Posts from — May 2009

Captain Gopinath took the Southwest Airlines /Jet Blue model to India’s aviation market. Low-cost fares, no-frills service,  and  internet-only booking were the hallmarks of his Deccan Air, which he rival sold to Kingfisher in 2007 and is now operated as Kingfisher Red.

Gopinath contested and lost from the Parliamentary constituency of Bangalore (south) as an “Independent” candidate and ran an internet savvy campaign in this high tech city.  His campaign  website carried links to Facebook, LinkedIN, Twitter, even Wikipedia!  He enlisted the support of business leaders, but Indian polticss is another game altogether. Bangalore is not like New York in that sense where a Michael Bloomberg can readily make the transition from entrpreneur to Mayor in one swoop.

The Left parties, suffered a loss of 37 seats in India’s parliament and may be left with just 23 positions.  The older Communist Party of India, CPI,  (which used to be aligned to the Soviet Communist Party) won just two seats and risks  losing its national party status after being marginalized over the years. But more important is the loss in position for the Communist Party of India Marxist, CPM, which has controlled the eastern state of West Bengal since 1978 and has been in power at times in the southern state of Kerala. Historically it was said that the CPM was more aligned the Chinese Communists, so I was keen read the word from Beijing about this, click here to read the view from Xinhua.

CPM stalwarts such as Kurup, lost in Kottayam Kerala and even in industrial strongholds such as Hooghly, near Kolkata (Calcutta), Rupchand Pal was a loser.

When I was a student at IIT Kanpur in the 1970′s an articulate and eloquent young man from St Stephen’s College in Delhi won every debating contest at our annual Cultural Festival.  Shashi Tharoor has now created history in many ways by winning a parliamentary seat  for the Indian National Congress from the southern state of Kerala in the recently completed general election.

I last saw Tharoor in 2005 , shortly after he had lost the bid to become Secretary General of the United Nations. He still seemed his ebullient self and ready for new challenges. During the election campaign in the last few months, many were skeptical since he had lived abroad most of his life. Tharoor proved them wrong. Rediff.com says “Never before has any one not born in Kerala or not educated here or not proficient in Malayalam registered an electoral victory in the state” .

Politics in India is often disdained by intellectuals. But Tharoor has a PhD from Tufts University and is author of books such as The Great Indian Novel and more recently The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone.  His experience in diplomacy lends itself well for him finding a role  not just in India’s parliament but perhaps in the Council of  Ministers. I’d love to him as Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, for example.

The Chief Minister of India’s most populous state, Ms. Mayawati Kumari was on a roll for the last several years. The 53-year old was feaured on Forbes’ 100 Most Powerful Women list and India’s national media began mentioning her name as a future candidate for Prime Minister.  While she and her regional  Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) had a strong grip on the state of Uttar Pradesh (U.P.) , the rest of the country did not seem to care much for her caste-based demagoguery.

Jackie Range of the Wall Street Journal declared hours ago Mayawati Mystique rejected by voters. So far it seems that the Congress Party and its UPA alliance have gained 10 parliamentary seats from Uttar Pradesh for a total showing of 19 out of 80.  This is a state where many had written off the Congress party as a major force but it is also the state where party President Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi contest elections (both won).

U.P. is my home state and I was troubled in recent visits to see giant posters of her image on virtually every major intersection; in  busy interactions  would often have TWO billboards with her likeness.  Major construction in the captial city of  Lucknow seemed to focus on a cult of personalities promoted by her and her BSP.  Since there were no state elections in UP at this time, her power on the state continues but clearly her ambitions for national office have been curtailed for now.

Besides Gujarat, another business-friendly venue in recent years has been the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. The twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderad are home to India’s pharmaceutical giants such as Dr. Reddy’s Labs and to multinational corporatations’ India operations such as Oracle, Conexant, Microsoft and Google.  The Indian School of Business is also based in Andhra.  Along with national parliamentary elections, the state (provincial) assembly of Andhra was also up for play in the polls.

The Indian National Congress of Sonia Gandhi and Dr. Manmohan Singh has routed other players, winning 186 out of 294 seats in the state assembly. This is more than four times that of the next largest party in the assembly: the regional Telugu Desam Party (TDP).  The TDP has historically been very strong in the state and many credit its leaders for bring economic growth to the region or at least to the cities.