India's Democracy Shines

What American Businesses Need to Know About India’s Election Results

Just five days after the results of India’s parliamentary elections were announced, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was sworn in as Prime Minster on Sunday by President Draupadi Murmu.

Democracy Shining

India’s democracy again showed its strength and resilience.  The death of the largest democracy in the world was "greatly exaggerated" in Western media.  India has had fully electronic voting for two decades and there’s no protest about fake voters, stolen elections or serious legal challenges.

In fact, the BJP or Bhartiya Janata Party came far short of its aspirations and has had to depend on its coalition partners of the National Democratic Alliance or NDA in order to muster the majority needed to form a government.

Since early this year, most media expected that the inauguration of the new Ram Temple, in the ancient holy city of Ayodhya in my native state of Uttar Pradesh, would somehow galvanize the so-called Hindu nationalist vote.  In fact, the BJP candidate in that district lost badly to the opposition. In Varanasi, the holiest city for Hindus,  the popularity of the Prime Minister was under pressure as his victory margin was far lower than in 2014. The Indian National Congress, battered and beaten in the last two elections doubled its seat count.

India’s voters and its election system outwitted exit polls and so-called experts across the globe.

 What’s Next

 India’s parliamentary system requires ministers to be members of one of the two houses of parliament but unlike the United States there is no long drawn out process for the upper house to approve appointments. So 30 cabinet ministers were sworn in on the same day as Narendra Modi. 

The two largest junior partners in the NDA coalition are the Janata Dal United (JDU), strong in state of Bihar and Telugu Desam Party (TDP), strong in Andhra Pradesh.  Rajeev Ranjan Singh and Ram Mohan Naidu respectively of these parties were also sworn in as cabinet ministers along with several others. 

Specific ministry assignments will be announced in the weeks to come. But the Prime Minister appears to have retained most of the high profile members who have held key posts for five to ten years.

While member of the Coalition will certainly play an outsized role in certain aspects of policy. I don’t expect India’s foreign policy or its  trade relationships with the United States to change dramatically.