It was also the time that Indira Gandhi was consolidating her hold on the Congress Party with a series of populist moves-nationalizing banks and enacting draconian controls on private investment.

Moreover, with an isolated dictator who asserts draconian control over his people and his closest advisers, direct talk is the only way to take the correct measure of the man.

But economists and business executives said the slowdown also reflected a combination of Herculean investments to relieve transportation and electricity bottlenecks, sometimes draconian administrative controls and a handful of market-based measures.

Troop numbers were increased and draconian controls were imposed on the population, isolating the territory from the outside world.

Kim Jong-il had used draconian controls and international aid to discourage coups after having foiled three such attempts in the late 90s.

The post-revolution Zanzibar government was accused of draconian controls on personal freedoms and travel and exercised nepotism in appointments to political and industrial offices, the new Tanzanian government being powerless to intervene.

Quit acting like you should exert some kind of draconian control over how I listen to things and try to find some way to get money out of me every which way.

At the same time, Cuban independent NGOs are not allowed to work as the government exercises a draconian control over them.

Their parents' generation grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, when any tentative liberalisation of India's Kashmir policy relapsed into draconian control and election-rigging.

Much more important, the interior ministry has let it be known that it is dropping its draconian controls on the use of photocopying machines.