India's New Government: Elections in States and Stages

Option (2) is obviously the most costly. Typically the two parties with the largest plurality stand against each other at the next round of voting. This makes the process much less of a fling-open-the-gates affair, but the state-by-state process must recommence, and India must wait at least another month to have a new government.

The most recent cycle of voting in India elected a Congress Party government, and this gave the process a whole new dimension: The presumptive prime minister and party leader Sonia Ghandi rejected the post. The "problem" is that Ms. Ghandi was born in Italy, and she concluded that her non-Indian birth status would cause more difficulties than it would bring benefits. She therefore designated Mandus Sing - the country's first Sikh head of government - to be the next prime minister.

This added layer of ethnic diversity could be the right thing at the right time for India. The Sikh are a very vocal minority in respect of attempts to secure equal rights with the Hindu majority. The Sikh also are mostly Islamic, which could add urgency and incentive to US/India/Pakistan diplomatic relations, the "war on terror", and solving the problems in Kashmir.Given his background as an ecomomist, Mr. Singh will likely be more interested in developing India's financial sector than in belaboring the religious aspects of his country.

It took the better part of six weeks to complete all the stages of India's prolonged voting process - it could have taken much longer if more rounds were required - but the result was that Indian voters freely elected a new administration to guide their country for the next few years. Some violence occurred, but that factor decreases with each electoral effort. Mr. Singh has an extensive agenda of trade and development projects, but he has a substantial Parliamentary coalition to assist him to accomplish thhose goals. India can still rightly claim its status as the world's most populous democracy.

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