PRI19980303.2000.0432 NEWS TRANSCRIPT This is "the world." I'm Lisa Mullins. The final results of India's parliamentary elections will be known tonight or tomorrow, but this much is clear -- no party has won enough seats to form its own government. Political confusion has become the norm in India for the last several years. The once all-powerful congress party, which governed for 45 of India's 50 years of independence, is in decline. The last government, led by the united front, fell after the congress party withdrew its support. And the B.J.P., the leader in the vote, is unlikely to get a majority in the 545-member lower house of Parliament. We checked in with the BBC's Andrew whitehead in Delhi for the latest. Most of the results are now in, not all but most. And we know there's going to be again in India a Hung Parliament. No party's going to have an overall majority. But the closest are the Hindu nationalists, the B.J.P. and their allies. And they're going to be about 25 seats short. They think they can do it. They think they can find the extra allies. But other parties, notably the congress party, the one that's led by sonja gandy -- gandhi, and the left parties are talking about combining to block the B.J.P. What is the significance -- if there is indeed a coalition Parliament, if there is another round of coalition politics for India, what does that mean? Well, it tends to mean indecisive, unstable governments which can't plan long-term and that tends to put off foreign investments, which is one of the reasons why share prices in India have gone down quite sharply during the past 24 hours. And I think that's one of the main concerns. If the B.J.P. gets into a coalition government, leads a coalition government, I think that would concern some Western governments and certainly would concern Washington, not least because the B.J.P. says it wants India to be openly a nuclear power and perhaps to have a nuclear weapons test. And I think also it's interesting for outside observers because one of the big ironies of this election is the fact that Indians were going to the ballot box primarily to say we want a stable government after years of chaos and years of confusion. And at least right now it doesn't as if they're going to be getting that. No, I think the Indian voters feel a little bit cheated. Every party has said, vote for us, we'll give you stable government. And it just so happens that the outcome is that India will not have stable government. It's had coalition government and weak coalition governments at that for the past two years. And most people are really rather Fed up of it. They want a single party strong government, but they haven't got it. What happened to the popular support for the widow of rajiv gandhi, sonja gandhi? She became the icon for the congress party. Did the enthusiastic crowds not translate into enthusiastic votes for the congress party? Well, I think she did the party some good. I think without her -- she was a charismatic figure. She was by far the biggest crowd pull of the election campaign. Without her, the congress party would have done a lot worse. But she hasn't delivered victory. I think a lot of people went to her rallies to see this italian-born woman who Wears saris and speaks in Hindi. It was curiosity. It didn't translate into votes. Nevertheless, as I say, without the nehru family, without the gandhi family being present, the congress party would have suffered much worse than it did. So summarize, Andrew, if you will, the options for us. Now, what are the possible scenarios in this election? Well, I think the immediate scenario is of days and perhaps weeks of deal brokering in smoke-filled rooms here in Delhi, which will eventually lead to some sort of coalition government. It may well be, and I think my hunch is it will be a B.J.P., a Hindu nationalist-led government, something really rather new for India. But the -- its rivals are doing everything they can to form a grand alliance simply to block the B.J.P., which they regard as a sectarian communal party, which would damage India's secular fabric. If there is, indeed, a Hung Parliament, what does that - how does that auger for India's attempts to modernize? - It will be a setback. It rather depends on the actual chemistry of the particular coalition. But we've seen over the past two years that having a coalition government, as we've had of 13 or 14 parties, simply means there is very little decisionmaking, and investors in particular get worried. And the outside money which India so desperately needs to modernize its infrastructure and to build efficient industry, firblet telecommunications doesn't come in. -- efficient telecommunications doesn't come in. So I think that's why investors are worried. They're taking a little bit of fright from the prospect of more instability. But until we know who's going to be in charge and who their allies are, we can't be sure how serious the problem is. That's the BBC's Andrew whitehead in Delhi.