India

[Yaffles]

Jun 6, 2024 11:04:12 GMT The Bishop said:

Jun 6, 2024 0:31:39 GMT johnloony said:

Not sure what point is being made by these various comments about numbers of votes or electorates. We already knew that India is rhe biggest country in the world.

Um no, that is Russia

If you mean the most populous (and I presume you did) does it actually beat China these days?

Indeed it is - whilst India's birthrate is dropping, China's population is shrinking and will do so at a rapid rate over the next few decades. 

[johnloony]

Jun 6, 2024 11:04:12 GMT The Bishop said:

Jun 6, 2024 0:31:39 GMT johnloony said:

Not sure what point is being made by these various comments about numbers of votes or electorates. We already knew that India is rhe biggest country in the world.

Um no, that is Russia

If you mean the most populous (and I presume you did) does it actually beat China these days?

YIVIIS, I did of course mean by population. India overtook China in population in about March 2023.

It’s sometimes fun confusing people by not being specific. Frig zumple, the biggest country of which I have not learnt the national anthem is Bangladesh.

[rcronald]

10 LS members have moved to the NDA, increasing the Alliance to 303 seats. Now the alliance has a majority even without Kumar and Naidu, so they can’t push modi too hard.

[iain]

Jun 6, 2024 12:28:18 GMT rcronald said:

10 LS members have moved to the NDA, increasing the Alliance to 303 seats. Now the alliance has a majority even without Kumar and Naidu, so they can’t push modi too hard.

Who? I can't see this reported anywhere.

[rcronald]

Jun 6, 2024 14:19:00 GMT iain said:

Jun 6, 2024 12:28:18 GMT rcronald said:

10 LS members have moved to the NDA, increasing the Alliance to 303 seats. Now the alliance has a majority even without Kumar and Naidu, so they can’t push modi too hard.

Who? I can't see this reported anywhere.

It’s been reported by TimesNow. They didn’t say any specific names, but it seems like it is all unaligned/independent members.

[ibfc]

That’s not possible. The only confirmed independent who has supported the NDA is the Daman and Diu guy who is a BJP rebel. His story is amazing. The translation option is available.
x.com/jpsin1/status/1798555869011210484?t=1aRFvz41BhoHuYZo_f2txw&s=08
Of the others, one is a INC rebel from Maharashtra who has pledged support to the INC. Another is Pappu Yadav who is also a sort of INC rebel. He’s not likely to support the BJP. There’s also a Kashmiri separatist and two ‘Khalistan’ supporters from Punjabi. None of these are likely (to put it mildly) support the BJP. The same goes for the Muslim independent from Ladakh. It however appears that the SKM from Sikkim and VOP from Meghalaya are supporting so the total seems to be 295.

[rcronald]

Just finished going over the Maharashtra results,

22/30 (73.3%) seats won by INDIA were decided by less than 10%
7/17 (41.1%) seats won by NDA were decided by less than 10%

So theoretically, this could have quite easily ended up being an 39-8 NDA victory or an 37-10 INDIA victory…

[rcronald]

Jun 6, 2024 15:06:35 GMT ibfc said:

That’s not possible. The only confirmed independent who has supported the NDA is the Daman and Diu guy who is a BJP rebel. His story is amazing. The translation option is available.
x.com/jpsin1/status/1798555869011210484?t=1aRFvz41BhoHuYZo_f2txw&s=08
Of the others, one is a INC rebel from Maharashtra who has pledged support to the INC. Another is Pappu Yadav who is also a sort of INC rebel. He’s not likely to support the BJP. There’s also a Kashmiri separatist and two ‘Khalistan’ supporters from Punjabi. None of these are likely (to put it mildly) support the BJP. The same goes for the Muslim independent from Ladakh. It however appears that the SKM from Sikkim and VOP from Meghalaya are supporting so the total seems to be 295.

So they just reported fake news.😳

They also reported that the BJP offered something to Uddhav Thackeray and that he’s ‘considering it’ (seems unlikely, but since the SS battle ended in a 6-6 tie maybe he wants to climb down before his sympathy vote runs out).

[ibfc]

Jun 6, 2024 8:52:18 GMT Devil Wincarnate said:

Interesting to see Modi making a big noise about a congratulatory message from Taiwan. What do you make of that ibfc?

He’s become pretty unequivocal on the issue. A natural progression ever since the Galwan clash.

[rcronald]

ibfc , out of the 2 main coalition partners, I presume that the JD(U) is more problematic than the TDP because of Kumar and economics?

Would also love to hear your thoughts on:
1.BJP performance in Odisha
2.(Abysmal) BJP performance in Eastern UP

[Georg Ebner]

Jun 4, 2024 10:05:04 GMT matureleft said:

Our more expert posters may well put me right. India has a reputation for pretty transactional politics. This result suggests we will see some growth in that. Whatever one might think of Modi he did seek to address some of the problems holding back business activity which had been largely parked by earlier governments (although Manmohan Singh had a try at some bits). We may see some hesitancy/trade offs in that momentum.

A strong Indian economy is good not just for India.

Can't claim to be an expert on Indian ecoNomy, but my imPression is this: Already before Corona Modi tried to modernize (=westernize) it by investing big in infraStructure. (In India 94% of all railWayRoutes are now electrified. Huge exPansion of rail&motor-Ways (although there could certainly be a lot more done in future).) Yet, the government faces a lack of revenues: Taxes account for only 10% of GDP (instead of the 30% usual in modern countries), not even 2% of Indians pay an InCome-tax (probably only the civilServants, who cannot escape)! In order to increase this, Modi has tried to decrease the "informal" sector and now to expand industry (not least by lowering the laborLaws).

TDP is officially economically liberal - but JD(U) represents Bihar, so any reForms into the planned direction will at least have to be paid off with generous goodies for India's poorest state.

[rcronald]

Jun 7, 2024 19:47:53 GMT Georg Ebner said:

Jun 4, 2024 10:05:04 GMT matureleft said:

Our more expert posters may well put me right. India has a reputation for pretty transactional politics. This result suggests we will see some growth in that. Whatever one might think of Modi he did seek to address some of the problems holding back business activity which had been largely parked by earlier governments (although Manmohan Singh had a try at some bits). We may see some hesitancy/trade offs in that momentum.

A strong Indian economy is good not just for India.

Can't claim to be an expert on Indian ecoNomy, but my imPression is this: Already before Corona Modi tried to modernize (=westernize) it by investing big in infraStructure. (In India 94% of all railWayRoutes are now electrified. Huge exPansion of rail&motor-Ways (although there could certainly be a lot more done in future).) Yet, the government faces a lack of revenues: Taxes account for only 10% of GDP (instead of the 30% usual in modern countries), not even 2% of Indians pay an InCome-tax (probably only the civilServants, who cannot escape)! In order to increase this, Modi has tried to decrease the "informal" sector and now to expand industry (not least by lowering the laborLaws).

TDP is officially economically liberal - but JD(U) represents Bihar, so any reForms into the planned direction will at least have to be paid off with generous goodies for India's poorest state.

Bihar should honestly be compensated for:
1.The Freight equalisation policy, which absolutely destroyed the state (and some other states) between the 50s-90s (and then they elected someone from the infamous Yadav Caste, and remained even more extremely backward than it is now until Nitish Kumar finally kicked the Yadavs out).
2.The creation of Jharkhand in 2000, which took most of the minerals out of the state.

[rcronald]

A little bit heartbreaking if true.

www.deccanherald.com/elections/india/odisha-assembly-elections-2024-pandian-quits-active-politics-after-bjds-defeat-3059038

[John Chanin]

Just  got round to looking in detail at the Indian results.  Here's my favourite:

Firozpur (Punjab)

Congress          266.626 (23.9%)
Aam Aadmi       263,384 (23.6%)
BJP                   255,097 (22.8%)
Akali Dal           253,645 (22.7%)

Akali Dal were the incumbents, but a typical Indian splinter stood against the main party, managing 16,000 votes...

Less of these multiple contests than usual as most of the regional parties joined pacts with Congress or the BJP, where only a single candidate was run.

As commented earlier in this thread, Maharashtra was chaotic verging on hilarious as both regional parties (Shiv Sena and Nationalist Congress) split on personality grounds, each half joining the opposite alliance.  So many seats saw Shiv Sena fighting Shiv Sena or Nationalist Congress v Nationalist Congress.  Don't know what the voters made of it, but results seem to be completely random.  The factions aligned with Congress did better, but whether this was for local or national reasons who knows?  Maybe ibfc
 

[iain]

The Congress aligned NCP look to have clearly been more successful than the BJP aligned faction, but in Shiv Shena’s case it is perhaps a little less clear cut.

[rcronald]

Jun 15, 2024 9:26:37 GMT iain said:

The Congress aligned NCP look to have clearly been more successful than the BJP aligned faction, but in Shiv Shena’s case it is perhaps a little less clear cut.

In direct fights, both SS’s got 6 wins.
But if you look at all of the seats contested by any of the factions than the pro-Modi faction actually got a higher hit rate.

[ibfc]

Jun 15, 2024 10:15:44 GMT rcronald said:

Jun 15, 2024 9:26:37 GMT iain said:

The Congress aligned NCP look to have clearly been more successful than the BJP aligned faction, but in Shiv Shena’s case it is perhaps a little less clear cut.

In direct fights, both SS’s got 6 wins.
But if you look at all of the seats contested by any of the factions than the pro-Modi faction actually got a higher hit rate.

They also got slightly easier seats but yes they did do better. The NCP case is also a bit tricky because the Ajit Pawar faction was given really bad seats to contest. Fundamentally, it was a case of BJP underperforming and the Congress over performing.

[rcronald]

Jun 15, 2024 12:02:18 GMT ibfc said:

Jun 15, 2024 10:15:44 GMT rcronald said:

In direct fights, both SS’s got 6 wins.
But if you look at all of the seats contested by any of the factions than the pro-Modi faction actually got a higher hit rate.

They also got slightly easier seats but yes they did do better. The NCP case is also a bit tricky because the Ajit Pawar faction was given really bad seats to contest. Fundamentally, it was a case of BJP underperforming and the Congress over performing.

The anti-Marathi narrative that S.Pawar fuelled worked really well.

Btw, the amount of very tight constituencies that the NDA lost in Maharashtra is insane.

[Georg Ebner]

Haryana and Jammu&Kashmir will be counted next TuesDay, but voting ends toDay at 18:00 (13.30 BST), after which the exitPolls can be released.
After their, well, not so great achievement in the federal election probably only few will have been ordered&conducted.

Additionally everyThing else than a more or less huge defeat for BJP in Haryana would be a sensation.

In Jammu&Kashmir it's the first election in a decade.
In Jammu BJP and INC will rival; the latter will hope, its ally JKNC can sweep Kashmir for getting an overallMajority.

[Georg Ebner]

In Jammu&Kashmir the situation is less clear: