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India's new coalition allies jockey for key jobs Members of India's new ruling coalition begin jockeying for key ministries on Thursday after the main Congress party finally chose a pro-reform economist as prime minister, ending its first crisis before taking power.
Former bureaucrat, central bank governor and finance minister Manmohan Singh, 71, will be sworn in as prime minister on Saturday, newspapers said.
The finance minister will drive India's economic policy and have the difficult job of ensuring that reforms are not derailed while keeping pivotal left-wing allies of the coalition on board.
Two former finance and trade ministers, Pranab Mukherjee, a commerce graduate from Calcutta, and P. Chidambaram, a Harvard-educated lawyer-turned-politician, are front-runners.
Bimal Jalan, another former central bank governor, is also in the running.
But no decisions have been announced. Singh has called a news conference for 9:15 a.m. (11:45 p.m. EDT) but it was not clear if he would name members of his cabinet.
President Abdul Kalam invited Singh, a Sikh and India's first non-Hindu prime minister, to form a new government on Wednesday, ending days of uncertainty that panicked investors.
After the roughest few days in years for financial markets, which feared the new coalition would be unstable and could row back on the reforms that have brought an industrial boom in India, Singh quickly moved to calm fears.
He pledged a reformist government, with a human touch, and to make the 21st century "the Indian century."
"We have always said that economic reforms, with emphasis on the human element, will continue," a smiling, blue-turbaned Singh told reporters after meeting Kalam.
"We will give to the world and to our people a model of economic reforms, which add to the processes of development, which create new opportunities for the poor and downtrodden."
India's markets firmed on Wednesday as it became increasingly clear Singh, seen as able to keep his communist allies under control, would take over Asia's third largest economy and one of the world's fastest-growing.
The Bombay exchange's benchmark index climbed past the psychologically important 5,000 point level to close 2.65 percent up just two days after massive losses sparked by anti-reform comments by the leftists and doubts about Gandhi's ability to control her partners.
The 57-year-old Italian-born Gandhi, the torch-bearer of the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty, shocked and stunned her colleagues and tens of millions of grassroots supporters on Tuesday after giving up her claim to the top job. The shock announcement followed the Congress party's stunning defeat of the ruling Hindu nationalists in last week's election.
Gandhi said she wanted to spare a Congress-led government from damaging attacks over her foreign birth, although local media speculated that fears she would become the target of militant nationalists also played a part.
Friday is the 13th anniversary of the day her husband, former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, was assassinated by a suicide bomber in the town of Sriperumbudur in southern Tamil Nadu state. Singh and Sonia Gandhi will travel to the town to mark the day.
Rajiv's mother, India's "Iron Lady" Indira Gandhi, another former prime minister, was also assassinated. |
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