New interest in Indian polls

Never in the past fifty years have the people of Pakistan shown such a keen and widespread interest in India's general election as in the present one that began on April 20 and will conclude in four stages on May 10. The election results will be announced on May 13.

Nearly all opinion polls and analysts suggest that the ruling Bharatya Janata Party (BJP) will emerge again as the single largest party in the 545-seat lower house (Lok Sabha) and form, as before, a coalition government with the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) under the leadership of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

The sheer scale of the Indian poll, described as the greatest show on earth, is mind-boggling: 670 million voters, many thousand candidates and 700,000 polling stations with 1,075,000 electronic machines which promise the remarkable feat of counting all the votes in a matter of hours.

To enable security forces and poll officials to reach their destinations, voting will be divided in four rounds. The whole process will be supervised by a fiercely independent and all-powerful Election Commission to ensure free and fair elections, an institution of which India can be justifiably proud.

Voter turnout in Indian elections has always been high. Of the 670 million voters, more that 400 million of them are expected to turn out at the polling booths to cast their vote.

The average voting percentage in India's 13 general elections during the period 1952-1999 is a little under 60 which compares favourably with voter participation in most developed countries.

In India, the lowest voting percentage of 55.29 was registered in 1971 and the highest, 63.56, in 1984. The Indian voting percentage looks all the more impressive if we keep in mind that seven to eight per cent of those shown on the electoral rolls cannot cast their vote for a variety of practical reasons. For instance, some of them do not happen to be where they are shown to be resident.

The BJP is fighting the elections on three slogans: "feeling good" (economic development), "great leader" (Mr Vajpayee has achieved a stature that no other Indian leader can match) and the peace process with Pakistan.

Also, the party is playing down "Hindu" issues like the Ayodhya temple, and fielding more Muslim candidates than ever before. In addition to that the BJP is trying to exploit the prejudice against the foreign birth of Congress leader, Sonia Gandhi, widow of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.

The BJP's decision to flaunt, in the election campaign, the peace process with Pakistan as one of its achievements indicates an important turnaround in Indian politics. Since 1965, Pakistan-bashing has been the mainstay of India's electoral politics and the BJP has been in the forefront of such rhetoric.

Even in the last general election held in 1999, the party fully exploited the anti-Pakistan feeling in the post-Kargil period in India. But the current election is being fought on an entirely different platform which only shows that peace with Pakistan has now become a vote-winner in India.

Sonia Gandhi's Congress, the main rival of BJP, which ruled India for most of its first half century of independence, finds itself today in a tight spot. It used to rely on the support of upper-caste Hindus, Muslims and dalits (untouchables).

Many upper-caste Hindus now vote for the BJP. Muslims have been disillusioned over the years by the "secular" policies of the Congress. The Babri mosque was demolished when a Congress government was in power at the centre. In some important states like Uttar Pradesh, the dalits vote for their own party (Bahujan Samaj Party).

The Congress has, however, overcome in this election its traditional repugnance to "pre-poll alliances" and the new electoral strategy may come to its rescue. It has entered into electoral alliances with local and regional parties in different states, agreeing to share seats with them and thus putting up a united front against the BJP and NDA alliance.

The other hope of the Congress lies in the "ripple effect" from the enthusiasm that has greeted Sonia Gandhi's son Rahul and daughter Priyanka. Both have been drawing large crowds.

The reason for their popularity is ancestry: their father was Rajiv Gandhi, grandmother Indira Gandhi and great-grand father Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister and a national hero.

It remains to be seen if the pre-poll alliances and family charisma will help Sonia Gandhi's party win more seats in the Lok Sabha than it did in the last election. But the real test of the Congress's popularity will be in the 103 Lok Sabha constituencies, spread over six states, where it is directly pitted against the BJP, without any regional party offering a distraction.

In the last election, the Congress won only 112 out of 545 seats. Most opinion polls suggest that the maximum number of seats it can win is around 135.

The increasing alienation of Muslim voters from the Congress has contributed to the party's decline. Muslims, who constitute about 14 per cent of the population, play a crucial role in many constituencies, especially in UP and Bihar. With its 170 million people, UP, India's largest state, holds 80 out of 545 Lok Sabha seats.

The Congress won only nine seats in UP in the last election and its prospects in the current one do not appear to be any better because it has failed to woo the Muslim or the dalit voter.

The main causes for concern, as far as the Indian Muslims are concerned, are three: security, employment and identity. It is "security" in its most basic sense that they have been concerned with - security of Muslim life, limb and property.

After Jawaharlal Nehru, the Congress governments have failed to alleviate any of the above noted concerns. It is an irony that the BJP-led government under Mr Vajpayee at the centre has been more successful, as a whole, in maintaining communal harmony than the "secular" Congress governments.

Of course, there have been some blemishes like the Gujarat pogrom, and the anti-Muslim riots in Ahmedabad after the Kargil conflict. But, by and large, Indian Muslims have felt more secure under the BJP rule than under a Congress government.

It is true that under Mr Vajpayee's leadership the BJP has undergone a quiet transformation in a remarkably short time. His party is now being increasingly associated with modernity, moderation and concern for minorities.

Strong economic growth of the past few years has also convinced many Muslims to put the past behind them and support the BJP in this election. Also, Mr Vajpayee's efforts to make peace with Pakistan has made Indian Muslims feel less insecure.

Almost all analysts are agreed that no single party will be able to win an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha and the next government will also be a coalition government. The current trends indicate that the BJP may improve on its showing in the last election in 1999 when it won 182 out of 545 seats in the Lok Sabha.

So in all probability, Mr Vajpayee will again form a coalition government at the centre with the help of NDA. Pakistan will be happy if Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee gets another mandate to become India's prime minister because that will enable him to take the Islamabad peace process to its logical conclusion: the resolution of contentious issues - which have kept the two neighbours at loggerheads - through sincere and earnest efforts.

It will be a difficult and delicate process. But of all the Indian leaders, it is Mr Vajpayee alone who, with his vision and stature as well as light touch, can turn the page on the Indo-Pakistan conflict.

The write is a former ambassador.

A fatal blow to ME peace

Weep for Palestine. President George W. Bush, ably assisted by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, administered the last rites to a state that has been in the process of being born since the Oslo agreements projected the prospect of peace.

Sharon buried Oslo years ago by decimating the Palestinian Authority and destroying its infrastructure with the stated objective of breaking the Palestinians' will to resist. And now he has dealt the coup de grace by securing American consent to the negation of a Palestinian state.

In a week the world heard Orwellian talk of an audacity unrivalled in the 21st century, President Bush termed Sharon a courageous man for proposing to withdraw Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip and gave him all he asked for - and more.

Israeli settlements on the West Bank can stay, contrary to what UN resolutions have said, and the millions of Palestinian refugees ejected from homes on the founding of the Israeli state in 1948 have no right to return to today's Israel.

The wall Israel is building by robbing Palestinians of more land, separating families from farmland and schools and health centres, can be completed. This much has to be said for President Bush: he has dispensed with the pretence of being an honest broker between Palestinians and Israel - no US administration ever was.

The US is now even more firmly aligned with the state of Israel as the occupation of Iraq is merging with Tel Aviv's aims. As President Bush's record shows, he has little time for international treaties and commitments, except when it suits his purpose, as in going back to the United Nations to cope with the consequences of the invasion of Iraq.

Standing truth on its head, George W. Bush has performed the miracle of holding aloft the tattered "roadmap" to peace as an exhibit. And the loyal Tony Blair of Britain, desperate to save shreds of his self-respect in parroting the US president, hugged the "roadmap", after his buddy had flogged a dead horse.

Where do we go from here and how will the outrage and anger that is sweeping the Arab world impact on events? Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, President Bush's guest at his ranch days before the latter gave Palestine to Sharon on a silver platter, said he was "shocked".

And Jordan's King Abdullah is being presented with a fait accompli. Not for the first time, the leaders of the Arab world will demonstrate their impotence, Egypt weighed down by an annual American subsidy of $2 billion, and Jordan trying to survive as a small country in a dangerous world as best it can.

Yet the Arab leaders' dilemmas have grown immeasurably as America aligns itself with Israel more blatantly. They cannot continue to prevaricate in seeking to douse the anger of their peoples by seeking US benevolence and protection while allowing their media to vent their peoples' fury on Americans.

For one thing, the Arab leaders will be unable to contain the people within the constraints of rhetoric, as the curious episode involving a Jordanian police officer's firefight with his American counterparts in Kosovo shows.

For another, they will have to make greater efforts at achieving a measure of unity. The scheduled meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Malaysia on May 4 could be one opportunity to put heads together, but similar meetings have yielded little of substance.

There will be consequences for the rest of the world, the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation becoming a new rallying cause in the face of the great American betrayal. Israel might have succeeded in merging its suppression of Palestinians with America's occupation of Iraq and "war on terror".

But much of the world will resist the thesis that a people fighting for their independence from an alien ruler can be clubbed with plain terrorists, that Israel has acquired the right of banishing Palestinians to Bantustans, walled in and denied access to friends and neighbours and the wider world, except through humiliating Israeli check posts.

Israel is never slow to make its points. Buoyed by President Bush's carte blanche, 25 days after killing the spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Yassin, an Israeli helicopter gunship has assassinated his successor, Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi.

The pitiful US response was to call for restraint "on both sides"; even in undertaking targeted killings, Israel retains US sympathy. And consider what Sharon has proposed on evacuating Jewish settlements on Gaza Strip, apparently by the end of next year.

Even after Israel withdraws its settlements, a territory 36 square kilometres in size holding 1.3 million people, it will control its air and sea space and border crossings. Further, it will retain a strip adjoining the border with Egypt which will be patrolled by its army. Palestinians then can wallow in misery, sealed off from their relations and friends on the West Bank, forgotten by the world.

The European Union has demurred on Sharon's highway robbery, expressing its reservations on America's decision to go back on previous US and United Nations commitments. The nearest the Israeli-Palestinian conflict came to resolution was during the dying days of President Clinton's second term.

Some 96 per cent of the West Bank and the whole of the Gaza Strip was to be given back to the Palestinians, with Jerusalem serving as a capital of both states. The absorption of major Jewish settlements around Jerusalem by Israel was to be compensated by the giving up of equivalent Jewish land.

The question of the Palestinian refugees' right of return to their original homes remained unresolved but a compromise of a symbolic number returning to Israel while compensating the rest was on the cards.

The so-called Quartet - comprising the US, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations can only indulge in rhetoric to save Blair's political career and its own embarrassment to deal with the sea-change in the situation.

Sharon, with the connivance of the Bush administration, has successfully aced Oslo and the Clinton compromise. The United States and the world must now steel themselves against the coming storm.

There will be a surge in violence, directed in particular at Israel, the US and Britain, and new spectacular acts of terrorism can be expected, despite the heightened state of alert in these countries.

At any rate, Americans are now adopting Israeli methods in seeking to retain control of occupied Iraq even as they are using pressure and guile to get the world to police Iraq. The latest ploy is to invite troops to guard United Nations installations and personnel - of course under US command. Unlike Tony Blair, the US refuses to give the UN a "central role" in Iraq, America demonstrating yet again that Britain does not count.

In short, the United States' adoption of the Israeli agenda to reform West Asia and the world is a dangerous development. Palestinians will never accept defeat.

The writer is a former editor of The Statesman and Khaleej Times.

Tough times for detainees in Britain

The first of the Muslim detainees released from London's Belmarsh high security prison after being held on suspicion of terrorism has said that his fellow prisoners are suffering such severe mental problems that they constantly consider suicide.

In his first interview since being released from the jail, after judges said there was no evidence that he was a terrorist, detainee M said being held without charge and without limit of time has made his fellow prisoners "crazy".

"Their situation has become very, very difficult for them," he said. "Three or four of them have become mad, exactly mad. They can't control themselves, they are not thinking in a good way." His claims came on the day that another detainee, G - neither can be named for legal reasons - was released from Belmarsh to become the first prisoner in Britain to be held under house arrest because he is too mentally ill to stay in prison.

The decision marks another embarrassing defeat for the British home secretary David Blunkett, who had fought to prevent both G and M from being released.

The UK's Special Immigration Appeals Commission ruled that G had become mentally deranged in Belmarsh and that his detention meant he was in danger of self-harm. He will now reside at his home under strict bail conditions and will be cared for by mental health workers.

According to M, G explained to him that he knew suicide was against Islam but he took consolation in an interpretation under the circumstances. "If you are lost in the desert and you don't have any food and drink but you have a bottle of wine, which is forbidden, then it is allowed for us to stay alive," he said. "I am in prison, I am thinking of taking my own life because I would do less harm than what prison is doing to me."

M stated, "One of them understands that he is crazy, because his situation is worse than the others. He thinks that everybody wants to kill him, that maybe he will lose his wife. "It is unlawful to detain people inside prison indefinitely and the situation is made worse because of the situation in the prison, where you are inside four walls for most of the time."

The 38-year-old Libyan claims that two of the detaineees have become full-time carers for their fellow prisoners because they are now so obviously sick. He recalled how he was once woken at 3am and asked by a prison officer to look after G. "Sometimes he is crying, sometimes he said: 'I would like to kill myself, I can't stay alone in my cell.' He is just thinking: 'When am I going to die?'"

M claims Belmarsh cannot cope with mental health issues but the British Home Office argues that each prisoner has the same healthcare provision inside as they would receive outside.

"They say they have healthcare in Belmarsh but it doesn't make a difference. They will take you from your single cell, they will put you with other people and maybe they are more mad than you. They will give you tablets to make you sleep and that's it. They are not coping with the situation. I have seen people become worse. It is absolutely appalling conditions."

M said he had not contemplated suicide but it has been reported that at least one of the other men attempted it. "I don't know if they have tried (suicide) but they are thinking about it," M said. "The reason is because they do not know if they will ever be released."

Recently, the UK Home Office said: "Anyone held in a high-security establishment has access to 24-hour healthcare. They are regularly seen by healthcare professionals and anyone can request a psychiatric assessment at any time, as can their legal representatives, and they will be seen." - Dawn Guardian News Service