Showing posts with label UPA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UPA. Show all posts

Monday, December 10, 2012

Raj of the satraps

The elections this year is seeing a trend' parties vying for larger pie shun pre-poll alliances

The eleventh Lok Sabha was a defining moment for Indian politics. Despite emerging as the single largest party with 161 seats in 1996, BJP could not prove its majority. Who can forget images of Pramod Mahajan talking simultaneously on two mobiles, claiming confidently of having the required numbers? They were all false claims, as BJP simply did not have allies that could help it reach the magic figure. During the next two years, the party worked hard on stitching alliances. That heralded the era of coalition politics, which necessitated pre-poll alliances.

BJP again forgot this lesson in 2004, when it entered the elections with only five allies. The Congress by then had learnt from its past mistakes. Party Chief, Sonia Gandhi, quietly buried her party’s Panchmarhi resolution to fight all elections on its own and have no alliances. She personally visited regional satraps like Lalu Prasad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan, and forfeited own seats to have pre-poll alliance with their parties.

Cut to 2009: Both NDA and UPA are devoid of partners. Barring NCP, DMK and JMM, all UPA constituents are contesting against 'big brother' Congress. They were apparently irked by Congress’s political posturing refusing a national alliance and restricting itself to state-level alliances only. That put paid to ambitions of allies like the NCP to grow outside Maharashtra and of Samajwadi Party to grow out of UP.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

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Tuesday, October 16, 2012

At the mercy of the State

Not much has changed for India Inc. since the UPA took the power seat in 2004. Genuine business interests continued to suffer, analyses VIRAT BAHRI

It would be wrong to say that the UPA regime was not one of great transformation. And their claim to fame (or the opposite!) in this regard is not just the landmark Indo-US nuclear deal. One entire industry revved up its engines, took off with elan, and all but crash landed in the course of their term. Yes, we are talking about the aviation industry, an industry that decisively led the rest of them in gasping for breath, for the players were bleeding red much before Lehman Brothers actually sounded the alarm bells that shook the world.

Surely, the first question that comes to mind is: What did the government have to do with that? Indeed, as Binit Somaiya, Regional Director, CAPA rightly points out, “A large part of the responsibility for the revival of the aviation industry rests with the industry players themselves and not with the government.” But then, there were critical support systems needed for the industry, which the government failed to provide. In particular the lack of an Airport Regulatory Authority was a major unresolved issue, which, according to Binit, can be quite unnerving for investors; whose role was critical for the industry’s growth. Allegations of corruption in the bidding process for airports made matters only worse. Moreover the horse-before-the-cart philosophy prevailed here as well, as airport infrastructure lagged miserably behind schedule, as players went ballistic on expanding their fleet and routes.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
 
IIPM : The B-School with a Human Face
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