By K. Govindan INDIAN Premier Narasimha Rao's days in office look numbered after his Congress(I) party was crushed in four recent state elections.
In Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Sikkim, Congress(l) state governments were soundly defeated, and they may only be able to form a minority government in the tiny state of Goa.
It was on Rao's home state of Andhra Pradesh that attention was focused as the campaign became a personal referendum on the Prime Minister and the economic liberalisation policies being pursued by the central government.
In a humiliating defeat the Congress(I) state party was reduced from 181 members of the legislative assembly to just 25.
The regionalist Telugu Desam Party, led by charismatic ex-film star N.T. Rama Rao swept to victory, along with its allies of the Communist Party of India and Communist Party of India (Marxist), who scooped 34 seats.
Populist election promises of sale of rice at two rupees a kilo, and total prohibition of alcohol won favour in a state where landlords are also arrack (hooch) sellers, and where women have mobilised in their thousands on this issue.
However the loss of hundreds of millions of rupees in alcohol taxes may compromise the ability of the TDP to deliver on other promises like employment-generating development projects.
Similarly in Karnataka the state wing of the opposition Janata Dal party scored a convincing win, reducing Congress(l) from 178 to 35 seats in the 224-member assembly.
It too promises to subsidise the sale of rice and to create 100.000 jobs in the state sector.
However what lost these elections for Rao is the record of the Congress(I) both in state governments and at the centre.
At state level its administrations were perceived as corrupt and indifferent to the poor, and at the centre its New Economic Policy which is reducing the enormous state sector and opening India to multi-national companies is causing tremendous convulsions.
The Muslim minority which has traditionally voted for the Congress(I) due to its secularist roots in the anti-colonial movement have deserted it in droves.
The central government has been dithering on the Ayodhya issue (where a mosque was torn down in december 1992 by supporters of the Hindu right wing Bharatiya Janata Party BJP). The hurt of this episode and the scars of the anti-Muslim riots which followed endure.
Rao's administration had sought to retain muslim support and win over the BJP's base by referring the question of the mosque to the Supreme Court, which wisely declined.
All he ended up doing was alienate both constituencies.
While the BJP have been on the defensive since the Ayodhya tragedy, and lost the state elections in 1993, they remain the largest opposition party at the centre.
The BJP has led demonstrations against GATT and protested at removal of controls on foreign capital while in the same breath accusing Congress(l) of stealing its economic policies.
It is here that the contradictions are greatest and where the BJP must be confronted to prise its working class and depressed caste sections away from its upper caste, rich leadership.
The victor of two constituent parties of the bourgeois centrist National Front in these elections has revived its fortunes but not necessarily its ability to form an alternative government.
The mainstream Communist parties are strategically committed to an alliance with the National Front which they hail as 'secular democratic', while their state government in West Bengal pursues an aggressive policy of courting industrial bosses and siding with employers against workers in struggle.
Five more states go to the polls in February and March, this time in the Hindi-speaking heartland of Congress(l).
A defeat here will heighten pressure for Rao's removal ahead of a general election in 1996, and the need for united front candidacies of mass organisations of workers, peasants, the oppressed and the exploited in opposition to neoliberal disaster and communal politics.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No.76. 21 January 1995, Page 13