Indian politics: It's all 'inside baseball'

Editors have a dismissive phrase they use to slash and burn the carefully worded political analyses that we reporters come up with.  "Inside baseball," they say — meaning that it's arcane stuff that nobody outside the business understands.

Well, in Indian politics, it's all inside baseball, or maybe inside cricket.

So far in this election, I have yet to read a single news article about the "issues" of the campaign.  And that's not because the Indian media doesn't care about politics.  I get six major dailies, and each devotes about half of the issue to the campaign every day.  (i.e. They arguably think politics matters more here than editors do in the U.S. — at least in a year that Obama isn't running).

So what does make news? Alliances.  Which regional party leader wants to be PM, despite expecting to garner only 5 percent of the popular vote.  Who's cosying up to whom.  The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance partners who are jumping ship.  The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance partners who are demanding that the Congress cede more constituencies to them in the race.  And on and on.

Sure, before it all started there was some talk that the BJP might run on a "tough on terror" plus "the economy sucks" platform.  And there was speculation that the Congress would have trouble avoiding a repeat of the BJP's "India Shining" fiasco of 2004.

But none of that has materialized — at least so far.

Pakistan isn't an issue.  Terrorism isn't an issue.  Not even the economy is an issue.  The only issue that matters is COALITION — and which regional party will swing which way.

http://www.globalpost.com/notebook/india/090316/indian-politics-its-all-inside-baseball