The Greatest Show on Earth!

• Mohan Guruswamy

The National Actors.

The Democracy Card!

Market democracy.

760 giant public meetings in 12

weeks.

Different hats to identify with different people.

Where the claims to fame and fortune are decided!

Getting better educated?

Women voters matter more now.

The slow and slippery down downwards.

The road up with many downs.

The sheer scale of it all.

Big elections need big government.

Percentage of the votes.

The first past the post system.

The saffron surge!

The change in fortunes.

The changing color of India.

Uttar Pradesh has the maximum number of voters in the country followed by Maharashtra, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Bihar.

As per the electoral data of 2014 released by the EC, of the 814,591,184 voters, Uttar Pradesh has 16.4 percent of the total voters and Maharashtra has 9.6 percent followed by West Bengal at 7.699 percent, Andhra Pradesh at 7.659 percent and Bihar at 7.624 percent.

With 3.62 lakh voters or 0.044 percent of the national electorate, Sikkim has the smallest number of voters.

The EC said the 28 states together account for 98.27 percent of the voters while the seven union territories constitute the remaining 1.73 percent.

Delhi accounts for 1.48 percent of the voters while the other six union territories constitute 0.253 percent of the Indian electorate.

The power of the Regional Parties.

Regional parties are slowly losing steam.

The scenario now and the task.

• Congress is facing an existential crisis.• The regional parties are under pressure.• India gets a one party government after

a quarter of a century.• Single party government with a strong

leader, but without a majority mandate.• The fate of the ruling party in the next

elections is decided by the index of opposition unity. How to keep them divided?

The checklist is long, but the four critical areas to focus on are fiscal belt-tightening, improving the business climate, complementing anti-inflation efforts and sustaining the improvement in the current account deficit, according to economists.

The deficit is forecast to come in at around 4.6 percent in the 2013-2014 financial year ended in March 2014, down from 4.9 percent in 2012-2013 and 5.8 percent in 2011-2012. This is significantly higher than China, for example, which recorded a fiscal deficit of 2.1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) last year.

If the authorities choose to expedite capital spending to orchestrate a cyclical turn in the investment cycle and boost long-term growth, the short-term casualty will be the debt/gross domestic product ratio,

mproving the business climate should be the anchor of the new government's agenda

In power, it would be the de-nationalization of the coal sector and creation of a National Power Distribution Company (NPDC), along the lines of PowerGrid. NPDC could be mandated to pick up the output of stranded capacities and India can stop waiting forever for state discoms to reform themselves. It should also give a fillip to "open access".

On infra finance, it would be to create an enabling environment for rapid ramp-up of infra debt funds to address the issue of non-availability of long-term funding and the clear constraints of the commercial banking system.

To clear infra logjams, an energetic infrastructure ministry should be created by reshaping the ministry of programme implementation.

Land bank corporations should be set up at the central level and mirror-imaged at the state level. They should acquire large tracts of unused, unusable or waste land and develop them ex-ante for industrial, commercial, social and institutional

The checklist is long, but the four critical areas to focus on are fiscal belt-tightening, improving the business climate, complementing anti-inflation efforts and sustaining the improvement in the current account deficit, according to economists.