capable of understanding the problems and applying the solutions.

At the G20 Summit last month, London’s Financial Times put him on its masthead next to Obama and sent three editors to interview him.

The interview (www.ft.com/indepth/g20) shows us glimpses into the quality of his intellect.

The second reason Sonia Gandhi chose him was a moral one. And it was to make up for the Congress’s presiding over the massacre of Sikhs in 1984. The Congress again won Sikh-majority Punjab this time, showing that the community has put the matter behind them.

Though her chamchas overdo it, it is true that Sonia Gandhi has run the Congress party well.

She has put the party and the nation above herself and her family. She chose not to be prime minister in 2004. Her son, though he won then, was not made a minister as first-time MP. This time, she was adamant that Manmohan Singh would lead the government and made sure everyone else in the Congress said that as well.

The conduct of her son and daughter in the election, their modesty and their culture, has been manifestly different from that of Varun Gandhi.

It has taken an Italian to show Indians how to run a political party.

The Congress has a very strong list of technocrats that will take power now, and that will be good for India.

Shashi Tharoor, the 53-year-old former undersecretary general of the United Nations won from Kerala. The Congress has a dozen MPs around 40 years of age who are highly educated and have won their second election.

Politically, the Congress revived itself in Uttar Pradesh, becoming the second largest party there, beating both Mayawati and the BJP. The credit for that will be given to the Gandhis by Congressmen, and perhaps rightly. Rahul worked there for five years and Sonia refused an alliance with the Samajwadi Party because too few seats were offered to her.

Both the peasant Yadavs lost. Mulayam Singh Yadav did not do poorly, winning two dozen seats, but he won fewer than last time and will not have the leverage over Sonia Gandhi that he did in the last Lok Sabha.

India’s railway minister, the colourful Lalu Yadav was wiped out in Bihar by an extremely competent chief minister.

The Communists were defeated in both the states they held majorities in. They were wiped out in Kerala by a coalition of the Congress and the Muslim League, and in Bengal by the coalition of former BJP ally Mamata Banerjee and the Congress.

L K Advani will go into the night having refused to discipline the rabid Varun Gandhi. This shame will be written into his biography, along with the bloodstains of thousands of Indians who died because of his party’s ambition.

The BJP will go far right now as Advani is eclipsed in his last five years in parliament.

He will face a hard time retaining control of a party that is inclined more and more to Narendra Modi. Modi did better in Gujarat than he did last time, but only four or so seats, and some seats were a close-run thing.

The editor of Indian Express, Shekhar Gupta, said that Modi’s behaviour cost the BJP nationally.

Modi arrived while the operation against the Lashkar-e-Taiba in Bombay was on, and announced rewards for the fallen policemen. One of them, Hemant Karkare, had been previously abused by Modi because of his investigation of a bomb blasts involving the RSS.

“Logon ki chitaon par rotiya pak rahi thi” (he cooked bread on the fires of the funeral pyre) is how Gupta described it.

The BJP was down marginally from 2004. The party said it was expected to do better in UP, Rajasthan and Gujarat.

Narendra Modi won the election in his state and delivered a couple of more seats, but he hasn’t delivered the sweep that was promised. In any case Gujarat, with only 26 seats and five per cent of India’s population is not relevant nationally.

Though Modi has a strong base in the state, he will need substantial parts of India to be turned on by his primitive anti-Muslim message to do well in 2014. Two places responded to bigotry in this election. In UP’s Pilibhit, Varun Gandhi won after an appalling campaign. In Orissa’s Kandhamal, the BJP candidate won after a riot between Hindus and Christians. The party will remember this: it does better when it is able to spread its poison.

In Kashmir, the first separatist to contest elections in 20 years lost. Sajjad Lone fought on the legacy of his father, Abdul Ghani Lone, who was killed by militants. Despite this, Sajjad fought on an Azadi platform, which got rejected.

The separatists of Kashmir must now decide whether they will remain outside the democratic process (which Kashmiris endorsed in last year’s assembly election with their turnout) or join in.

India’s challenges over the next five years remain the same as they have been since our first elections 59 years ago, which the Congress swept. Poverty, illiteracy, health and infrastructure, these are our concerns.

We have elected to put the best possible man in charge to tackle them.

The writer is a former newspaper editor who lives in Bombay. Email: aakar.patel@gmail.com

Source: News