INDIA: Indira Is Back

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In New Delhi, Indira's win was seen as a rebuke to the Janata government. The five-party alliance led by Prime Minister Morarji Desai, 82, has been riven by petty factionalism. In fact, the record is not all that bad: the government has curbed inflation, restored most of the civil liberties abridged during Mrs. Gandhi's emergency, and developed a soft-sell foreign policy that has erased Indira's threatening "big brother" image in South Asia. But Janata has failed to carry out promises for rural development and small-scale industry. Street crime in India is increasing, and the country has been beset with riots that pit Untouchables against higher caste Hindus. Says Industry Minister George Fernandes: "The Janata must cease to be a nonperforming government and a nonperforming party." Admitted another party official: "We are suffering from auto-intoxication."

Still, Indira is a long way from taking power away from Janata, which holds 330 seats in the 542-member lower house. Although her branch of the Congress Party, which split up last January, controls India's upper house, the Council of States, it has only 78 members in the lower house. Even with a parliamentary forum, Mrs. Gandhi will probably continue to concentrate on her role of party chairman, providing guidance to her followers as they try to disrupt government timetables and block Janata legislation.