Day: June 19, 2013

The Congress has been arguably extremely successful in maintaining its stranglehold on India despite — and perhaps because of — its evident failures of governance. At the time of India’s political independence from British rule, the Congress inherited a very poor country. Roughly speaking, around 80 percent of the 300 million Indians then, or 240 million, were desperately poor. After 66 years, today that number of the desperately poor in India has more than tripled to around 900 million. For much of that time, the Congress has dominated the political control of India at the center and therefore has dictated those central (and state) policies that are directly responsible for this abominable state of underdevelopment. The Congress’s inability to provide good policies is matched only by their ability to hang on to power. How they manage to do that is fascinating and instructive.
Continue reading “The Reasons that the Congress Survives”