Those Left Behind Turned Indian Vote

Poor Say Economic Boom Was Just Rhetoric

AKLIMPUR, India, May 14 -- On Friday morning, Sant Raj, an itinerant farmhand, set out from the small concrete house he shares with his wife and 7-year-old son, hoping to find a bit of work. But farm jobs are scarce in the dry season that follows the winter harvest. So by midday, Raj had given up the search, flopping by the side of the road in the shade of a small tree.

In a small but telling way, Raj's frustrated quest helps explain how the governing coalition led by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) suffered a stunning and unexpected loss to the secular opposition alliance led by the Congress party in parliamentary elections that ended this week.

Challenging the government's campaign theme of "India Shining," a catchphrase for the booming economy, Congress and its allies accused Vajpayee's coalition of pursuing harsh economic reforms at the expense of the poor. It was a message that resonated with Raj, 29, who said he voted for the BJP in parliamentary elections four years ago but switched his allegiance to Congress after the governing coalition failed to deliver on promises of jobs and development.

"There is no difference," Raj said. "I'm where I started. I labored to eat then, and I labor to eat now."

In part because of last year's generous monsoon, a critical factor in an economy still dominated by agriculture, as well as a surge in the outsourcing of service jobs from the United States and other developed countries, Vajpayee's government in the past year has presided over one of the world's hottest economies, with an annual growth rate estimated at 8 percent by the World Bank.

But the monsoon was a temporary phenomenon, and economists say growth in the service sector masks high unemployment linked to the dismantling of public-sector industries that began with economic liberalization in 1991. Officially, the jobless rate is 8 percent.

Even defenders of the government's economic reforms acknowledge that the benefits have been distributed unevenly, fueling resentment among those who have grown weary of politicians' promises of better times ahead.

"The vote is not against reform," said N. Srinivasan, the director general-designate of the Confederation of Indian Industry. "What's happening is there is an impatience about reform benefits reaching all strata of society, and perhaps that is where we need a midcourse correction."

A number of analysts have interpreted the election outcome as an expression of resentment from Bharat, a Hindi word that translates literally as India but in colloquial use means village India, or rural India, where most of the country's billion-plus people still live. But Shekhar Gupta, the editor of the Indian Express newspaper in New Delhi, challenged that explanation in a front-page editorial Friday.

"If it was so simple, how come the greatest beneficiaries of feel-good economics, in South Bombay and New Delhi . . . have voted exactly the same way as the debt-strangled farmer in Vijayawada, the jobless graduate in Hazaribagh?" he wrote. "As reform pulls more Indians above the poverty line, they are moving the bar of their expectations higher."

In part because of geography, the clash between expectations and reality is especially stark in this village.

Home to about 300 families, Aklimpur is six miles from the booming New Delhi suburb of Gurgaon, a high-tech hub of sleek office towers, air-conditioned malls and multiplex movie theaters. As Indian villages go, this one is not especially poor. The homes are simple but solidly built, with electricity and hand pumps that provide water two hours a day. A few have cable television. The streets are paved with bricks.

In parliamentary elections four years ago, voters in the village -- as in the district -- lined up solidly behind the BJP candidate, who unseated the Congress party incumbent. But promised improvements failed to materialize, villagers said. The government built a clinic in a neighboring town, then neglected to staff it with a doctor or nurse. And for most people, the economic promise of Gurgaon -- of India Shining -- remains as distant as a mirage.

"Mostly it's propaganda," said Mangat Ram Vashisht, 62, the head of the village council, rousing himself from the rope cot where he had been napping in the stultifying afternoon heat. "Many don't even know what India Shining is. It only shines for those who have money. Nothing comes the poor man's way."