Indian election discussions

Qalandar whose post Mellow on Indian elections was quoted before has further posts on A.P.ANDHRA PRADESH: Notes on the 2009 Elections and U.P. Qalandar’s pieces on Election-2009 . I came across Qalandar's comments in Chapati Mystery and looked up his site.

See also Best readings on the election results from Ajay Shah.

It is tempting to think that voters have become more rational but the calculus of elections seems to vary from state to state. Meanwhile Ahmad Rashid in Pakistan on the Brink warns:
"What has shocked the world is not just the spread of the Taliban forces southward, but the lack of the government's will and commitment to oppose them and the army's lack of a counterinsurgency strategy. This disarray makes them all the more vulnerable in view of the apparent cohesiveness of the Taliban's tactics and strategy. Although the group has no single acknowledged leader, it has formed alliances with around forty different extremist groups, some of them with no previous direct connection to the Taliban. Moreover, the Afghan Taliban have become a model for the entire region. The Afghan Taliban of the 1990s have morphed into the Pakistani Taliban and the Central Asian Taliban and it may be only a question of time before we see the Indian Taliban."

P.S. Qalandar gives these two links for comparing 2004, 2009 vote shares of different parties.