Few Indians mourned the passing of the 11-month-old government of Prime Minister V. P. Singh, who lost a lopsided no-confidence vote in Parliament early in the week. Singh’s fate was sealed last month when a leading Hindu fundamentalist party abandoned his coalition :in protest over Singh’s decisions to arrest the party’s leader and to use troops to stop Hindu extremists from tearing down a disputed mosque. Some 370 Hindus and Muslims have been killed in the sectarian violence.
Shekhar’s elevation signals the return to influence of Rajiv Gandhi, whose Congress Party–India’s largest–provided the votes for a parliamentary majority in a lastminute backroom deal. Gandhi himself turned down the job but will probably call policy shots behind: the seen while Shekhar, a god-fatherlike figure who receives; hordes of petitioners at his I homes in New Delhi and the nearby countryside’ takes the heat in public. The Indian Express called the new government a “political freak” with a “minuscule head in: front” and Congress’s “enormous rump” leading from behind. But most Indian political analysts believe that the arrangement will last only until Gandhi and Congress have cranked up their political machine for a new election–and bid farewell to Shekhar.
