Sonia Gandhi has called for a period of introspection to work out why the Congress did so badly in the elections ... Admittedly, there is nothing in the party's behaviour to suggest that it has changed the habits of a lifetime - and some serious soul-searching will take place ... Congressmen must begin by asking a basic question: did the BJP's ideology defeat the Congress' secular world-view?

No matter how much the BJP exults in its victory, it would be hard to argue that the verdict at this election had anything to do with the ideology on which the Sangh Parivar is predicated. Hindutva, for example, was almost a dirty word during this campaign. Instead, the BJP borrowed the Congress' clothes. It fought on an entirely secular platform ... and - in imitation of the Congress tradition - spent most of its time projecting a single leader.

The Congress now needs to ask itself how it was that the BJP got away with being a better Congress than the Congress itself. Until it comes to terms with this paradox, there is little hope of the party recovering from the humiliation of this defeat.

Part of the answer has more to do with the BJP than it does with the Congress. The party proved more successful in hiding the Hindutva loonies than anyone had dared hope a year ago (when there was talk of surreptitiously building a temple at Ayodhya); it made the right alliances and in A.B. Vajpayee, it has the one widely respected veteran statesman left in Indian politics.

But the Congress also made mistakes that could easily have been avoided ... Vajpayee went into the election with the halo of a statesman who had been gratuitously humiliated by a power-hungry party ... The first manifestation of this new approach came with the decision to oppose the imposition of President's rule in Bihar ...

From that point on, it was downhill. The Congress opposed everything and sent out signals that it was only a matter of time before the Vajpayee government fell; "a government that lives on daily wages" was the preferred formulation because it suggested that the end was near ...

The sarne (peopie who) had propped up Rabri and Laloo needed Jayalalitha's support ... The Vajpayee govemment fell under the weight of its own contradictions. But as this election demonstraies/ .. The electorate has concluded that greedy Congressmen conspired to bring down a Prime Minister who was doing his best.

And yet, there are compensations for the Congress in the election results. Its share of the popular vote has actually gone up (though it is hard to see how the party could have done worse than it did under Sitaram Kesri) and - more significantly - it has become a force to reckon with in UP for the first time in a decade ... Moreover, the UP results suggest that the minorities are finally returning to the Congress.

All this should offer some comfort to the Congress. If you take the V.P. Singh line that this election is only a semi-final and that the next one, three years from now, will be the real battle, then the Congress has much to look forward to. The BJP cannot play the Vajpayee card again and again, nor can it go on about Sonia's foreign birth a second time. On the other hand, the Congress will represent the dominant ideology in Indian politics (so dominant that the BJP stole it this time) and will at last have some kind of base in northern India ...

(Source: The Hindustan Times, 15 October, 1999)