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Loser of the Election: Sonia Gandhi

By a coincidence, the results of the general election are coming out at almost the same time as the half-yearly financial results. But that convergence of events needn't necessarily mean that we start to release balance sheets for the polls. After all, the data is still streaming in. I cannot, however, resist the temptation of citing my nominee for Loser of the Election -- Sonia Gandhi.

Let us put it brutally -- this is the worst performance by the Congress in any general election. It is worse than the post-Emergency debacle of 1977, worse than the scam-tainted Narasimha Rao government managed in 1996, and worse than the results won by the Sitaram Kesri-Sonia Gandhi duopoly in 1998.

Take a look at Delhi and Madhya Pradesh. Last winter, both returned Congress majorities during the assembly election. In fact, the Congress virtually wiped out the BJP, winning 53 of the 70 assembly seats in Delhi. Since then, there has been nothing much to crib about as far as the performance of the Shiela Dixit ministry goes, definitely nothing on the lines of the great onion debacle in 1998. Yet see the results less than a year later -- the BJP has romped home in all the seven seats in Delhi.

How about Madhya Pradesh? Digvijay Singh bucked conventional wisdom to lead the Congress back to power in 1998. And now the BJP has won a whopping 28 of the 40 seats in Madhya Pradesh. Singh is commonly accepted as one of the better chief ministers in the country, so what led the electorate to reject the Congress so decisively?

Well, we often forget that India is a federal entity. And we also forget that the voter is sophisticated enough to recognise the difference between choosing a prime minister and choosing a chief minister. In 1998, the Congress projected Dixit in Delhi and Singh in Madhya Pradesh as their potential chief ministers -- not openly, but tacitly. And in 1999, Congressmen all over India specifically asked for votes to make Sonia Gandhi the prime minister, just as the BJP and its allies projected Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

So, as far as these two are concerned, we should look at how they appealed to India as a whole, not just how they fared in Lucknow, or Amethi, or Bellary. So what do we make of the fact that the Congress has plunged to a new low? What else, but that Sonia Gandhi has proved unacceptable to the vast majority of the voters?

We have also heard all about the electorate's desire to see new faces. Sonia Gandhi's is a new face. She is, by the standards of Indian politics, fairly young. So what went wrong? Could it be the foreigner issue?

Immediately after the news came in that Sonia Gandhi was winning in both Bellary and Amethi, several commentators jumped to the conclusion that Indians had disregarded Sonia Maino Gandhi's Italian background. (Some Star News analysts were particularly insistent!) But is it so?

Actually, the results from Amethi and Bellary prove absolutely nothing. BJP candidates all spoke of the way in which Atal Bihari Vajpayee had been betrayed by Jayalalitha, and pleaded for votes to 'strengthen Atal-ji's hands.' The Congress was openly banking on the Nehru-Gandhi charisma, to the extent of insisting that both Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Vadra should campaign. This was the case everywhere from the snowy heights of Siachen to the beaches of the Nicobar islands, from the marshes of Kutch to the rain-forests of Assam.

So, let us look at Sonia Gandhi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee once again. What did the voters of India have to say about these two potential chief executives?

When the Lok Sabha was dissolved, the prime minister could count on 268 votes in the House. To that you could add the Speaker's vote, meaning 269. And now? All the results are not out even as I write, but the simple fact is that at least 290 members of Parliament have been elected specifically to back Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

And Sonia Gandhi? As stated above, the Congress has never before been so badly battered. Any hopes that the Congress might have entertained about Nehru-Gandhi charisma are at an end.

Next, the men who first raised the foreigner issue have done remarkably well. The man who began the debate, actually calling for an amendment to the Constitution barring aliens from high posts, was Chandrababu Naidu. (This was back in the days when he was convener of the United Front.) The second to do so was Mulayam Singh Yadav. And the third, famously so, was Sharad Pawar.

You would have to be nine different kinds of an idiot to believe that Chandrababu Naidu and Mulayam Singh Yadav can be counted as losers in this general election! As for Sharad Pawar, the vast majority of the electorate in Maharashtra have accepted his view about Sonia Gandhi¹s foreign origins. (The votes may have been split between the BJP-Shiv Sena on the one hand and Pawar on the other, but all those voters bought the criticism of Sonia Gandhi.)

So is the foreigner issue a matter for the past as some analysts are in a hurry to proclaim? Ask the voters of those 290+ constituencies who backed Atal Behari Vajpayee in the race for prime minister. And if the Congress is serious about introspection, it should also ponder about all those traditional Congress voters -- in Delhi for instance -- who sat at home rather than vote for a foreigner. No, the issue, unfortunately or otherwise, is not going to go away any time soon.

T V R Shenoy