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From Our Own Correspondent: India's unexpected election result

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India Election Results in New Delhi

08/06/2024 GMT

India's unexpected election result

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, India's unexpected election result

For Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a victory that still seemed like a setback.

Modi's BJP win a victory that seemed like a setback;  South Africa's young voters rebuke the ANC; women and power in Mexico; tales from Europe's sleeper trains

Pascale Harter introduces correspondents' and writers' stories from elections in India, South Africa and Mexico, and a sleeper train across central Europe.

Narendra Modi has been re-elected for his third consecutive term as India's Prime Minister - but his party, the BJP, fell far short of its goal of a landslide and failed to win an absolute majority. Despite all the predictions of a crushing victory, many voters weren't buying the BJP's message. Yogita Limaye reflects on what the world's largest election process revealed about the health of India's democracy today.

In South Africa, the general election also shook a previously dominant governing party - the African National Congress. Anne Soy speaks to young South Africans across the political spectrum about the change they wanted to see, and hears from former president and 'great disruptor' Jacob Zuma about why he formed a new party to challenge the ANC.

Mexico has a female President for the first time in its history: Claudia Sheinbaum, a former climate scientist and mayor of Mexico City. She's committed to continuing on the political path of outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador - so will she turn out to be a puppet (as her critics claim) or a trailblazer? Will Grant talks to the women who voted her in. 

The rise of cheap flights threatened to do away with the romance of the sleeper train - as short hops by plane squeezed long rail journeys out of the European travel market. Many networks closed down their overnight routes. But now there's a revival under way. Horatio Clare caught a sleeper train from Frankfurt to Zurich - and though he didn't get much sleep, the sense of a rolling international community was transporting.
 
Producer: Polly Hope
Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith
Production Coordinator: Katie Morrison

(Image: India Election Results in New Delhi. Credit: Anindito Mukherjee/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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