The following lines from Fareed Zakaria’s book The Post American World:
You can tell that India is a strange land not by looking at snake
charmers but by observing its election results: In what other
country would sizzling economic growth make you unpopular?
In 2004, the ruling BJP coalition went to the polls with the
economic wind at its back—the country was growing 9 percent.
But the BJP lost the election. A cottage industry of intellectuals,
many of them socialist in orientation, quickly
explained that the prosperity had been hollow, that growth
hadn't trickled down, and that the BJP had forgotten about
the real India. But this explanation simply does not bear close
examination. Poverty rates in India had fallen rapidly in the
1990s, in numbers large enough to be visible to all. And in any
event, the puzzle continued after 2004. The Congress coalition
(currently in power) has sustained growth over 8 percent
for three years, and yet it has fared poorly in every regional
election held since it took office. Even with legitimate concerns
over inequality and the distribution of wealth, there is a
connection between robust growth and government popularity
in almost every country in the world. Why not in India?
India is Thomas (Tip) O'Neill's dreamland. "All politics is
local," the former Speaker of the House of Representatives
famously said. In India, that principle can be carved in stone.
India's elections are not really national elections at all. They
are rather simultaneous regional and local elections that have
Now, you can replace India with Egypt and the paragraph will stay the same !
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