India’s prime minister elect Narendra Modi gestures towards his supporters from his car during a road show upon his arrival at the airport in New Delhi May 17, 2014. Reuters/Adnan Abidi
The bulk of these pieces focus on how startling Narendra Modi’s defeat over Rahul Gandhi was, and the root causes behind it. As Modi gets ready to become inaugurated this coming Monday, however, the topic has moved quickly from domestic concerns to international ones — just what might India’s foreign policy look like under Modi?
Gulseer, outside his family’s modest home in Barowalia village in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. (Sonia Paul)
Gulseer, who goes by one name, is about 34 or 35 years old. His exact age has escaped him. He’s been married to his wife, Ayesha, for the past 10 to 15 years. The exact duration of their marriage has escaped him too.
But as he woke up from a nap on the dusty veranda outside his family’s modest home in Barowalia village in the state of Uttar Pradesh last week, he told me one thing he is sure of — his unwavering support for Rahul Gandhi and India’s National Congress Party, which has governed India for 55 of the last 67 years. “It’s been like this since I was born,” he said, shoving a bidi into his mouth. “Whether Congress will win or lose, I’m going to vote for Rahul. Because he keeps coming here.”
A security personnel stands next to the symbol of India’s ruling Congress party, during a rally addressed by Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi ahead of the 2014 general elections, in New Delhi. Photo: REUTERS/Adnan Abidi
One-sixth of the world’s entire population will head to the polls this spring to cast their vote in India’s 16th parliamentary exercises. The hype surrounding the elections has been simmering for some time — India’s economy is in a huge slump, and ongoing domestic issues like unemployment, corruption and safety are plaguing the population from Kashmir in the north to Kanyakumari in the south.
Then last fall, Narendra Modi, the chief minister of the Indian state of Gujurat, announced his candidacy for prime minister. A new political party that grew out of an anticorruption movement, the Aam Aadmi Party, emerged from seemingly nowhere as a potential game changer in determining the outcome of the elections. And Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family that has been at the helm of Indian politics since independence from the British in 1947, is also running for prime minister — without a whole lot of experience behind him.
What this all means is that the elections this year are some of the most important and highly contested in India’s history. Below, a crash course on the fundamentals you need to know to understand what’s at stake.
Sonia Paul 