Don't cry for me, India
With tearful pleas to the masses and sycophants around her, Sonia Gandhi has nobly declined the chance to be Indian prime minister. But why did she not do so as soon as the result was known, and before billions were wiped off the Indian stock market?
The answer is that such melodramas are necessary to prime the political landscape for the behind-the-scenes manipulation that has been the hallmark of Mrs Gandhi's style since she was 'reluctantly' recruited into party politics a decade ago.
The only thing that remains to be seen with the 'Eva Peron-isation' of Indian politics is whether the economy will also follow Argentina's path, with the Congress party and its communist allies forging an unholy alliance to follow ruinous nationalistic economic policies.
The reality is that the rise of Mrs Gandhi, who even her supporters cannot accuse of possessing any intellectual or leadership qualities, proves that India is still a feudal monarchy where someone married to the right family can be chosen to be prime minister.
V.S. Naipaul, the Nobel prize-winning Indian author, wrote that Indians have been oppressed for so many centuries by foreign dynasties that they have lost any sense of racial memory; a sense of being separate people with the right to rule themselves.
That is why they could have let Mrs Gandhi, who lived in India for 15 years before bothering to apply for citizenship, rule. Born in Italy, she studied English in the city of Cambridge, and while working there as a waitress in a Greek restaurant, met Rajiv Gandhi, who was trying to get a degree from the university.
However, the election of Congress is not going to liberate the Indian masses. The party has not held internal elections for more than 10 years (which makes it worse than the Chinese Communist Party) and is run along the lines of a feudal family business.
China's communists openly court foreign technology and capital, while jealously guarding the country's sovereignty. Yet India's communists were effectively willing to outsource the position of prime minister to Italy, while opposing foreign capital and technology.
Mrs Gandhi nominated Manmohan Singh for the post of prime minister; a clever man who is also a loyal family servant. Previously, Congress ruled India for 50 years and led the nation into stagnation and international marginalisation. The Nehru family, which has come back to haunt India, led the party for most of those years. The family witnessed India's worst riots and the biggest corruption case, the Bofors arms scandal. As Karl Marx said, history repeats itself twice, once as tragedy and the second time as farce. We are now seeing the second phase unfold. What has happened in India is not a revolution. It is a counter-revolution, led by the feudalistic and bureaucratic elite, who are afraid of losing their privileges through modernisation and capitalism.
Many of the public sector companies that are supposed to serve the poor make huge losses and exist only to serve the managers and workers with links to corrupt politicians. It is the poor who pay the price for India's 'socialism'. While naive citizens may take pleasure in being patted on the back by equally naive foreign journalists over the vibrancy of the country's democracy, the more knowledgeable are shedding a tear for India's poor.
N. Balakrishnan is a Hong Kong-based businessman
