February, February 4, 2014, 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
725 Park Avenue, New York, NY
India’s national elections this spring are as historic as any since independence in 1947. The explosive growth of recent years has fallen off sharply, and the ruling Congress Party is facing a serious challenge from the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Narendra Modi. Modi has become the darling of business, despite being accused of fomenting anti-Muslim violence, because he’s promising to fix India’s abysmal infrastructure, tackle its hidebound bureaucracy and attract foreign investment. Both of these established parties are facing a new challenge in the form of the Aam Adami Party (AAP). AAP’s leader, Arvind Kejriwal, a political neophyte, has run a populist campaign promising relief from inflation and rampant corruption.
Do any of these parties have what it takes to reignite India’s economy? Are they campaigning on the right issues? Will this election produce a government that can fix India’s broken institutions? Will any one party have the moral authority to enact the next wave of liberalization? Or will this election simply prolong India’s political fragmentation that some blame for stalling its vaunted rise?
Join us for a Beyond the Headlines discussion with Sadanand Dhume of the American Enterprise Institute, Arvind Panagariya of Columbia University and Milan Vaishnav of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The discussion will be moderated by Shikha Dalmia of the Reason Foundation.
For more information about the panel discussion, please visit:
http://asiasociety.org/