India's Election Won't Be Decided on Old Lines

In the weeks after this election -- the first to reveal the electoral power of the urbanized villager -- the stock market may rise, and foreign investors might be lured back into India. But these signs, always superficial, of improved socioeconomic health will be dangerously misleading. A great rage and discontent is blowing across India’s landscape of thwarted modernization. Whoever rides this angry tiger into the country’s highest office, whether free marketeer or social welfarist, secularist or Hindu chauvinist, will have to pacify it quickly.