Word: gandhi
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...Failure," said Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, 42, last week, "is part of any mission of this magnitude." Gandhi was comforting India's space scientists after the country's newest rocket ended its maiden flight in a watery crash, a fate that also befell an American Atlas-Centaur rocket later in the week. But Gandhi could easily have been speaking of even more unhappy news that reached him the same day. In two of three state elections, his Congress (I) Party had suffered major setbacks at the hands of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the strongest of the country...
Indeed, so resounding were the setbacks that the victory by Gandhi's party, as the junior partner of a coalition, in the state of Jammu and Kashmir offered little consolation. In the past 18 months the Congress Party has lost state elections in Punjab, Assam and Mizoram. Gandhi appeared willing to live with these defeats because they temporarily quieted rebellious local ethnic and religious parties. There were, however, no such considerations in Kerala and West Bengal. Even more devastating, the loss of Kerala marked the first time Gandhi's party was out of power in all four south Indian states...
...national level, Congress still controls 75% of the seats in Parliament, but the losses have spotlighted serious declines in the party's popularity. Gandhi has political troubles on other fronts, including a feud with India's President, Giani Zail Singh. Capturing a widespread mood in the country, the Calcutta Telegraph declared last week, "The growing questions about Mr. Gandhi's abilities are taking their toll...
...this is a startling change from the situation little more than two years ago, when Indians voted the Congress Party into office by a landslide. The vote was a show of confidence in Gandhi only seven weeks after his mother, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was assassinated by Sikh bodyguards. Gandhi cultivated an image as a young, honest politician who was determined to modernize the economy and clean up the Congress Party, whose members he said in 1985 "follow no principle of public morality." Today, none of those goals has been fulfilled, and Gandhi seems to have lost his golden electioneering...
Pakistan's announcement that it can "go nuclear" at any time it chooses presents sharp dilemmas for its neighbors and allies. In New Delhi, the government of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi has come under pressure from conservative politicians to start building nuclear weapons. Relations between the longtime rivals on the subcontinent are already tense. Last week, following an angry standoff involving some 370,000 Indian and Pakistani troops that began in January, the two nations' forces began withdrawing from the Rajasthan sector of the border, continuing a pullback agreement worked out late last month. But the incident has left both...