Word: pradesh
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...three months after the Congress returned to power, a powerful politician's sudden death has thrown Gandhi's party a challenge: who will it choose to succeed Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, the chief minister of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, who died in a helicopter crash? And will merit or family ties dictate the decision...
Hours after a massive search operation involving 11 aircraft and 2,000 personnel found Reddy's body deep in the jungles where his helicopter had crashed, the Congress party members in Andhra Pradesh banded together to press the party's central leadership to appoint his son, Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy, in his place. YSR, as the late chief minister was popularly known, was a giant in regional politics and had run a tightly centralized administration with himself as the locus of authority. He had designated no clear successor. Now, most legislators in the state, being staunch loyalists, are now displaying that...
Caste considerations are also playing out: the Reddys are a powerful community of traditional village headmen native to Andhra Pradesh, who continue to remain active in local, state and national politics. Their influence can be judged by the fact that for 36 years after the state was carved out in 1956, ten of the state's Chief Ministers have been from the Reddy community. The 12 Reddys among the present cabinet of ministers are keen to keep the top post within the community, showing how Indian politics also still runs mainly on caste and community considerations. (See a timeline...
India's drought is drying up consumer demand in rural areas, and the entire economy is feeling thirsty. It begins with people like Kalu Singh. A prosperous farmer in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, Singh has built a tiny empire - a microcosm of the Indian economy - around him. He owns 144 acres of vegetable plots and paddy fields and last year earned almost Rs. 2.2 million (about $45,833). That's enough to employ more than 1,500 people and for him to live well, spending about $625 a month buying clothes, food and comforts for his family...
...Those small decisions - the motorcycles and new clothes left unbought - add up for retailers. Ombati and Rajinder Singh run a grocery store in Barola, another village in Uttar Pradesh, and their customers are mostly farmers. "People are not buying in bulk anymore. They come and buy things in limited quantities," Ombati says. That change has reduced their daily earnings from Rs. 2000 ($42) to Rs. 600 ($12.50). "In a drought, where is the money to buy things?" (See pictures of the deadly 2007 monsoon floods...