Is Gandhi opting out of Indian election race?

Dikshit, the long-serving Chief Minister of Delhi, is facing her fourth state election this year. If she wins her status will be enhanced and there may be some advantage for Congress in putting a woman forward. However, the gang-rape and murder of a young medical student in the city last December and the apparent suicide of one of the suspects, Ram Singh, while in custody, has led to allegations of incompetence and mismanagement in her administration.

Shinde has considerable administrative experience, but is not a good campaigner and is prone to making high-profile gaffes. As Home Affairs Minister he also has to take some of the blame for the failure of law and order in New Delhi and other major cities which has led to slurs that India is the rape capital of the world.   

Which means that despite his reluctance, many in Congress still see Gandhi as the best, and perhaps the only hope, for Congress to win a third straight election. Party spokesperson Rashid Alvi insisted that Rahul’s comments may not be the last word.

“All Congress workers desire that he will become Prime Minister one day and we are sure that our wish will be fulfilled,” Alvi said.

At this point, Congress’s best hope is that the BJP, never the most cohesive of forces, may splinter into quarrelling groups. Modi is by no means universally liked within its many and complex structures, one notable opponent being the Bihar Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar, whose Janata Dal Party is part of the BJP-led coalition.

Kumar has impressive credentials in Bihar with a program of development that has lifted the formerly backward state out of the financial mire to an almost 12 per cent annual growth rate. He does not have a national profile, but the regional seats his party can deliver could be crucial to a BJP majority in 2014.

As one supporter put it: “Nitish Kumar may not become king, but he can definitely be a kingmaker.”

Another problem for Modi is the persistent belief that as a freshman Chief Minister he did little to stop, and might even have encouraged, the infamous Gujarat riots of 2002 in which more than 1000 people, the majority of them Muslims, died. Despite a special investigation clearing him of any complicity in the disturbances, the charges continue to be used against him.

Only recently, an invitation for him to make a video address to the University of Pennsylvania Wharton Business School’s India Economic Forum was withdrawn when academics circulated a petition demanding he be banned on the grounds that the school “should not give platforms to people who have violated so many human rights while in power”.

The publicity generated has done Modi no harm – even Congress leaders criticised Wharton’s decision as a violation of free speech – and further invitations for him to address much larger meetings of the Indian diaspora in New Jersey and Illinois quickly followed.

It is likely the lead-up to what many observers are calling the most important election in India’s 67-year-old democracy will have more twists and turns in the weeks and months to come.