The Triangle

Issue date: 5/21/04 Section: Ed-Op

Media Credit: The Triangle

As most of you probably heard through some source or the other, the Indian parliamentary elections happened over the last month with extremely surprising results. Elections in India have far reaching consequences, and it would be foolish to think that what happens in India does not affect America. In today's global economy, events in India inevitably shape events in America. Before I actually delve into how the global scenario has changed as a result of the change in government, let me give you all an idea of the Indian democratic process.

India is a parliamentary democracy, meaning that during every general election, people vote for a particular candidate as a Member of Parliament from their constituency. All in all, there are 542 constituencies across the country. The party which ends up having a majority of MPs in Parliament can form the next government. The majority mark is 272 seats, and in the past decade, no party has been able to reach that magic figure on its own. So a coalition among two or more parties is formed, so that the coalition can garner 272 seats, and a coalition government is formed. A prime minister is chosen through consensus among coalition parties, and usually is from the single largest party in Parliament. India is also the world's largest democracy, with 635 million registered voters.

Almost always, over 50 percent of voters exercise their franchise, and this year's turnout was expected to be somewhere between 300 and 400 million. For the first time this year, all the voting was done through electronic voting machines throughout the country, with not one of the hundreds of millions of voters casting a paper ballot.

There are three main political groups in the country. One of the groups, the National Democratic Alliance, is led by the conservative nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. Another is led by the socialist Indian National Congress, also referred to simply as the Congress. The third much smaller force is led by a group of Communist parties, collectively referred to as the Left Parties. There are dozens of small regional parties with regional interests that belong in one of these three blocs, and frequently shift blocs depending on what is most politically convenient for them. In fact, these days, no party even dreams of reaching the majority mark on their own. The BJP's and Congress' hopes were to be the single largest party in Parliament, after which they hoped that the regional parties would jump on the bandwagon and help them cross the majority mark.

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