Election Commission needs more rope to get to the bottom of it Money is making Election 2019 go around. Currency with the public totalled ₹20.64 trillion on March 15, five days after the elections were announced. This compared with ₹12.48 trillion on March 7, 2014, two days after the previous Lok Sabha election was announced. …
The 48-year-old challenger is flat on his back on the canvas. The crowd is cheering on the champion, who is 20 years older but lighter on his feet. Is the challenger out for the count, or will he go another round? Can Rahul Gandhi breathe life back into his shattered organization? Three weeks after the…
Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end! ‘I wonder how many miles I’ve fallen by this time?’ she said aloud. ‘I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth…’ —Alice’s Adventures in Wales (1865), Lewis Carroll Today marks the first day of the world’s biggest social media Election.…
India is walking into a middle-income trap with its eyes wide open The good news is that every. body — the IMF was the latest to fall in line on Tuesday — agrees with the RBI that India’s GDP growth rate will be a modest 7% in 2019-20. The 0.3 percentage point reduction in its…
One week before Phase 1, the votes still hold the cards Loyalty to the nation all the time, loyalty to the government when it deserves it. -Mark Twain After five years of ‘achhe din’, you would think we’d be gazing with happy expectation at the bright lights of even better days, looking forward to a…
Nobody speaks in the language of the masses Remarkably, after seven decades of spirited democracy, India has produced only three leaders, who have enjoyed nationwide popularity — Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Narendra Modi. I am not considering Lal Bahadur Shastri or Rajiv Gandhi (whose only electoral win was on the rebound from his mother’s…
Modi has been handed a blank cheque. He must ensure it doesn’t bounce Narendra Modi’s pulverising victory has wiped out every semblance of opposition in Parliament’s lower house. The Congress’ humiliation is so total that it will fail to be recognised as the main Opposition party in the Lok Sabha for the second time in…
Be Careful what you digest from the result of the assembly elections I like only one kind of fudge and one kind of shake, the chocolate kind. And I especially dislike fudges and shakes of the economic kind. The Narendra Modi government, by no means on its last legs, has treated us to quite a…
Four years ago, I wrote in my first Needle’s Eye column that predictions about caste not dominating the 2014 elections were all hogwash. If you still believe that four years of this government have whipped up a centripetal force of development and transformation, you need to notify the I&B Ministry that you are being misled…
Here is my poll prediction: if, and only if, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wins power in Uttar Pradesh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will roll out his biggest-bang reforms. He will recover his political capital, dented by the things that did not go well with demonetisation, and gather the courage to attempt to amend election…
As our all-too-brief winter slips into a warm spring, we are headed-once again-for another Judgement Day in our interminable elections. But, just as we start to weary of the burdens of democracy, it is useful to remember the meaning of that word: “power of the people”. Time and again we are reminded of the power…
The longer the course of a long-drawn election, the coarser the language gets. The strain is starting to tell in Uttar Pradesh. Both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah have certainly raised the pitch. Shah said hooligans (presumably from the ruling Samajwadi Party) would be hanged by their feet.…
Brushing up on some history, I read about how powerful dynasties in the 8th and 9th centuries fought themselves into exhaustion over the kingdom of Kannauj in north India, oblivious to the first Arab invaders who conquered Sindh in 712CE. Today, the prize of Uttar Pradesh is being fought over by three modern armies: Prime…
In the preface to his 1995 book ‘How Good People Make Tough Choices’, ethicist Rushworth M. Kidder wrote that when he interviewed twenty-two leading thinkers around the world about the challenges, they saw looming in the 21st century, six themes stood out. Five of them were not surprising: the nuclear threat, environmental degradation, the North-South…
Why the regional thoroughbreds are the real winners in the assembly election sweepstakes The scene for India’s regional politics was scripted by Conjeevaram Natarajan Annadurai in 1967. The screenwriter and playwright led his Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam to victory in Tamil Nadu (then Madras state), riding to power on resurgent Tamil nationalism and an anti-Hindi agitation. …
The only thing going for Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi is his longevity in electoral politics Voter turnout in the first phase of Assam’s election on Monday was very high. By the time polls closed it had hit 78%. Assam’s voters usually turn out in large numbers, but this time the numbers bode ill for the…
In March 2014, two months before PM Modi was swept to power, the previous Congress govt pressed both the caste and patriotism buttons. It charged 10 Kashmiri students with sedition for shouting pro-Pak slogans in a Meerut varsity. The same month, it said Jats would be included in OBC quotas Most of us ordinary mortals…
The sheer size of our population will continue to power domestic demand for some time, but India cannot hope to be a heavyweight global player without taking ever-bigger bites of the world trade pie. Sadly, alongside falling two-way trade, India has turned increasingly protectionist The world around us grows more uneasy by the day about…
Five years ago the Centennial Group and the Asian Development Bank issued an interesting report titled “India 2039: An Affluent Society”. There is a lot to read there; the Congress party had just been re-elected, and it seemed to have been handed a decisive second chance that would enable it to get out of the…
When our prime minister rode on horseback to the Vaishno Devi shrine in Jammu last week, one swooning supporter could not contain himself and tweeted: “When I saw Modi on a white horse on way Maa Vaishno Devi the avatara of Kaliki (sic) flashed my mind. What a leadership”. Devout Hindus believe that we are…
About 1,000 authors and teachers marched through the streets of the capital on Tuesday, asserting their right to free speech. Did you miss this event in Delhi? Actually, it happened in Dhaka, where four bloggers and a publisher have been killed so far this year, and civil society believes free speech is being throttled in…
I was chatting with my barber in Gurgaon when I realised that Narendra Modi and the hundreds of other politicians campaigning in the Haryana and Maharashtra assembly elections were not uttering the P word. Salman, the young hair-cutter, said he was the second of nine children of a sepoy in the Indian Army — the…
“On an October evening, two young men met at a paan shop.” So, starts ‘Hatyaare’ (Assassins), a disturbing and dystopian Hindi short story by Amarkant. It was published in 1964, and faintly echoed ‘A Clockwork Orange’, that classic 1962 tale by Anthony Burgess of a darkly futuristic England blighted by extremely violent youths. Assassins is…
Twice in the past four months, Narendra Modi has spoken with unalloyed pride and excitement as he stood among our super-achieving space scientists — at Sriharikota on June 30, and on Wednesday when the Indian Space Research Organisation celebrated the success of our Mars orbiter Mangalyaan. “History has been created today You have dared to…
Sometimes, when the late monsoon clouds hover low, India can be spied through the gloom, as if by happen-stance. So many geographies, languages, foods, cultures — and religions — thrown together higgledy-piggledy and powered by a sputtering nationalism that makes us want to be counted among the great powers of the world, rich, strong, and…
Arvind Kejriwal is the India Rubber Man. A Leo in politics if there is one, charismatic, mercurial, impetuous and likeable despite his foibles, he has re-invented himself time and again and rebounded into a new avatar. IIT trained engineer, IRS tax officer, Right to Information activist, anti-corruption crusader, and sidekick to Anna Hazare, Kejriwal couldn’t…
One word summed up the five-week election: certitude. From the very beginning most of us were certain that the National Democratic Alliance would win power. It is fairly certain that the Congress party will suffer its worst defeat in 16 general elections. Over 300,000 kilometres, 440 rallies, 1,350 holograms, 4,000 chai pe charchas, and a…
The end of campaigning in Amethi in a cacophony of anger, derogation, and obloquy was briefly leavened by “Twitter joining Rajinikanth.” The Superstar’s followers piled up at the rate of 20,000 an hour. Not even Narendra Modi, one of the Thalaivar’s first followers, could have matched that. Fantasy had trumped politics. As if in affirmation,…
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.- Julius Caesar, Act 1 By Wednesday elections had been held for 438 seats, or four-fifths of the 16th Lok Sabha, and it seemed like a good point to draw breath and take stock of the men and women who…
Certainly not the growing number of people who believe that “free speech” means a loose mouth and the abuse of certain classes or communities. Imran Masood, Azam Khan and Mulayam Singh Yadav are not afraid of Narendra Modi. Nor is the swelling saffron sena if you believe Ram Rajya is about to dawn. In its…
Several moons ago a car driver in Chennai told me the fascinating story of a young man whom he drove around in Coimbatore during the 2009 general elections. At every stop, the driver said, the young man would return with a bulging sack that he would stuff into the boot. The young man was collecting…
First election since 1984 where a national party is looking like sure-fire winner Last weekend, just before the first phase of voting in India’s 16th general election opened, a group of people gathered in Delhi for a “nation-building” meeting. For two days they thrashed and turned in their search for a better alternative to the…
Which party will you vote for? It is a bit like England’s witch trials in the Middle Ages. You were dunked in water as a test; if you did not drown, you were pronounced a sorceress and burnt at the stake. Whichever government you elect, the choice is not clear, clean, or comforting. By…
Money is making Election 2019 go around. Currency with the public totalled Rs. 20.64 trillion on March 15, five days after the elections were announced. This compared with Rs. 12.48 trillion on March 7, 2014, two days after the previous Lok Sabha election was announced. Where is the less-cash economy that demonetisation was supposed to…
Uneasy ties with neighbours By Chaitanya Kalbag NEW DELHI, (Reuter): Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s massive victory in the Indian general election has given him new freedom to tackle his country’s un-easy relations with its neighbours, especially Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Rajiv, armed with a huge parliamentary majority, declared immediately after the election that good relations…
The sub-text to the debate on simultaneous elections is that BJP wants to further centralise power. In 2012, watching Manmohan Singh struggling with a disorderly coalition, an obstreperous cabinet, and a host of powerful state chief ministers, I wrote that he was the lone prime minister in a nation of presidents. In 2014, on the…
One of the smartest things Prime Minister Narendra Modi did after coming to power four years ago was to appoint diehard loyalists as state governors. They were either beholden to him or to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). When the Congress was on top of the heap, it routinely…
Can momentum towards holding simultaneous elections to Lok Sabha, state assemblies be achieved in one fell swoop? The momentum towards holding simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies is growing, but can this be achieved in one fell swoop? If it is done in stages, it may take until 2024 at least to…
Oh, what a glorious thing democracy is! If you add the number of festivals, weekends, hours spent in bad traffic, and election days in a typical working-age Indian’s life, chances are that she or he is beavering away for less than half the year. If we just had elections to all our state assemblies and…
“Our nation’s biggest problem is that we who sit in government think nobody knows more than us, nobody is more honest than us, and nobody cares more about the nation than us. This is wrong. We have to trust 1.25 billion Indians. The government cannot run on suspicions,” Narendra Modi told an audience on Thursday,…
For prime minister Narendra Modi, 2015 has been an annus horribilis, bracketed by the Bhartiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) waiting loss in the Delhi elections in February, and now the even more humiliating and momentous loss in Bihar. Bihar has been bruited about, mainly by the BJP, as a referendum on Modi’s popularity. Modi heavily invested…
For Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), it is a make-or-break election in Assam. Of the four states and one union territory going to the polls in April and May, Assam is the only one where the BJP–having suffered defeats in Delhi and Bihar–stands a decent chance of snatching power. Except in…
Which party will you vote for? It is a bit like England’s witch trials in the middle ages. You were dunked in water as a test; if you did not drown you were pronounced a sorceress and burnt at the stake. Whichever government you elect, the choice is not clear, clean, and comforting. By now…
Last weekend, just before the first phase of voting in India’s 16th general election opened, a group of people gathered in Delhi for a “nation-building” meeting. For two days they thrashed and turned in their search for a better alternative to the choices facing the nation. They were exercised by the epic corruption and mis-governance,…
Several moons ago, a car driver in Chennai told me the fascinating story of a young man whom he drove around in Coimbatore during the 2009 general elections. At every stop, the driver said, the young man would return with a bulging sack that he would stuff into the boot. The young man was collecting…
The end of campaigning in Amethi in a cacophony of anger, derogation, and obloquy was briefly leavened by “Twitter joining Rajinikanth.” The Superstar’s followers piled up at the rate of 20,000 an hour. Not even Narendra Modi, one of the Thalaivar’s first followers, could have matched that. Fantasy had trumped politics. As if in affirmation,…
One word summed up the five-week election: certitude. From the very beginning, most of us were certain that the National Democratic Alliance would win power. It is fairly certain that the Congress party will suffer its worst defeat in 16 general elections. Over 300,000 kilometres, 440 rallies, 1,350 holograms, 4,000 chai pe charchas, and a…
I was hard put on Wednesday to find an advertisement remembering Rajiv Gandhi on the anniversary of his assassination. It was a telling contrast with a few months ago when the newspapers were flooded, just before the elections were announced, with ads extolling UPA II’s achievements. Political parties do suffer huge losses, but nothing has…
The Rajyabhishek in the magnificent Rashtrapati Bhavan forecourt was a sight for sore eyes, and understandably some of us went ape even if we were not among the 4,000 people attending Narendra Modi’s oathtaking. It was still a modest event compared with the 1.8 million people who attended Barack Obama’s January 2009 inauguration. Talking about…
It seemed like the rhyming slogans, the election jingles, and the grandiloquence of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s manifesto were all that we needed to shake us out of our psychic numbing during the past few years. Alliteration hit you everywhere you turned. Narendra Modi told a small audience last Sunday that we needed to ramp…
Somewhere, through the unbearable din of television and anti-social media this week, I saw one tweet that plaintively asked why we were hearing so much from everybody but not enough from Narendra Modi at the BRICS summit in Brazil. Our prime minister met the leaders of China, Russia, Brazil and South Africa, but coverage back…
Calcutta, India, June 15 (Reuters) – The leader of the world’s oldest democratically elected communist government looked back on his 20 years in power, and said he was proud of his achievements in a “capitalist feudalist” society. Jyoti Basu, the 82-year-old chief minister of India’s West Bengal state, told Reuters in an interview late on Saturday…
Chaitanya Kalbag MANILA, Jan 17, Reuter – Monday’s local elections are billed as President Corazon Aquino’s last step in returning the Philippines to democracy, but bloody campaigning has left many here wondering if there has been genuine change. Analysts polled by Reuters said the elections would bring about a realignment of political forces, hasten the…
13 February 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Feb 13 (Reuters) – The resemblance to Indira Gandhi is eerie—the sari draped over the head, the dark glasses, the high-pitched oratory, the imperious wave of the hand. Even her signature “Jai Hind!” (Victory to India) at the end of every campaign…
14 February 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Feb 14 (Reuters) – The leader of India’s main opposition party said on Saturday he was the target of a series of car bomb blasts that killed at least 31 people, wounded up to 100, and triggered rioting and arson in the…
15 February 1998 The Washington Post A30 Copyright 1998, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved The leader of India’s main opposition party said today he was the target of a series of car-bomb blasts that killed 32 people, wounded as many as 100 and triggered rioting and arson in the city of Coimbatore. The…
16 February 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Feb 16 (Reuters) – Indian voters queued up early on Monday to cast their votes as the world’s largest democracy launched the first phase of a mid-term election that is widely predicted to return another hung parliament. At least 250 million adults are…
22 February 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Feb 22 (Reuters) – “Watch this space.” The website of India’s 112-year-old Congress party promises to introduce the “most popular, most charismatic and most dynamic political figures” in India—but there are no names. “This section will be up soon,” the page says limply.…
1 March 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, March 1 (Reuters) – Indians waited uneasily on Sunday for official results from a drawn-out election that looks set to confirm their worst fears of more political instability in a hung parliament. State television Doordarshan forecast large gains for the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya…
3 March 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, March 3 (Reuters) – India’s Bharatiya Janata Party appeared tantalisingly close on Tuesday to realising its dream of ruling this vast nation, but its leaders were not rapturous. With results in for 504 of the 545 seats in parliament’s lower house, the…
10 March 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, March 10 (Reuters) – India was set on Tuesday for a new coalition government led by Hindu nationalist leader Atal Behari Vajpayee. Vajpayee, leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was invited by President K.R. Narayanan to form a new federal government, ending…
15 March 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, March 15 (Reuters) – Atal Behari Vajpayee received the green light on Sunday to form India’s next government, but his coalition is likely to be even more shaky than the one it replaced. Vajpayee’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will take power…
16 March 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, March 16 (Reuters) – The leader of India’s Hindu-dominated Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) embarks on Monday on the difficult task of cobbling together a cabinet coalition to head a shaky minority government. BJP supporters celebrated late into the night with sweets and fireworks…
19 March 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, March 19 (Reuters) – Hindu nationalist leader Atal Behari Vajpayee took office on Thursday as India’s new prime minister at the head of a minority coalition government. Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and over a dozen regional allies will have to face a…
29 November 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Nov 29 (Reuters) – India’s Congress party swept to electoral victory in three key states on Sunday, raising the prospect of a power struggle with the Hindu nationalist-led central government. Congress leader Sonia Gandhi said she was in no hurry to oust the…
29 November 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Nov 29 (Reuters) – India’s wounded Bharatiya Janata Party should ram through an agenda of bold economic reform in the aftermath of its humbling in three key provincial elections, a senior official of the rival Congress party said on Sunday. Voters spoke with…
25 April 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, April 25 (Reuters) – What do a former housewife who speaks Italian-accented Hindi, a former movie glamour girl now dubbed a “Revolutionary Leader”, and the world’s longest serving elected communist leader have in common? All three unlikely partners have struggled over the…
18 May 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 17 (Reuters) – Sonia Gandhi spent 16 years observing India’s most consummate political chess player – her mother-in-law – and on Monday showed she knew a gambit or two. Faced with a revolt by three veteran colleagues, the Italian-born Sonia handed…
23 May 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited KATHMANDU, May 23 (Reuter) – Nepal’s fragile coalition government is not in any danger despite the Communist partner’s strong showing in local polls, Prime Minister Lokendra Bahadur Chand said on Friday. “I don’t see any threat now but it is very difficult to predict when…
20 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, NOV 20, Reuters – Whoever wins this week’s Indian elections will face some knotty economic problems, but analysts believe the nation will continue to open up to the world. “Liberalisation will have to continue whichever government comes in. This is economic reality,” said…
21 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Nov 21, Reuters – The leader of an increasingly powerful rightwing Hindu party said on Tuesday that India faces instability if the opposition alliance he backs wins this week’s elections. Lal Krishna Advani of the revivalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was harsh in…
21 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited Calcutta, Nov 21, Reuters – The six Bengalis splashing around a fire hydrant inches from cursing bus-drivers in the evening traffic are worried about their daily bath. “Election? What election? I have a holiday on polling day and plan to visit my mother,” says Barun…
23 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited CHAMKAUR SAHIB, India, Nov 23, Reuter – Long before Bimal Kaur Khalsa’s motorcade churns into dusty view across the Punjab countryside, the waiting crowds are chanting militant Sikh slogans. Khalsa, widow of one of prime minister Indira Gandhi’s assassins, has come to symbolise the anger…
24 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited LUDHIANA, India, Nov 24, Reuter – At least 26 people were killed on Friday on the second day of India’s general election, taking the death toll in the three-stage poll in the world’s largest democracy to 60. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi meanwhile brought his campaign…
24 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited LUDHIANA, India, Nov 24, Reuters – Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi wound up an exhausting election campaign on Friday, addressing a sparse crowd standing up to its ankles in mud. Chief rival Vishwanath Pratap Singh ended his campaign jubilant. “Congress will be routed,” Singh told…
26 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited CHANDIGARH, India, Nov 26, Reuters – India’s bloody general election entered its final stage on Sunday with an exit poll from earlier voting predicting that Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi faces major losses. The survey, conducted by the independent India Today magazine, forecast neither Gandhi nor…
27 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Nov 27, Reuter – A giant petrochemical project could hold a clue to whether India’s main communist party will throw its weight behind Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi as he heads towards an election defeat. Gandhi’s Congress party appeared on Monday to be…
28 November 1989 Reuters News English (c) 1989 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, NOV 28, Reuters – Political instability in India may be in prospect after inconclusive national elections, but industrialists and economists said they expected business to carry on as usual. They said industry’s energetic growth over the past five years had generated its own…
5 September 1999 Reuters News English (c) 1999 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Sept 5 (Reuters) – Little more than half of 166 million eligible voters took part in the first round of India’s general election on Sunday in a poll widely predicted to deliver the first majority government in 15 years. Five people died in…
27 May 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 27 (Reuters) – India is determined to grant autonomy to state-controlled television and radio, Information and Broadcasting Minister Jaipal Reddy said. Reddy, a leader of the Janata Dal, the largest group in India’s ruling centre-left coalition, told Reuters in an interview late…
20 November 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Nov 20 (Reuters) – India faced the prospect of fresh elections on Thursday as the country was convulsed by a frenzy of political gamesmanship. The only real question appeared to be when, not whether, the new polls would be held. “It may happen…
27 November 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Nov 27 (Reuters) – “May you be the mother of a hundred sons.” That benediction has been called down upon generations of Hindu brides in India, but the country’s junior health minister Renuka Chowdhury has a new mantra: “One is fun.” Some demographers…
29 November 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Nov 29 (Reuters) – India woke up on Saturday to a lame-duck government and a political crisis that only deepened after Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral’s resignation. Newspapers were cynical about what lay ahead and ran banner headlines like “Experiment Coalition: Abort, Fail,…
Timing is everything, and with a number of state elections soon, leading to the general election next year, cynicism and opportunism are manifest. The Congress-led government now in power will be remembered as the most corrupt in our history. I remember visiting the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s house in Isla Negra, west of Santiago, a…
28 November 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Nov 29 (Reuters) – India’s Congress party switched off the life support system of the minority government on Friday, but in the process may have hastened its own death throes. Twice in the past 13 years Congress has ridden to power on a…
7 December 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Dec 7 (Reuters) – The word “pundit” is Sanskrit for “learned man,” and in India they were busy at the weekend trying to divine what lay ahead for the world’s most populous democracy. This much was clear — no single party was likely…
8 December 1997 Reuters News English (c) 1997 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, Dec 8 (Reuters) – India’s main opposition group will block the full convertibility of the rupee, favour foreign investment only if it goes into infrastructure and shake out state firms if it wins power, its chief planner said on Monday. Jay Dubashi, chief…
The economy is whirling around in a populist spiral Pranab Mukherjee is starting to look worryingly like a feckless heir squandering his generous inheritance while his fretful guardian in the person of Duvvuri Subbarao tries to board up the door and keep the wolves at bay with a nail here and a nail there. The…
Nitish Kumar’s victory in last month’s Bihar election celebrates the triumph of economics over feudalism, but the climb out of poverty will be steep and hard. Schoolgirls on bicycles. Schools that actually function. Half of all panchayat posts are reserved for women. Close to 40,000 criminals were put behind bars. Roads that can be driven…
Indians got the vote even before they got citizenship To be precise, 173,213,635 voters aged 21 years or above. That was the total on the electoral rolls published, constituency by constituency, between the first week of September and 15th November, 1951, about a year before independent India’s first general election. The 1951 Census counted 180,307,684…
Our history of Karnataka-style perfidy goes back a long way The wise ones among us are all ganit shastris (Mathematicians) and love crunching our election results which seem more frequent than our economic indicators. Politics is street theatre for us, and vote shares mean more than batting averages. A switch to simultaneous elections to parliament…
Merchandise, tourism, a board game, a biopic, a web series … If you want to decompress from the 2019 election campaign, and haven’t already donned the colours to be a cheering face in a shouting crowd at one of the prime minister’s rallies, then go to his website, which has a link to ‘NaMo Merchandise’.…
The numbers are stupendous; will the results take our breath away too? The number are numbing. About 900 million Indians will be eligible to vote in this general election, and as The Hindu noted, this is more than the electorate in 36 of the world’s democracies combined. It is nearly eight per cent more than…