GOING TO THE POLLS - AGAIN

Spoiler Jayalalitha Jayaram's agenda

IN HINDU MYTHOLOGY, a chakravyooh represents a circular battle formation that only the most skilled warriors can penetrate and escape from. In everyday usage, the term is a metaphor for the unrealizable. Recently, members of the Indian Parliament found themselves trapped in a chakravyooh, unable to overcome a bizarre political destiny befalling the nation.

The drama began about two weeks ago when the 18-party coalition government led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party lost a parliamentary vote of confidence. Over the days following, the main opposition Congress party scrambled to form an alternative government with the help of 22 allied groups. But the parties failed to agree on how the spoils of power should be shared. A political deadlock ensued, forcing President K.R. Narayanan to dissolve Parliament on April 26 and call for a mid-term poll. "The ruling alliance lost its majority because of lack of cohesion," said the president in a tersely worded statement. "Those who voted out the alliance showed the same disunity." The moral for the squabbling politicians is clear: that nobody who enters the chakravyooh of India's coalition politics can emerge unscathed.

For a while, though, it seemed as if the opposition would scrape through. A day before Parliament was annulled, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi presented Narayanan with a list of 239 MPs willing to support a minority government under her leadership. But the figure was still 33 short of the 272 seats necessary for a simple majority in the 545-member House, which has two vacancies. "I tried my best to convince our friends in the other secular parties to support a Congress government but I was unable to do so," Sonia told reporters after Narayanan rejected her offer to lead the nation.

Indians now face the unwelcome prospect of electing their sixth government in less than four years - with no guarantee that it will not be toppled yet again by power-hungry rivals. Across the country, there is an atmosphere of hopelessness - and it is tinged with anger for a perfectly sound reason: The fragile BJP coalition was dislodged by just one vote in Parliament by a mÈlange of parties which proved to be even more disunited. Little wonder that on the day the House was dissolved, stock prices plunged 4.7%. "[Elections are] a criminal waste of resources in a poor country like India," says K.P. Singh of the Associated Chambers of Commerce. "We are doomed if we don't have a clear mandate." Says now-caretaker PM A.B. Vajpayee:"The worst victims of this power game are the economy and India's image abroad."

The events have created a wave of sympathy for Vajpayee - and resentment against Congress. The BJP's leaders have launched a campaign against Sonia, arguing that she is unfit to rule the country because she was born an Italian. Though the widow of assassinated premier Rajiv Gandhi became an Indian citizen 14 years ago, the attack on her foreign origins strikes a vulnerable spot in the minds of many Indians: It reminds them of their ancestors' servility to white-skinned Europeans - an attitude that is still pervasive. As Calcutta resident Anoushka Mehra put it in a letter to the Telegraph daily: "Had Sonia Gandhi been a colored native of any other Third World nation, she wouldn't have sailed like a queen onto India's political centerstage."

The BJP has lost no time spearheading a clever campaign to highlight the plight of its fallen leader. On April 27, the party ran full-page advertisements in all the major national dailies, featuring a portrait of Vajpayee with a caption that read: "What wrong did this man do?" The ads also set the tone for the BJP's electoral campaign. They blamed the Congress and its allies for forcing costly and cumbersome elections on the country and exhorted voters to "teach them a lesson."

There is near unanimity in the national press that a lesson in political maturity is just what Congress needs. There was hardly a newspaper that didn't criticize the party for trying to gain power through the back door in league with Jayalalitha Jayaram, the temperamental southern satrap who precipitated the government's collapse by pulling out her 18 MPs. "What you have today is a spectacle of aspirations and absurdities enacted by a divided troupe," editorialized the Indian Express. "Yesterday's unity in Vajpayee-should-go has become today's After-Vajpayee-what."

What does the future hold? Much depends on the timing of elections, which must be held within six months. Though the Election Commission has indicated that balloting will have to wait at least until the end of July, when about eight weeks of disruptive monsoon rains abate, the BJP is pushing for a poll in June. Public memory is short and only early elections will allow it to play on the sympathy factor. There is, of course, the all-important anti-incumbency factor as well. The longer the BJP remains India's caretaker, the greater the chance it will be punished for the nation's problems in the run-up to elections. Chakravyooh all over again.