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Foreign policy is rarely central to elections anywhere in the world. It is no surprise, then, that the foreign policy sections in the manifestos put out by some Indian parties seem an afterthought.
Journalist and policy expert Pramit Pal Chaudhuri assessed India’s successes and shortcomings of the past decade and analyze how this spring’s general election is likely to affect India’s economic and foreign policy landscape.
India’s ruling Congress Party is expected to take a beating at the polls, as the world’s biggest election gets underway. The opposition BJP is set to do well, despite its polarizing candidate.
What matters to India’s 800 million voters and how will these desires manifest in the 2014 parliamentary elections?
Even if the rural/urban divide did once provide an accurate description of the country, there is good reason to doubt it as India heads to the polls in 2014.
Since 1947, India has forged and consolidated the world’s largest democracy—an endeavor that is far from complete. India continues to wrestle with such diverse challenges as ethnic conflict, governance deficits, and stunning economic disparities among regions and peoples.
The impact of tighter fiscal and monetary policy on inflation in India is now visible in recent price data. Inflation, measured both by the wholesale price index and by the consumer price index, has come down.
India’s decision to abstain on a resolution against Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva last week was unexpected.
If anticorruption fighter Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party could force Indian officials to mend their ways, the country would be making real progress toward what it claims to be.
An inability to act on necessary reforms, coupled with massive malfeasance in government, has the potential to invigorate the Indian opposition going into the elections.