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The Sonia Shock — page 3
Sociologists and security experts predict rising social tension and violence in India. Discontent is already showing in a rash of attacks on tea-estate managers in the eastern part of the country, the killing of more than 50 migrant workers in Assam last November and a near-total breakdown of law and order in Bihar, where kidnapping for ransom is a growth industry. Several thousand left-wing guerrillas from the Maoist Communist Center and People's War Group now rule a swath of territory in eastern and central India and have vowed to reverse "World Bank, pro-globalization" economic policies. Last October, they narrowly failed to assassinate Naidu when they detonated a clutch of land mines under his car, an act that earned them the description of "largest single internal security challenge after terrorism in Kashmir" by the New Delhi-based Institute for Conflict Management and a terrorist listing by the U.S. State Department. "There is poverty," says the institute's executive director Ajai Sahni, "and there is rising affluence in the cities. So, yes, there is violence and, yes, it will grow."
Domestic unrest will not be Sonia's only burden. Away from home, she must contend with delicate peace talks with Pakistan. Vajpayee began negotiating with Islamabad over Kashmir. And as the drama of India's election result unfolded, its potential ramifications caused almost as much shock in the Pakistani capital as in New Delhi. "We had an understanding with the BJP government," Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri told TIME. Still, he also indicated his government can work with Congress: "Peace is a must to eliminate poverty in both countries. So there is no need to worry. Nobody wants to miss this opportunity."
But the opportunity may already be slipping away. A declaration last month by Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, leader of the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Toiba, that "jihad" was the only "road map" for Kashmir, gave weight to recent predictions by Indian intelligence of an escalation in violence this summer. Moreover, with neither nation willing to give up their claim to the divided region, says one Western diplomat, "sooner or later, the process is going to reach a dead end." With the BJP in opposition, Sonia may be forced to take a tougher line with Pakistan to avoid charges that she is not selling out India. "Sonia has to be more Indian than the average Indian," says Brahma Chellaney, a professor at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research, "more nationalistic than Vajpayee."
Perhaps most crucially, Sonia must decide what sort of leader she will be. Vajpayee's forgetfulness raised eyebrows during the election campaign—in one speech he forgot the poll date, the assembly it concerned and the name of the candidate, his own niece—as did his admission that he announced the peace process on a whim while making a speech in Kashmir. But Sonia succeeds a man who nevertheless commanded widespread respect for this same habit of reaching out in unexpected directions, as well as his skillful handling of coalition politics. She, on the other hand, has no experience of government, has never articulated what her economic or foreign policy might be and is handicapped by what even friends call a "crippling shyness" that was all too obvious at her victory press conference. While her decision to enter politics displayed a stubborn courage, she has failed to tackle her only reformist challenge to date—that of remaking a Congress paralyzed by bureaucratic inefficiency, disorganization and a culture of self-regarding, pompous factionalism. "She's never set out any clear policy arguments or set of ideas," says Chellaney. "She's surrounded by these fossilized old Congress has-beens, and her sole belief was always that she only had to wait for the BJP to make a mistake and she'd win."
Few politicians ever duplicate the high of their first big win. For Sonia, the challenges of the next few months will be daunting, for she will have to confront some of the toughest questions—how to secure the gains of economic reform while satisfying the poor; how to make peace with Pakistan over Kashmir—that have ever confronted India. Perhaps the most important lesson to draw from the election is that Indian governments lose popularity quickly. India is the world's most populous democracy, but in a nation where politicians are widely regarded as self-serving and corrupt, voting often boils down to a chance for revenge. So it was that in last week's poll: the BJP lost as badly in the big cities of New Delhi and Mumbai, where it finds its natural support base among the urban élite, as it did in the countryside. "As reform pulls more Indians above the poverty line," Indian Express editor in chief Shekhar Gupta wrote, "they are moving their expectations higher. The voter is more unforgiving, demanding, tougher to fool. It requires something extraordinary to blunt his compulsive rejection of the incumbent." India, in other words, is an impatient place; it can't wait to be great. After seeing her own fantasy become extraordinary, unbelievable fact, Sonia now faces the task of making a billion others' dreams come true.
With reporting by Aravind Adiga and Sara Rajan/New Delhi, Faizan Ahmed/Patna and Ghulam Hasnain and Talat Hussain/Islamabad
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