Victor in India Promises to Make Country Strong Gardiner Harris

Narendra Modi addressed a large gathering on the banks of Ganga during his first visit to this ancient temple town after winning the Varanasi seat by a huge margin of 3.7 lakh votes.

New Delhi: Narendra Modi, the man expected to become India's next prime minister, swept into the capital Saturday morning in a triumphal procession to the colonial bungalows here that still serve as India's power center and promised that he "will try to make India self-reliant and strong."

Modi, who engineered a historic victory over India's long-governing Gandhi family, was surrounded at several places along the route by well-wishers who chanted paeans to him. When he stopped to greet the crowds, they showered him with rose petals.

Modi gave a brief speech at the headquarters of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which on Friday won a decisive majority in Parliament. It is the first time in India's history that any party other than the Indian National Congress Party, led by the Gandhi family, has managed such a feat.

"I am thankful to you for the way in which you received me with so much gratitude from the airport," Modi said.

After a meeting of top party members, Modi departed for Varanasi, the holiest city in Hinduism, where he won election to the lower house of Parliament. He went to the famous Kashi Vishwanath temple, which is devoted to Lord Shiva, a virile, muscular and meditative god. He then went to the banks of the Ganges, India's holiest river and one Modi has promised to clean. In some spots, the Ganges is little more than an open sewer.

One of the onlookers, Rajeev Bind, 26, had come from a village nearly 30 miles away from Varanasi because Modi "is the only politician who can make this country strong and powerful."

"All politicians say that they will do something but when he speaks you believe it," Bind said. "He makes you believe."

The electricity in much of Varanasi was disrupted Friday as the election returns made clear the size of Modi's victory, and the power failure led many to wonder whether Modi could truly fix India's huge problems.

While Modi was accepting congratulations in New Delhi, not far away Manmohan Singh, who has been India's prime minister for 10 years, delivered a brief farewell address, tendered his resignation and wished the new government well.

"I owe everything to this country, this great land of ours where I, an underprivileged child of Partition, was empowered enough to rise and occupy high office," Singh said. "It is both a debt that I will never be able to repay and a decoration that I will always wear with pride."

Singh will retire to a simple bungalow and a $1,000-a-month pension. He is widely acknowledged to be an honest man who presided over a government riddled with corruption. And his humble acceptance of his role as a seat-warmer for Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the country's leading political family, was eventually seen as undercutting the institution of the prime minister's office.

It is an office that Modi has promised to restore, and in his own speech he said his victory "belongs to 1.25 billion Indians." Among those listening to Modi was Byas Tiwari, 68, who struggled to make his way through the throng of party supporters. Tiwari took a train Friday night from a distant village in a neighboring state so that he could see Modi with his own eyes. He said that he had not eaten or bathed for nearly 30 hours.

Modi "is an honest politician, and I had prayed to God to give him a huge mandate," Tiwari said.

Like hundreds of millions of others, Tiwari has high hopes for Modi. For instance, Tiwari said he believed that Modi would provide pensions to old people like him.

In fact, Modi's party has largely promised to end the redistribution efforts that have long been the accepted political formula of the Gandhi family, policies that have not been terribly beneficial for India's economy. Disgust with the governing Congress Party was so intense that Modi managed to avoid having to detail many of his policies during the campaign, but expectations are so high that he may face keen disappointment if he does not rapidly improve the country's struggling economy.

Nearly 1 million people in India join the search for work every month, and the economy is not creating nearly enough jobs for them all. Half of India's population is under the age of 25. Modi must find a way to accommodate this youth bulge, and fairly quickly, or Friday's electoral earthquake may not be the last