Un texte de mon ami Feroz Mehdi sur les récentes élections en Inde.

Which Italian are you for?
Mussolini or Sonia Gandhi

Elections in India were held in four phases between April 20 and May 10 to elect the new Parliament. India gained independence in 1947 and this was the 14th parliamentary elections. Although these elections in the world’s largest democracy went quite unnoticed by the Western media, the Indian electorate has a very important lesson for all parliamentary democracies in the world.

Indian people not only voted out the ruling coalition the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by the rightwing Hindu nationalist party, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), it brought the Congress as the largest party in parliament which is led by the Italian-born Sonia Gandhi.

The Congress and allies won 215 seats while the BJP and its allies have 184 seats in the 543-member Parliament. The Congress will be able to muster the required 272 members with the support of the Left and other important secular regional parties.

BJP carried its election campaign on two issues: Growing economic prosperity and Hindu nationalism. The earlier issue was woven around the slogan of « Shining India » with goods and riches for the middle class and opening up all sectors in Indian economy to privatization by multinationals. It made it very easy for Indians to get loan from a bank to buy a Mercedes-Benz, it boasted of high growth rate of nearly 8%, it created a post in the Cabinet for Minister of Disinvestment (first time in modern Indian history; the task of this ministry is to sell state-owned enterprises to private capital), it boasted of a very comfortable bank balance of foreign currency.

The second issue of nationalism taken up by the BJP in the election campaign was armed with the ongoing attack on minorities, especially Muslims, and a thrust towards their fascist ideology of one people, one religion and one culture. Sonia Gandhi’s Italian origin were thus a target in the campaign.

The BJP lost on both grounds. While it is true that it is much more easier for an Indian to get a bank loan to buy a Mercedes Benz, nearly 70% of households do not have a bank account. Whatever figures might be thrown in for the growth rate of economy, a journalist rightly commented that the fastest growing sector in India is Inequality. « Whether food or other items, rich Indians are consuming on a scale even they have never managed before. In a country which accounts for the largest number of malnourished children in the world ». India is home to about half the planet’s hungry people. Where nearly nine out of 10 pregnant women aged between 15 and 49 years suffer from malnutrition and anaemia. And where about half of all children under five suffer moderate or severe malnourishment or stunting. Most of these are girls.

That much for « India Shining ». The people of India have given their verdict. The second largest partner in the NDA coalition government was the Telgu Desam Party (TDP), a regional party in the province of Andhra Pradesh. This party was the leader in the neo-liberal globalization drive started five years ago. It has been completely routed out of power.

The Asian Social Forum was held in 2003 in Hyderabad, capital of Andhra Pradesh and the World Social Forum 2004 was held in the financial capital of India, Mumbai. There is no intention to draw any causality between the election results and these two events. Only to mention, that the 130 000 participants in the Social Forum can breathe a bit more freely now. But let us not stretch this beyond proportions. The Structural Adjustment Program of opening the Indian economy to the dictates of the IMF and the World Bank was initiated by the Congress in 1995. It was under its governance that the BJP led campaign of hatred succeeded in demolishing the historic Babri mosque.

No one expects the Congress to reverse the neo-liberal policies and its flirting with the USA. One thing was very clear to the activists in social movements: which so ever party wins, their struggle has to continue.

So why is there jubilation in the secular progressive camp? Why has the Left extended its support to the Congress in the formation of the next government? One of the reasons is that defeat of the BJP is in fact a defeat of the RSS, the ideological backbone of the BJP which is an overtly fascist party inspired by the Nazis and Mussolini. While the Indian electorate has defeated the followers of one Italian, they have brought to power a democratic party led by an Italian born woman. Participants in this battle were over 390 million voters!