INDIA In Search of Stability

With no family scion available to take up the mantle of Rajiv Gandhi, India’s Congress Party last week did what any other faction-riven political bureaucracy would have done: fudge. After a two-hour meeting, party leaders appointed P.V. Narasimha Rao, 69, as president. Although Rao boasts an impressive resume — he is a poet, linguist and former Foreign Minister — he was selected because, according to colleagues, he is respected by everyone but feared by no one.

The compromise choice postpones what is expected to be a fierce fight among younger politicians for the prize of Prime Minister. That job will be filled by the party’s members of parliament after national elections, which were interrupted by Gandhi’s murder, are completed next week. If Congress does not win at the polls, party strategists hope to team up with smaller factions on the left to deny power to the rising and divisive Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.