INDIA: Ms Gandhi tapped into the concerns of India's 300 million poor who believed they were being left behind, writes Randeep Ramesh in Delhi
India was on the brink of electing Italian-born Ms Sonia Gandhi as prime minister last night after voters decisively rejected the ruling Hindu nationalist party in the general elections.
The surprising victory for Ms Gandhi's Congress party came after a month-long campaign which had focused mainly on whether India's economic boom, built on information technology, had lifted the fortunes of the nation's one billion people.
The outgoing prime minister, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, whose Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and allies had confidently expected to win, resigned last night.
Analysts said that Mr Vajpayee (80) had made a serious political miscalculation by calling the elections six months early. At least five members of the Indian cabinet, including the foreign minister and the education minister, lost their seats.
India's first all-electronic elections saw the results pour in. The Congress party and its allies were expected to get more than 220 seats. Ms Gandhi's party has also attracted the backing of India's communist parties; the left achieved its best ever electoral results, capturing more than 60 seats.
Another ally is likely to be the Samajwadi Party (Socialist Party), whose base is in India's biggest state, Uttar Pradesh. It can count on about 35 seats. The BJP and its coalition partners, with 180 MPs, said they would take to the opposition benches in the 543-seat parliament.
It appears that Ms Gandhi's Italian ancestry "problem" has been defused by the entry of her children into politics. Her daughter, Priyanka, and son, Rahul (34), caught the public's imagination in a country where half the population is under 35 and the average age of politicians is 56.
Rahul won for the Congress party the northern constituency of Amethi, once held by Rajiv. He told television crews at his campaign office that he had seen personal attacks on his family and mother but he was not interested in such matters. "Neither are the people," he said. "I am interested in helping the country."
Under the slogan "India shining", the BJP had hoped that a bountiful monsoon, rising growth rates and a nascent peace process with Pakistan, would have persuaded voters to give Mr Vajpayee another five years in office.
However, Ms Gandhi tapped into the concerns of the rural poor - at least 300 million people - who believed they were being left behind as the country's cities marched ahead.
A former editor of the Times of India, Inder Malhotra, said: "The India shining campaign boomeranged completely for the BJP. It showed a careless disregard for the vast areas of darkness where the majority of Indian people live. Both Congress and the leftist parties pointed this out and reaped the benefits."
The first signs of a possible upset came on Tuesday when the BJP's largest coalition partner in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh lost in regional elections by a landslide. Commentators said the virtual wipeout of the Telugu Desam Party and the ejection from office of the state's chief minister, Mr Chandrababu Naidu, was an indicator of the rising anger in the countryside.
The World Bank had praised the policies of Mr Naidu, the chief executive officer of his state (which is larger than Britain). The policies had attracted multinationals such as Microsoft and HSBC, and helped put shopping malls and business parks in the state capital, Hyderabad.
"This is a verdict against globalisation," said Kuldip Nayar, a political columnist and a member of the upper house of Parliament.
"Now the next government will have to think how to employ more hands than machine."
The Congress party also claimed big victories in some of the most affluent urban centres. In the capital, Delhi, it took six of seven seats.
One of the most high-profile contests saw the petroleum minister, Mr Ram Naik, lose in Bombay North to the film star turned Congress candidate Govinda.
Perhaps even more surprising was the result in Gujarat, the BJP's heartland and the scene of bloody Hindu-Muslim violence two years ago. More than 1,000 Muslims were killed when Hindu mobs rampaged through Gujarat after a train carrying Hindu pilgrims was torched.
The BJP's state leader, Mr Narendra Modi, a hardline preacher turned politician, saw his party lose half of the 26 seats in Gujarat. It was Congress's best result in Gujarat, one of India's most industrialised regions, in more than 25 years.
The BJP had been steadily trying to reposition itself as a more inclusive party, distancing itself from the aggressive Hindu nationalism of the past.
In a move led by Mr Vajpayee, it tried to reach out to the country's 140 million Muslims to assuage their fears of being treated as second-class citizens.
Analysts warn that the results may cause the BJP to halt its moderation policy and enter a period of regression. "\ may now well slide back into extremism," said M J Akbar, editor of the Asian Age paper.