Supporters cheer the victory of a Bharata Janata Party candidate for Central Delhi on March 3. (AFP)

By Kenneth J. Cooper
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, March 8, 1998; Page A22

NEW DELHI—After five decades of choosing among a dominant Congress party or minor parties that seldom amounted to true contenders, voters in the world's largest democracy selected this year from among three major blocs, each with a strong base and a genuine shot at taking power.

But India's cautious electorate could not quite make up its collective mind, leaving the country with a hung Parliament and a host of unresolved issues of critical importance at home and abroad.

While other developing countries have been racing to compete for foreign investment and trade, India's failure to elect a strong government means the world's second-most-populous country -- and, hence, one of its biggest markets -- will likely continue its slow movement toward fully joining the global economy.

The delay, as India's population swells toward 1 billion, will make it harder to achieve the rapid economic growth needed to pull millions out of the greatest concentration of poverty in the world.

The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and an assortment of allies came out ahead in the vote, capturing 46 percent of Parliament's 545-member lower house. Their combined total fell about 20 seats short of a majority, but still enough to stand first in line to form a new government.

In a conservative society that values stability, cautious voters apparently withheld a clear mandate to show they did not entirely trust the BJP, which has never completed a full five-year term governing any state and in 1992 played a major role in provoking Hindu-Muslim riots in which 2,500 were killed following the demolition of a mosque in Uttar Pradesh state.

"The electoral verdict is: Rule wisely and well. Do not foment disorders or think that foul and bigoted language about any community in India is a substitute for governance," said Ashutosh Varshney, a professor of government at Harvard University.

BJP leaders last week picked up a handful of additional supporters and hoped to secure enough by the middle of this week to persuade President K.R. Narayanan to appoint their candidate, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a moderate, as prime minister pending a vote of confidence in Parliament.

The two other blocs, the ruling United Front coalition and another led by the Congress party, could join forces to form a government; together, they won 262 seats to the BJP bloc's 252, according to unofficial tallies. But they appeared likely to fail in half-hearted efforts to resolve their differences, preferring instead to let the BJP lead a weak government.

But the outcome of the staggered voting -- which began Feb. 17 and is largely completed, except for two snow-bound districts that will vote in June -- did not amount to an endorsement of the BJP's philosophy that Hindu culture unites this pluralistic country.

Preliminary estimates indicated that the BJP's popularity increased by only a few percentage points, rising to about a quarter of the popular vote. Of 11 parties allied with the BJP, just one -- Shiv Sena -- subscribes to Hindu nationalism.

It is also doubtful that the election results can be read as a clear vote against market-oriented economic reforms that the last Congress party government began in 1991 and belatedly highlighted as part of its platform in this year's campaign.

A 1996 survey indicated that 80 percent of India's 950 million people were not even aware of the economic policy changes. Congress and its allies won the second-highest number of seats -- 30 percent of Parliament. Despite public interest generated by the emotional campaigning of Sonia Gandhi, widow of assassinated former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, Congress's tally in this election was about the same as in the 1996 election -- the lowest return for the party that has ruled independent India for 45 of its 50 years.

A wide swath of voters has grown disgruntled with the party for its alleged corruption and failure to produce more basic development and social advancement during its long rule. In Orissa, one of the few states that Congress governs, the party lost most of its parliamentary seats. Last December, rural residents there responded to questions about Congress with the Hindi-language word for "thieves."

Voters punished the third bloc, the United Front, almost halving its presence in Parliament to less than 20 percent. The coalition of 13 regional, centrist and communist parties coalesced after the last election to deny power to the BJP and went on to establish two unsteady governments with the backing of Congress.

G.V.L. Narasimha Rao, India's most reliable pollster, said voters had turned against the government of Prime Minister I.K. Gujral because of the United Front's instability as well as its lack of direction and strong leadership.

As ballot counting last week revealed the indecisive result, politicians acted more conciliatory toward one another and more self-conscious about their nation's image abroad.

One of Vajpayee's top aides, sipping an evening whiskey in the living room of Congress leader Murli Deora, suggested that the closely divided Parliament could at least agree on measures to reduce the nation's illiteracy rate of nearly 50 percent and the poverty that afflicts 40 percent of India.

"It does not matter who forms the government," Deora later assured an American guest. "Democracy is very strong here."

The fragmented results reflect a political transformation that no other developing country has experienced, mainly because so few others have remained democratic throughout their years of independence.

For decades, India took comfort in the heroic legacy and the broad coalition that Congress assembled across Hindu castes and different religions to shake off British rule. Now, strands of that coalition have gone their own way, moving India toward more competitive politics.

"A period of old certitudes has ended, and a new stability is struggling to be born," Varshney, the Harvard professor, said.

In the United States, a media-dominated, literate country, a single political dynamic may determine the outcome of elections. In a more socially complex, less informed India, elections can turn on several trends that conflict or converge in its distinct regions.

Major political trends that have emerged in the past decade continued in this election: the rise of the BJP as a national party, competitive with Congress; the assertiveness of lower-caste voters, an impoverished, fractured majority; and the growing clout of regional parties, particularly ones based in an ethnically distinct south that has felt neglected by a capital in the north.

To achieve its best showing so far, the BJP extended its base from upper-caste Hindus in northern India into four southern and eastern states that had never before sent BJP members to Parliament. The party also captured a larger share of votes from "backward castes," who rank just above dalits -- literally, "the downtrodden," formerly known as untouchables -- in the traditional Hindu hierarchy of social status, religious purity and occupation.

At the same time, the BJP maintained its power base. The most important regional parties to join the BJP bloc have upper-caste leaders. And the BJP dominated Uttar Pradesh -- India's most populous state and its bellwether: The party that wins that northern state almost always forms India's government.

While the largest party led by former untouchables fared badly at the polls, a smaller one allied itself with Congress and inflicted major defeats on Hindu nationalist candidates in one of their strongholds, western Maharashtra state. The alliance defeated the BJP's chief strategist in Bombay, the nation's financial capital; another district in the industrial state elected the grandson of B.R. Ambedkar, a founding father revered by former untouchables.

This week, President Narayanan is to announce which bloc gets the first chance to form a new government. He is the first former untouchable to hold the office, pivotal in political moments like these. He is also a southerner.