National Elections: India decides today

Top contenders whose political fate will be decided (from left) are Mulayam Singh Yadav, Arvind Kejriwal, Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi

Today is Super Friday. The day Indians had been looking forward to for the last couple of months has finally arrived.By the time you are reading this, counting of votes in India’s parliamentary polls — the biggest democratic exercise in the world — will be well under way to decide on the party and the leader who will head the third largest economy.

All exit polls have predicted a huge win for the National Democratic Alliance led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and, if those forecasts turn out to be true, right-wing prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi — the Chief Minister of Gujarat state since late 2001 — should be sworn in as the prime minister of India next week.

Change is the word millions of Indians have been waiting since as far back as 2011, when the first signs emerged of a huge yearning — especially among the youth — for a clean, stable government.

Somewhere along the way in its second term, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Congress-led United Progressive Aliiance (UPA) government lost its direction and found itself unable to build on the clear mandate it had received in 2009.

Apart from the economic downturn, there were reports of massive corruption scams, and the Congress simply could not wash its hands off all the allegations. The government also appeared to have frittered away many of the gains it had made abroad.

On the eve of counting, the mood in the Congress and UPA camp remained sombre while the BJP and its allies were already preparing for huge nationwide celebrations.

The BJP has begun consultations on the composition of the cabinet, the tricky question of appropriate roles for party veterans such as Lal Krishna Advani, Sushma Swaraj and Murli Manohar Joshi, and of managing its allies.

The party is also reaching out to potential new allies, and some small parties have announced their support for the NDA. While more allies are good for wider acceptability that the BJP is trying to create, dealing with their demands can also pose difficulties.

The new government will have to clearly hit the ground running because many of the issues begging its attention brook no delay. These include ways of kick-starting the economy, reining in inflation, reviving industrial growth, creating the promised new jobs, boosting infrastructure, improving education and health, and increasing security for women.

On the political front, the new government has to bring about greater cohesion among different religious, linguistic, social, geographical and other identities that make up the Indian nation. Then there are the problems in Jammu & Kashmir, the North-East, and in the Naxalite-affected areas.

The new government also has to meet the growing aspirations of an increasingly impatient people, especially those in rural areas and in the sprawling urban slums.

Ahead of the results, there is an air of optimism, and the stock markets have rallied on expectations that Modi would win the elections and provide a strong and stable government. The headline annual rate of inflation declined to 5.2 per cent in April, but the consumer inflation rate has risen to 8.59 per cent. Industrial production declined in February and March.

The new government’s biggest challenge will be to manage the expectations that have been raised, because meeting these quickly in a country as complex as India with a billion-plus population will be a mammoth task.

Assuming that it is Modi who will be voted into office, he will also have to deal with the doubts raised about his alleged failure to stem the 2002 post-Godhra violence in Gujarat that took place under his watch and work overtime to convince India’s minorities that he can carry them along. He also has to deliver on his promises of providing “good” and “corruption-free governance” and show that he can take the tough decisions needed on the economy.

Some years ago, when this correspondent met Modi in his Gandhinagar office, he wound up the meeting by saying, “I am not as bad as people make me out to be.” That seemed to suggest he was worried about the charges against him, and an election victory alone might not wipe them away. But performance might make a difference.