|
|
Article: Growing Smartly : The election's almost irrelevant. Both sides agree that development especially in technology is the way forward.(1999 elections in India)
- Article from:
- Newsweek International
- Article date:
- September 27, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Newsweek, Inc. All rights reserved. Any reuse, distribution or alteration without express written permission of Newsweek is prohibited. For permission: www.newsweek.com. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
It's election time in India. Again. The third national poll in three years is underway. Or at least rumored to be; with voter turnout so low (only 44 percent in the capital, New Delhi), it's hard to tell. The world's biggest democracy used to have elections every five years, but the 1990s have been a decade of short-lived coalition governments established after campaigns that only seem to get nastier. In the current race, which concludes on Oct. 3, Congress Party Leader Sonia Gandhi constantly calls Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee "corrupt," but never offers any specifics. Meanwhile, Pramod Mahajan, a minister in Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party, has ripped Gandhi ...