Sonia won because she promised the changes Indian people want

Satyabrata Rai Chowdhuri, Project Syndicate

Truly, the day before India's stunning election results were announced was the quiet before the storm. Instead of bold pronouncements by the parties, there were quiet calculations about possible alliances because everyone was predicting a hung parliament. But May 12 saw a tandava, a form of Indian dance which turns everything topsy-turvy, a dance of doom.

Indeed, India's politics was turned upside down, with the Congress Party, seemingly lifeless and leaderless, suddenly rebounding to claim victory. With that victory comes a restoration of the Nehru/Gandhi family that has dominated politics here since independence half a century ago.

The biggest factor in this stunning upset was voter anger at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The ruling BJP, the major partner of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), had brought the country unprecedented rates of growth, but its policies and, more importantly, its language seemed to ignore the vast majority of poor Indians who had benefited little from the country's new high tech economy. The BJP campaigned as if it deserved a coronation for the many good changes they brought. But instead of a coronation, India's voters preferred a restoration of the Gandhis.

The emergence of Congress as the largest single party and its alliance as the biggest grouping with 219 seats, is the most astonishing result in the history of Indian electoral politics, as was the Left's stunning tally of 63. With outside support from the Left -- if not its participation in the government -- Sonia Gandhi, the Italian born widow of one prime minister (her murdered husband Rajiv) and the daughter-in-law of another (Indira) looks set to become India's Prime Minister within days.

There is no doubt that the result makes a mockery of the jibe that Sonia Gandhi's foreign origin issue make her unfit to rule, a charge NDA leaders had built their campaign on. But the lady who unleashed the tsunami on India's politics retained her legendary composure throughout. Somehow her calm and focus on the poor convinced those left behind by India's new economy that she was with them. Congress, though making no promises to undo any of the BJP reforms, had relocated its soul as the voice of

Sonia's victory, indeed, was a near-unanimous verdict for the politics of inclusiveness -- economic, social and cultural -- over the divisiveness and xenophobia of the BJP. Indeed, it was BJP's relentless hype about its economic success, its Hindu chauvinism, and its anti-Sonia videshi (foreign) invective that ultimately pushed the other India, the old India of poverty, toward the underdog and long written off Congress Party. Nowhere was this perhaps more evident than in Gujarat in the west and Tamil Nadu in the south, where the two chief ministers ran singularly virulent campaigns against the Italian bahu (wife).

Rising from political wilderness, the Sonia-led Congress showed that it had the grit and gumption to be an engine of change. But why did the NDA, which had changed India so much, suffer such an electoral debacle, getting drubbed almost everywhere in he country? One reason is the resentment of India's huge 100 million strong Muslim minority. Indian Muslims will never forget the Gujarat massacre of just a few years ago, where a BJP governor seemed to wink and connive in the slaughter of countless Muslims.

Government employees also grew to loath the BJP. They feared for their jobs, and an underpaid and premature retirement. Because interest rates had fallen dramatically, retired people did not back the BJP because their financial security was threatened. The BJP leaders hyped up the Hindi issue of the "Hindutva" and Ram temple to such a ridiculous extent that secular-minded people turned away from it despite their appreciation of the country's economic progress. The middle class and poor villagers became frustrated because the BJP's "feel- good" budget did not benefit them in any way.

Throw in any number of financial scams by BJP politicians and it is no surprise that an angry electorate threw the government out. People wanted change and Sonia Gandhi promised change.

What changes she will bring is anyone's guess. Her victory came on the politics of resentment, and her possession of a name that remains magical with India's rural and urban poor. She will need to be as effective a policy magician as she proved to be magician in campaigning to make this Gandhi restoration succeed.

The writer, Emeritus Professor at India's University Grants Commission, is a former Professor of International Relations at Oxford University, and Research Coordinator at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.