Sonia Gandhi, Mamata Banerjee, Jayalalithaa, Mayawati…Angela Merkel.
- Sean Gallup/Getty Images
- German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrives in New Delhi Tuesday.
India is perhaps unsurpassed in the world in terms of the power wielded in the upper echelons of government by women. And the contrast was stark last year when the distinctly male heads of all five permanent United Nations Security Council members – the U.S., France, China, Russia and the U.K. – trooped to New Delhi to push for more trade and enhance relations.
Now, finally, a female global leader is heading this way to make nice.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrives Tuesday, doing her own version of what all those other leaders did, too: Make a pitch for closer bilateral relations and closer commercial ties. Among them: The much talked-about $10-billion fighter jet deal that India is expected to award in the next several months that now is a race between France's Dassault Aviation SA and European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co.'s Eurofighter Typhoon. Germany is part of the EADS consortium.
Ms. Merkel’s trip comes close on the heels of the visit last week by French Minister of Defense Gérard Longuet to lobby India to pick Dassault.
Ms. Merkel also is expected to push the candidacy of another woman who could soon become one of the world's most prominent females. Not that being finance minister of France counts as an also-ran post, but if Christine Lagarde succeeds in her bid to become the next chief of the Internation [...]
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