4/10 Good --- ridingtheelephant.blogs.fortune.cnn.com
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Want to find out about what's happening in India, the Asian country that has now come into the world's focus - and that will host Fortune's Global Forum this October? Fortune's India Correspondent, John Elliott, tracks the key events that affect business in this vast and often bewildering market. ...
The future of relations between India and the United States – and the future of the two countries’ proposed nuclear deal – partially hangs on changing the name of Lucknow airport in the state of Uttar Pradesh. It also hangs on how six members of parliament, jailed for murder and other crimes, vote July 22 on a confidence motion that will determine the fate of the current Congress Party-led coalition government. The gap between the coalition and its opponents in the 543-member Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament) has narrowed this past week since the Communist-led bloc withdrew the support of its 59 MPs over the nuclear deal. There is now a risk that the government could be defeated, and this has led to horse trading that exceeds anything seen before. Bribes as high as $6 million have been offered to some MPs to switch sides, according to widely believed newspaper reports. Welcome to politics in India where worries about inflation and an economic downturn have had no effect on political parties’ spending. Bribes have been paid to MPs to change parties for many years, but the sums have now become enormous because of huge amounts of money collected through extortion by top politicians, especially in regional parties. MPs and their leaders usually want cash or favors, or both, but re-naming an airport is new. The government has agreed that Lucknow airport (the capital of UP) should be called Charan Singh Airport after a farmers’ leader an ...
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