As the sun rose on the eastern United States, news arrived announcing the election of a new government in India. The world's largest democracy went to the polls this month and, following an extensive voting procedure, elected new leadership by a projected landslide.

In what many have called a historic election, the Congress Party was staggeringly defeated at the polls by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Although the 550 million votes have not been fully counted, initial counts and estimates project an overwhelming BJP victory, according to the New York Times. In the face of such odds, Rahul Gandhi, leader of the Indian Congress Party, conceded defeat.

"If the leads are correct, the results are conclusive," Abhishek Manu Singhvi, a Congress spokesman, told the Times. Another spokesman, Randeep Singh Surjewala, also confirmed the loss, saying, "We humbly accept the verdict of the people of India. We shall continue to play with rigor the role of a constructive and meaningful opposition -- the role that the people of India have assigned to us."

To win a decisive majority, one party has to win 272 seats and, according to the most recent results, the BJP will reach that goal. The BJP has been described as a Hindu nationalist party with a troubled history as well as its leader and the new projected Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. According to The Guardian, during Modi's tenure a chief minister of the Gujarat region, he did nothing during violent pogroms that left more than a thousand Muslims dead in 2002.

The BJP brought a relative unknown to the center stage during this election campaign and subsequently pummeled the Congress Party with extensive media coverage and political ads, according to The Guardian. Modi was placed as the party's overall image, a stalwart against corruption and a friend of business. Following the model employed in the Gujarat, Modi favors big business, granting them incentives in the form of subsidies, low wages for workers, and suppressing workers' dissent, reports The Guardian.

As the elections tilt towards Modi, business has responded in kind. As the election results were announced, the Sensex index rose 6 percent to record of 25375.63 and finally settling at 24121.74, according to BBC News. With an estimated record voter turn out of more than 60 percent, the tally stands at 237 seats for BJP and 36 for the Congress Party, as of this writing.