Vajpayee is, almost at once, a man transformed. His voice is deep, forceful and resonant. Now wearing the turban and wielding his blade, he quickly captivates an adoring crowd of several thousand supporters. They hang on his every word, and campaigning hard for a second five-year term as prime minister, he has no shortage of accomplishments to tout. The country’s economic growth is surging at more than 7 percent a year. (Numbers for the last quarter’s GDP growth rate, released last week, topped 10 percent–outpacing even China’s.) The huge Indian middle class of more than 300 million is rapidly expanding. The country’s ramshackle infrastructure is finally giving way to smoother roads and streamlined telecommunications. The improvements are not only bettering the lives of millions of Indians, but have finally begun to convince the outside world that India is an investment-worthy partner, with more than $10 billion in foreign capital pouring into the country in the last nine months of 2003.
At this campaign rally in the Sikh holy city of Amritsar–30 kilometers from India’s western border with Pakistan–Vajpayee is emphasizing an even more unlikely accomplishment for a man spearheading a Hindu nationalist party–peace. “Earlier we were firing bullets. Now we are playing cricket,” he says, to the crowd’s delight, referring to the popular monthlong series of matches between India and archrival Pakistan. These games–and a dramatic improvement of relations with Islamabad since the beginning of the year–are the result of a peace initiative Vajpayee launched 12 months ago in a surprise speech delivered in Kashmir. At the time the aging leader had said he was willing to give peace “one last chance” before he stepped off the political stage.
His olive branch turned into a diplomatic breakthrough in January, when Vajpayee and his counterpart, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, entered into a historic agreement. Vajpayee agreed to begin unconditional negotiations on the status of Kashmir in exchange for Musharraf’s promise to crack down on the Islamic militants who have led cross-border attacks on Indian forces. Now the two nuclear-armed neighbors–who have gone to war three times before–have their best chance in decades of reaching a lasting peace. Vajpayee is optimistic. “I don’t think we will ever fight again,” he says to more cheers. “This peace will be permanent.” Economics student Raghav Beri, 20, walks away from the rally with the same opinion as many others. “[Vajpayee] is the best man for India,” says Beri. “He’s changing India for the better.”
It’s ironic that the New India of popular imagination–the land of software engineers, call centers and Silicon Valley rivals–would have such an old-school politician as its champion. But the charismatic north Indian Brahmin, who is a popular poet and somewhat of a recluse, is widely considered the linchpin to the country’s successes. As one of the rare political leaders who has expelled senior party members tainted with corruption, he’s blessed with a popularity that cuts across India’s wide ethnic, religious and regional divides. That stature has helped keep the hard-liners in his own coalition in check–and allowed him to pursue peace with Musharraf. While given to occasional economic-nationalist rhetoric, he has been savvy enough to support the country’s high-tech entrepreneurs and to gently nudge along privatization efforts. Few people doubt that with approval ratings consistently above 60 percent Vajpayee and his Bharatiya Janata Party will have a strong showing when India’s 650 million eligible voters go to the polls between April 20 and mid-May. But the enthusiasm for giving this elder statesman a second five-year term masks a more serious question for many Indians: with so much riding on this one man, what will happen when he is gone?
Given his advanced age and uncertain health, it’s hardly cynical speculation. If Vajpayee were to disappear from the political scene, India could be plunged into a period of political instability. His 77-year-old deputy prime minister, Lal Krishna Advani, may be in line to succeed him, but is viewed with suspicion by many Indians who dislike his history of peddling Hindu-supremacist causes. No one within the BJP has anywhere near Vajpayee’s popularity or political skills. “No other Indian politician has his stature,” says Ravindra Katti, a 51-year-old Mumbai businessman. Both economic liberalization and the peace process are still fragile, fledgling efforts that could easily be brought down by infighting within the ruling coalition. A resurgence of Hindu-Muslim riots like those in Gujarat two years ago–which were fueled by BJP hard-liners–could destroy the country’s reputation as a good place to do business.
Naturally, Vajpayee’s critics–especially in the opposition Congress Party–don’t see his leadership as so central to the country’s future. Indeed when it comes to the prime minister’s biggest accomplishment–the country’s impressive economic performance–the opposition says he has had more luck than skill. “The real hero is God,” says Congress’s American-educated economist Jairam Ramesh. “A good monsoon helped shoot up the growth rate.”
That is decidedly a minority view. Economic analysts and voters alike give Vajpayee and his government high marks for promoting the country’s boom. From the beginning the prime minister and his team sent a hands-off, pro-growth message to India’s increasingly bullish industrialists and entrepreneurs, boosting business confidence in the private sector. Vajpayee gave Finance Minister Jaswant Singh–one of his few close personal friends–a relatively free hand to deepen economic reforms and take on entrenched bureaucratic interests. To be sure, India’s reforms have not been as far-reaching as those made by the so-called East Asian tigers. But New Delhi has cut a lot of red tape, and its decision to reduce import and export tariffs and keep interest rates low has hit the mark. “Reforms in the last few years [under Vajpayee] have largely contributed to the steady economic growth,” says Amit Mitra, secretary-general of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry. “Taking a cue from these initiatives, the private sector began to reform itself and now many Indian companies are emerging as globally competitive.”
In Vajpayee’s hands, these economic gains have paid political dividends, too. In relatively short order he has shifted the BJP’s emphasis from Muslim-baiting to the promotion of liberal, free-market ideals. He didn’t do it by expelling militants like Gujarat’s Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Nor did he abandon political alliances with anti-Muslim radicals like Mumbai’s Bal Thackeray. (Although he has had deep political disagreements with both men, Vajpayee prefers to lead by consensus, not confrontation–a good idea for a man who must maintain a coalition of 23 parties to stay in power.) Rather, Vajpayee convinced BJP hard-liners that the party would have more success at the ballot box by extolling economic development, not ethnic and religious division. While BJP conservatives still operate a powerful grass-roots network and rail against minority rights when it is politically expedient, they now echo Vajpayee’s more moderate message of good governance and economic progress. “The BJP and its allies realize they need him more than he needs them,” says a retired, senior Indian diplomat. “Without him they know they will be without power.”
Vajpayee’s efforts to chart a more centrist course for the BJP appear to be more than an election-year gambit. Indeed, he consistently reassures Muslims of the government’s even-handedness. “We have only one agenda,” Vajpayee told NEWSWEEK in an exclusive interview last week. “And it is the agenda of development to benefit every Indian, irrespective of their religion.” Earlier this year a younger generation of BJP activists–leaders like Commerce and Law Minister Arun Jaitley, BJP General Secretary Pramod Mahajan and party chief Venkaiah Naidu–were tapped to write the party’s platform and help select candidates according to their ability to promote growth and good governance. “It’s quite clear that the people who are calling the shots in this election campaign are our younger leaders,” says a top BJP source. “They are liberal, well-educated, articulate and tech-savvy people who reflect Vajpayee’s temperament for moderation.” Adds another senior government official: “It will really be difficult for any other leader to take the party back to its aggressive Hindu-nationalist days. The reason the party still talks about Hindu nationalism, albeit of a benign kind, is because if it didn’t, it would look like a copy of the Congress [Party].”
This month’s election will almost certainly validate Vajpayee’s moves. Some polls are predicting that the Congress Party, which has ruled India for much of the country’s 57 years of independence, could suffer its most crushing defeat ever, winning fewer than 100 seats out of 543 in the lower house of Parliament. Leading his party to such a position of dominance would be an impressive feat at any time, let alone when India is on the verge of its long-awaited emergence. Nevertheless, for a politician who is clearly concerned about his legacy, Vajpayee seems to have done remarkably little to alleviate his countrymen’s concerns about his own eventual succession. India has made remarkable strides during his tenure, and it may be poised to usher in an even greater era of prosperity if it stays the course in the years to come. But the India of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru has had a checkered history with singular leaders. Vajpayee’s gains would be better assured if the country’s progress rested more on the quality of its institutions and less on the charisma of one man. Then again, maybe that’s what he has in mind for this next chapter.
