INDIAN ELECTION RESULTS MAY SHUT THE DOOR TO FURTHER REFORMS

Five Indian states have been going to the polls for the past couple of months (given the size of India, elections are conducted in stages). But the results were announced last Tuesday (6 March) and the impact has been immediate.

The elections were for the state assemblies, so the results should  technically not affect the composition of the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian Parliament. But the next general elections are due in 2014, and last Tuesday's results are an indication of how they will turn out.

In India's biggest state Uttar Pradesh, which sends 80 members of Parliament to the Lok Sabha, the Congress Party and its allies suffered great losses and they now have just 37 seats out the 403-member assembly.

The casualty of the assembly polls is Rahul Gandhi, scion of the Nehru family that has ruled India for a large part of the period since Independence. Even today, the power behind the prime minister's chair (Prime Minister Manmohan Singh) is Sonia Grandhi, Rahul Gandhi's mother and wide of former prime minister, the late Rajiv Gandhi. Rahul, a prime ministerial candidate of a party that sets great store by heridity and lineage, had assumed charge of the campaign in Uttar Pradesh. The rout of the Congress party is being regarded as his failure. The Opposition will try to capitalize on that. For the Congress it is unthinkable to abandon Rahul. In fact, anybody who can is lining up to take the blame for the fiasco.

So, Prime Minister Mammohan Singh, the orginal architect of reforms is expected to face opposition from both within and without and these results may shut the door to further reforms that are badly needed.