Government > Leaders Stats: compare key data on India & Italy

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STAT	India	Italy	HISTORY
Head of state > Term limit for head of state	5 Ranked 71st.	7 Ranked 8th. 40% more than India
President	Pranab Mukherjee	Giorgio Napolitano
Prime Minister	Manmohan Singh	Enrico Letta (resigned)
Prime Minister > Profile	<p>Mr Singh became prime minister in May 2004 after the Congress Party&#039;s unexpected success in general elections. </p> <p>The party&#039;s president, Sonia Gandhi, the widow of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, shocked her supporters by declining the top post, apparently to protect the party from damaging attacks over her Italian origin. </p><p>Mr Singh said his priorities were to reduce poverty and to plough on with economic reforms. He stated a desire for friendly relations with India&#039;s neighbours, especially Pakistan. </p> <p>During his first year in office he held together a coalition which included communist allies and ministers accused of corruption. He continued to pursue market-friendly economic policies and oversaw the introduction of nuclear non-proliferation legislation. </p> <p>But his promised &quot;New Deal&quot; for rural India - an attempt to raise the poorest citizens out of poverty - has still to bear fruit, and by 2011 he was facing demands for inquiries into a series of financial scandals.</p> <p>Though Mr Singh has repeatedly promised a crackdown on corruption, his critics say that the accumulation of graft scandals points to a pervasive culture of corruption in his administration.</p> <p>His government also came under intense pressure after the Mumbai attacks of November 2008, which left nearly 200 people dead and prompted a storm of criticism of security arrangements. </p> <p>However, Mr Singh&#039;s Congress-led coalition then went on to score an emphatic victory at general elections in April and May 2009, coming within 11 seats of winning an absolute majority in parliament. </p> <p>The emphatic defeat of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) confounded predictions of a close contest. </p> <p>While still needing the support of some smaller parties, the government looked to be in a much stronger position to pursue economic reforms, particularly against opposition from the left. </p> <p>Mr Singh made his reputation as a finance minister in the early 1990s, under the Narasimha Rao government, when he was the driving force behind economic liberalisation. </p> <p>A Sikh born in West Punjab, Mr Singh is a former International Monetary Fund official and governor of India&#039;s Central Bank. He was educated at Oxford and Cambridge. </p>	<p>After less than a year in the job, Enrico Letta resigned as prime minister in February 2014, after his Democratic Party (PD) voted in favour of an urgent change of government to push through reforms. </p> <p>President Giorgio Napolitano then asked PD leader and mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi, to form a new government.</p> <p>Mr Letta was named prime minister in April 2013 after inconclusive elections at a time when Italy was mired in recession. </p> <p>He forged a coalition with former premier Silvio Berlusconi&#039;s conservatives - an unusual alliance of bitter rivals - as well as centrists led by former prime minister Mario Monti.</p> <p>The creation of the coalition at first appeared to pave the way for yet another political comeback for Mr Berlusconi, who was forced to resign in 2011 as Italy slid deeper into the eurozone&#039;s sovereign debt crisis. </p> <p>Mr Letta&#039;s appointment of a protege of Mr Berlusconi, Angelino Alfano, as his deputy initially raised suspicions that the scandal-tainted billionaire tycoon would continue to call the shots from the sidelines.</p> <p>However, the former prime minister&#039;s accumulating criminal convictions cast a shadow over the future of the coalition, and the Supreme Court&#039;s upholding of a custodial sentence for Mr Berlusconi in the first of these cases in August 2013 caused further tremors within the government.</p> <p>Mr Berlusconi responded to moves to expel him from parliament and deprive him of his immunity from arrest by attempting to bring down the government. This move backfired when Mr Alfano refused to follow the instructions of his former mentor and formed his own breakaway centre-right faction.</p> <p>But even after having been finally flung out of parliament in November, Mr Berlusconi continued to insist that he would remain a force in Italian politics as the leader of Forza Italia - a party that still enjoys considerable electoral support.</p> <p>Mr Letta, aged 46 at the time of his inauguration, is a moderate with a reputation as a political bridge-builder.</p> <p>On taking office said he would act fast to reverse an austerity policy he argued was killing Italy and called on Europe to become a motor for growth.</p> <p>But tensions within his own party over the pace of reform and differences over economic policy came to a head after Matteo Renzi was elected leader of the PD in December 2013. Mr Renzi forced a showdown in which the PD backed his vision of a new government that could implement &quot;profound change&quot; and get Italy &quot;out of the quagmire&quot;. Mr Letta had no choice but to step down. </p>
Prime Minister > Summary	Manmohan Singh initiated economic reforms in the 1990s	Enrico Letta led a grand coalition

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