By Sujatha Fernandes in India
A secular "United Front" government has been installed following inconclusive national elections last month. No one party received a majority in the elections to the eleventh Lok Sabha (parliament).
The right-wing Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) increased its share from one fifth in 1991 to a third of the seats in 1996. The heterogeneous grouping known as the Third Front ended up with over a fifth of the votes. It was made up of various non-left secular parties such as the Janata Dal, several regional entities and left parties organised under the Left Front — including the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and the Communist Party of India (CPI).
The Congress (I), which had been in power almost uninterruptedly since independence, suffered the greatest losses.
On May 16 a cabinet headed by BJP leader Atal Vihari Bajpai was sworn into government and given a fortnight to find a majority in parliament through alliances with smaller parties. By May 28, he was forced to resign, unable to find this majority, and Deve Gowda (of Janata Dal) was sworn in as the leader of the United Front government.
The government includes the Janata Dal, the Samajwadi Party and regional parties such as the Tamil Maanila Congress, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Asom Gan Parishad and the Telegu Desam Party). The Congress and the Left Front have refused to join this government, instead giving outside support.
The Indian media presented the elections as "issueless", identifying "local" issues as determining the way people voted. As results started coming in, commentators claimed that they showed that all the purported national parties are simply regional parties based on state-level support, while national concerns such as economic policy were irrelevant.
Yet these commentaries are misleading; national issues were critical for the majority of voters. Most votes were cast in a way that indicates a severe indictment of the policies of the past government and presents a mandate for change.
There was a comprehensive rejection of the economic policies of the past government. Everywhere the voters have been questioned, they have pinpointed the decline in basic living standards and the deterioration in the provision of public goods and services as primary problems.
In combination with the continuous high inflation since 1991 and the stagnation of employment opportunities, the absence of proper sanitation and drinking water facilities, inadequate provision of energy, the lack of growth and running down of basic infrastructure facilities such as transport, the inadequacy of the public health system and glaring gaps in education all contributed to the disaffection with the previous government.
The election results were a strong indictment of the policies of the Congress (I) government, but they are also representative of a general political crisis in which the public does not have faith in any of the bourgeois parties to provide a solution to their problems.
The United Front has already given assurances that it will not deviate in any major way from the policies of the Congress government. Deve Gowda has promised investors that there will be no fundamental changes to the policies of economic liberalisation carried out by the Congress, and his government will continue to deny self-determination to Kashmir and Punjab.