Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader wanted to comment briefly on India. This comment was prompted by the close of this post from the Minister of Propaganda.
(Before commenting, your Maximum Leader would like to thank the Minister of Propaganda for the great link to biographical information on the new Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh.)
Your Maximum Leader will first admit that he doesn’t follow Indian politics as closely as he should. But he can say that he has never been a great fan of the Congress Party. Why? They’ve always seemed a little too socialist for your Maximum Leader’s taste. Indeed, it was the BJP (the party just ousted by the Congress-led coalition) that really produced an economic environment thathas allowed India to flourish economically.
It came as a surprise to your Maximum Leader to learn that now-PM Singh was instrumental in tearing down some of the socialistic state monopolies (or laws that thwarted an open economy) during the last time Congress led India. Indeed, it seems as though Singh was able to lay some of the groundwork that the BJP used to get India’s economy to take off.
As the good Minister of Propaganda points out, the Communists are in the Congress-led governing coalition. (Should this surprise anyone? Sonia Ghandi is afterall a born Italian. And can any left-of-center Italian form a government in any nation without including communists?) What will the presence of the Communists mean for India? Your Maximum Leader thinks it will not mean too much. Congress will have its hands full keeping the Indian economy going, and living up to its electoral promises. If anything the Communists will push Congress into doing more to keep its electoral promises.
The Congress-led coalition won, it seems in large part, because of their appeal to the poor of India. You see, under the BJP’s “India Shining” programme the cities of India grew in wealth and affluence. Educated Indians are earning more, and spending more. But much of that new-found wealth has not yet found its way into improving the lives of the myriad poor in India. Congress has promised rual electrification, better sewage, improved education, and other government programmes to improve the condition of the poor.
It will be a great challenge to keep the burgeoning Indian middle-class growing and prospering, while supporting the massive taxation that will be required to acheive goals like rual electrification. It does seem as though if there is a man in India up to the task (who wasn’t in the BJP) it is the new Prime Minister, Mr. Singh.
In another vein, isn’t India just fascinating? In so many ways it is what so many nations could be. It is a hugely successful pluralistic democracy. And they are likely in a position that could be somewhat congruent to the US at the turn of the last century. Their cities (well, many of their cities) are hubs of the international economy. They have a strong manufacturing base. And their agriculture continues to improve. But outside the cities there is still a rual India that hasn’t seen the implementation of many the benefits of modern society.
Take rual electrification for example. From what your Maximum Leader reads, there are huge swaths of India that are not (or minimally) electrified. Does anyone recollect when rual electrification became a reality in the US? Can anyone say the TVA? Mrs. Villain was a little surprised to learn that many rual areas were not electrified until the 1950s. US cities were modern, electrified, and cutting edge early in the last century. But our rural areas were not. India strikes your Maximum Leader as being similar.
Well, your Maximum Leader wishes Mr. Singh luck. He can only hope that India continues to be a democracy that works in Asia.
Carry on.
