TO MARKET, TO MARKET?:

Gandhi bows out, taps reformer: Sonia Gandhi turned down India's top slot Tuesday, while her party signaled an agenda of moderate reforms. (Scott Baldauf, 5/19/04, CS monitor)

aside from all the drama and vitriol swirling around Gandhi's decision, the incoming leadership has quietly signaled that it will probably follow its predecessors on most of the major foreign and domestic issues of the day. On everything from economic reforms to relations with Pakistan, China, and the US, Congress leaders say they will choose policies that reflect and strengthen India's national interests, rather than any one party's ideology.

"We believe in the market, and I was a member of the Congress government that started the market reforms in 1989 under Rajiv Gandhi," says Eduardo Faleiro, a senior Congress party member and former minister of state for foreign affairs. [...]

With most of Congress's coalition partners and outside supporters coming from left-wing parties, investors are concerned that Congress might reverse some of the key economic reforms of the past decade. Some of these initiatives include lower import tariffs; tax breaks for foreign investors and Indian business houses; sell-offs of state-owned industries, hotels, and utilities; and cutbacks in bureaucratic regulations.

Continued economic liberalization without the BJP's Hindu nationalism would be precisely the right recipe for a bright future.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 18, 2004 7:21 PM