Breathing fresh air into the next govt

A coalition is India's best hope. It will be slow to move, but will lead to a consensual and collaborative form of governance

Opinion polls, the last of which came about a month ago, have predicted a majority for the National Democratic Alliance, with roughly a 220-seat return for the Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP). The data had been gathered a few weeks before that, and it was apparent that several of the polls were unsure of the direction of the momentum. That is to say, whether the trajectory of the BJP was from 220 towards 272 or away from it. It seems too tight an election in a couple of places, Uttar Pradesh in particular, for there to be conviction that it was a