> In a country of 180 million households, only about 45 million have
> telephone lines. Among India's 1.05 billion people, only 26.1 million
> have mobile phones.
Sorry, I have exceeded my quota, but some corrections are necessary.
There were 78 million phones (fixed lines +mobile) in India on 30-4-04. But there were only 15 million phones in 1998. (And only 86,000 in 1950). So it's pace of growth that's relevant, not the absolute number.
>And while around 300 million Indians still live
> on less than $1 a day,
150 million chinese suffer from malnutrition after 55 years marxism -leninism.
> only an estimated 659,000 households have
> computers.
Indian computer hardware industry sold 3 million PCs in fiscal 03-04. That includes PCs purchased by businesses. Plus 300 million people watch CTV. It's TV, radiosets that are important sources of news and information. Do 300 million people watch CTV in the US?
> That gap -- the coexistence of a growing middle class with the
> growing frustration of those excluded from it -- helps explain why
> Mr. Vajpayee's government has been turned out of office in the
> biggest upset since 1977, when Indira Gandhi lost after imposing a
> state of emergency. . . .
BJP + allies polled 36% of the votes polled and Congress +allies polled 37.7%. The difference 1.7% in the votes polled. Margin of victory is very thin.
> This still developing nation is indeed being transformed in many
> ways, but the transformation has yet to reach most of the population.
> The entire information technology industry here still employs fewer
> than one million people, compared with 40 million registered
> unemployed.
This is equally true of China and Vietnam.
> The B.J.P. and its allies fared poorly in all of the major
> metropolises, winning a total of only three seats in Delhi, Mumbai,
> Chennai and Calcutta. But heavily rural states were their undoing,
> particularly in the south, which has decided the national government
> for the past 14 years. . . .
> Not only the B.J.P. suffered for this: in Karnataka, home to
> Bangalore, the center of India's tech industry, voters turned out the
> Congress-run state government.
Even Congress ruled governments were defeated in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh in the recent elections. In short, everyone in power irrespective of the party in power was removed. (West Bengal being an exception.)
Ulhas