A Vote Fit For Bollywood

By Alex Perry; Aravind Adiga; Sara Rajan

Only India's movie moguls might have imagined the saga of a beautiful Italian girl who follows her prince to a faraway land, finding love, tragedy and heartbreak before finally triumphing as a leader of her adopted people. Last week the story came true. TV pundits who for months had predicted Sonia Gandhi's disastrous election defeat found themselves explaining a sensational victory instead. Outgoing Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee grudgingly praised the "strong and diverse" democracy that rejected him. But most dazed of all, it seemed, was Sonia.

Her victory crowns a remarkable odyssey. Born near Turin, Sonia Maino was 18 when she met Rajiv Gandhi at a Greek restaurant in Cambridge, England. The couple shunned politics, but the 1984 assassination of Rajiv's mother, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, thrust him to the head of India's leading political dynasty. On the day Indira died, Sonia predicted the same fate for her husband. "I begged him," she later recounted. "I said he too would be killed." A suicide bomber assassinated Rajiv in 1991. Sonia was not eager to take his place, but in 1997, with the Congress Party floundering, she relented. With her victory, her son Rahul, 33, declared that the family had finally laid its ghosts to rest.

But the unromantic truth is that last week's vote was as much a rejection of Vajpayee's Hindu nationalist party as any great swing for Sonia. And the problems that led to the party's ouster are set to get worse. India needs at least 75 million jobs over the next seven years just to keep unemployment from rising. The hype over outsourcing notwithstanding, the information-technology sector employs only 800,000 of India's elite. Abroad, India's next leader must handle peace talks with Pakistan. But Sonia has yet to articulate a clear economic or foreign policy. She also faces an unforgiving electorate. "As reform pulls more Indians above the poverty line," Indian Express editor Shekhar Gupta wrote, "they are moving their expectations higher." Having seen her own fairy tale fulfilled, Sonia must ensure that the dreams of a billion others come true.

--By Alex Perry, Aravind Adiga and Sara Rajan