The Empress picks India’s next ruler

Press, 19 February 1983, Page 15

The Empress picks India’s next ruler

From

SUNANDA DATTA-RAY

in Calcutta

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi has put an abrupt end to speculation that two resounding electoral defeats might jolt her into turning over a new leaf and starting an era of more open politics.

It became clear, when she foisted her 40-year-old son Rajiv on the ruling Congress Party as the most senior of its. five general secretaries, that Mrs Gandhi remains fervently committed to dynastic democracy. If the Congress victory in Delhi’s municipal elections this month is anything to judge by. voters are not particularly worried by her ambitions for Rajiv. Like a good Hindu matriarch, she has never bothered to conceal her hopes for her offspring. The first favourite was her younger son, the volatile Sanjay, whose strong-arm methods were largely responsible for his mother’s return to power in January, 1980. When Sanjay was killed in a flying accident some months later, Mrs Gandhi fought ferociously to prevent his attractive and accomplished young widow Maneka from seizing the mantle.. She draped it instead on her elder son Rajiv, then still an airline pilot and for a long time the reluctant debutant of Indian politics. Goaded and groomed by “momma,” the bashful Rajiv succeeded to his dead brother s parliamentary seat. Now. with a secure place in the party hierarchy — answerable only to the

Prime Minister who doubles as Congress president — Rajiv can look forward to a position in his mother’s Cabinet and eventually to succeeding her as constitutional dictator of India. The development was unexpected only because of the Congress Party's rout in two southern states in early January, and its acute problems with turbulent Sikhs in the west and chauvinistic Assamese in the north-east. Together, those setbacks raised hopes that Mrs Gandhi might at last have decided to overhaul her corrupt and creaking political and administrative apparatus. She herself went to some lengths to create this impression and encourage Indians to believe that drastic reforms were round the corner. It now seems that the decks were being cleared only to make way for the realisation of her ambitions for her son. In spite of the token resignations, which were probably intended only as a warning, there has been no change of any consequence in the Cabinet or party office. Rajiv’s grace and favour appointment without even the fig leaf of a contrived “popular" demand, leave alone respectable • elections, finally does away with the endearing image of a dashing young man forced against his inclinations to abandon his first love, flying, to lend a hand in steering the ship of state.