AFTER THE NADIR, A RAY OF LIGHT

How many of us have noticed the stark difference in the reaction of the media and intelligentsia to two recent developments of great import, one of which we should be proud and the other that should shame us? It will not a surprise if the answer to this question is another question: which ones? Even after the answer is known don't be surprised if many believe that the good development is actually bad and the really bad one, good.

What has happened in Andhra Pradesh is something that should shame us all, no? The sordid drama that turned one people into foes overnight because of the manner in which the separation of Telangana was announced at midnight, should have had the media out screaming. Who does not know that the whole charade was the direct result of the manner in which YSR Reddy, according to reports, enriched himself and his family beyond all proportions in just five years, turned much of the rest of the political class into plunderers and royally ignored Telangana leader and ally CS Rao?

Not only were most media mega stars were afraid to even whisper this bitter and damning truth, the usual suspects also overnight started selling to India the idea that there is great merit is having smaller states on all kinds of specious and often blatantly dishonest grounds. All that just to make the unprecedented plunder of Andhra look good and keep the Congress High Command unsullied. No conscience, no honesty, no nation.

Had it not been for the unbelievably foolish Shekhar Gupta, the real ugly underbelly of India's rulers, plunderers as he proudly called them only to make the division of Andhra lucrative for those who will suffer huge financial losses, would not have been so starkly revealed. In the process, he also unwittingly destroyed the credibility of sections of the media and exposed its complicity in keeping a lid on something that should have rudely woken Indians up and made them realise that their nation was in very wrong hands indeed. Remember how Bangaru Laxman was hounded by Tehelka and the rest of the media for taking Rs 1 lakh? YSR Reddy reportedly plundered close to a mind-boggling Rs 1 lakh crore, but there is praise for his dynamism! Do you think that would have happened had YSR not been protected, promoted and 'blessed'?

Coming to the second development; what do you think would have been the response if it had been thought up by someone but announced in the name of Rahul Gandhi? Tearing headlines, fawning TV studio discussions and relentless, saturated coverage to project how this original thinking signified the real change of guard, the arrival of the youth and the new direction that India's stagnating and failing democracy sorely needed.

Unfortunately for those who breathe not for India but their own little nests and empires, the man who has thought of one step that has the potential to set right some unacceptably enervating ills of India's democracy, is someone who is hated to death by them. Why is he so utterly unacceptable? Gujarat 2002, they will say in chorus, forgetting conveniently what one foolish decision, with no deaths involved, has done to one people with no history of animosity, much less sub-terranean tensions born out of many past riots and killings. That is only a - and the only - convenient chink through which they want to make a fatal penetration and fell him. Why? He poses the gravest threat to the comfort of status quo and the rot of corruption and nepotism that has enabled them to amass riches, power and titles and rise to levels that Laurence Peter never could have imagined people like them would when he propounded his famous principle.

Narendra Modi has stunned everyone by making voting compulsory in municipal corporations, municipalities and panchayats in Gujarat. Along with it, he has also given the voter the much-needed power to cast a negative vote and reject all candidates. This move, believes Modi, with great justification, will bring "the voter rather than the political party centrestage"

One more crime has been committed by Modi. In India, no one else other than the 'Congress', it seems, has the right or ability to do something good for the people. Other politicians and parties, if they are opposed to the Congress that is, can do only evil either because they are communal or because they are with those who are communal. The media and the accompanying paraphernalia have a clear cut role: create a non-existent genius in Rahul Gandhi and a villain in anyone who can rock his boat.

After the elections in Maharashtra, all these guys were lamenting the apathy shown by voters, particularly of Mumbai, and bemoaning the fact that some of those who shout the loudest in TV studios had mentally seceded from India. In hindsight, does it not appear absolutely elementary that someone should have thought of doing something about increasing voter participation, to get people fully involved in the electoral process? Should not people have been worried about this failed model of democracy, even when the PM himself had sounded the warning bell?

But, no one had the time, much less the inclination. They were, as always, having a good time and doing little more than waiting for their solitary fountain of wisdom to say or do something that they could applaud, add to most imaginatively and propagate in terrific prose. Keeping Indians believing in tomorrow even as institution after institution crumbles around them is no easy task!

Now that Modi has stunned them, once again, the reactions are predictable: Modi wants to exploit the superior organisational structure of the BJP to mobilise more voters; voting is a right not a duty; voting by dictat is dangerous; it is impractical to implement it across the country that has over 800 million voters; it takes away a fundamental right; it is an infringement of individual rights etc. No one, repeat no one, can honestly fault it as a partisan move that will benefit the BJP, or any other political party, at the expense of another. No one wants to mention the fact that 32 countries, including Italy, have already made voting compulsory. No one can question the intrinsic merit of the proposal but hardly any one with a reach is willing to risk his/her future and applaud it.

Why did only Modi think of it and give it shape too in such a short time? How did he, a Hindi/Gujarati-speaking guy from a humble background, once again manage to keep many feet ahead of the many Ivy League stars who adorn the Congress, and make them look like less than ordinary mortals, even midgets? As I have already written earlier, it is primarily because he is has no family to promote and is selflessly committed to Gujarat and India. He has a clear vision and is possessed by the belief that India can do much, much better than its leaders have allowed it to till now. And he has already demonstrated that it can be done even within the existing system that others have only exploited and then conveniently blamed, by tuning it to deliver. He is also scrupulously honest and leads a spartan life. But as Chief Minister, he is working with single-minded devotion to ensure that Gujaratis become rich and Gujarat becomes better than the best in the world.

Such men can do what has so far remained undo-able. Such men can awaken opiated masses who have not been allowed to shed their raja-praja mindsets that makes them accept plundering by 'royals' as their divine right and their own miserable fate as divine retribution. Such men are poison for those who have become plunderers, big and small, of their own land.

That is why, no matter how much India may need such men, the feudalistic elite who have taken over this country and the dynasties who have grotesquely twisted democracy to further their family businesses, will gang up against them to protect and further their own interests. That is why what should have shamed India is being covered up, justified and even obliquely praised. That is why what should have been welcomed as a positive, even if small, step to rid India's democracy and politics of the filth that has come to dominate it, is either being ignored or criticised.

But, there is hope yet. If Shekhar Gupta created a new Nadir by celebrating the plunder of India by its Indian rulers, Narendra Modi has re-kindled hope, fearless of the treacherous minefield in which he has been put. He has shown that there still are Indians out there whose hearts genuinely beat for the ordinary Indian waiting still for freedom to reach his doorstep; there still are Indians who have the strength, fire and moral courage to stand apart and away from those who have lost sight of their sacred duty to the suffering millions who have given them power with trust and hope. The spirit with which our forefathers fought to free us of yoke has not been snuffed out completely.

A ray of light is visible in the dark cave.
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Related reading:
1. Will Modi accomplish his 'Mission Impossible'?
2. Politics and media: a new Nadir
3. The Telangana domino: time to transcend parties, talk India
4. Covering up the mother of all corruption scandals
5. Wake Up...
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BYPOLLS: MANY SURPRISES, MORE IN STORE

In the recent bypolls in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, Mayawati and Mamata have emerged triumphant. While Mamata Banerjee was expected to do reasonably well, many believed that the Congress would put up a very good show in UP.

The "Rahul Wave" created in some sections of the media after the Lok Sabha elections in May this year has almost evaporated in UP within six months. Mayawati, who was humbled then, has perhaps surprised even herself by bagging nine out of 11 seats. This despite - perhaps because of - the intense media campaign against her statue-building spree. That this victory has come on top of her winning three of the four seats for which elections were held in August, makes the blip in May stand out even more. The Congress has wrested two seats and lost two that it had held earlier, while the SP and the BJP have drawn a blank.

In keeping with dynastic tradition, Rahul Gandhi is being given all the credit for the defeat of Mulayam Yadav's daughter-in-law in his home turf, Firozabad. What is being conveniently overlooked is that it is the BSP, not the Congress, that has won the Bharthana seat vacated by Mulayam Yadav's son. Both these results underline the fact that the SP has been routed in its fortress. This is a least expected body blow that Mulayam Yadav will find hard to take. For various reasons, the balance of political power appears to be shifting decisively away from him.

The BJP, thanks to the total vacuum of credible leadership in the state and its comatose central High Command led by Rajnath Singh - perhaps the worst leader the party has thrown up in UP - has been humiliatingly routed. Not only has it failed to win a single seat, it has lost security deposits in all constituencies barring its erstwhile stronghold Lucknow West, and Jhansi. How much more punishment its failed top leaders and strategists are going to inflict on the party before they are removed is a question that needs to be openly debated in the party.

In West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee is continuing her triumphant march that began in the Lok Sabha elections, by winning all the seven seats her party contested. But shockingly, the CPM has failed to win a single seat. Just three years back, the Left Front had stormed back to power with a three-fourths majority. But, thanks to Singur and Nandigram, the Left is, suddenly being wiped out in a manner that no one would have dreamt of a couple of years back. Cumulative failures of the past two decades are beginning to hurt and haunt the communists, ironically because of the reforms they belatedly initiated to undo the colossal and almost irreparable damage they inflicted upon the society and the state during their long and uninterrupted rein.

These results have tempted most analysts to write off the SP and BJP in UP, and the Left in West Bengal. That may well happen if things continue the way the are. Can anything swing things dramatically again?

In West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee is benefitting from the anger against the communists. The Marxist onslaught has, among other things, created such a leadership vacuum in the state that there is no other leader behind whom its people can rally against them. Is she really the alternative that voters are looking for? Will she be able to take the state forward or will she plunge it into even greater inertia and violence? Given her track record, it is almost a given that things will get only worse if and when she gets into the saddle. But even before that happens, just as the communists are paying for a couple of mistakes, Mamata might just hurt herself badly; a small slip is all it will take for voters to go back to the commies or a progressive break-away faction led by someone with the kind of vision that the many great leaders and thinkers of Bengal had once shown to the whole of India.

In UP, can the Mulayam Yadav dynasty really be written off because of the Firozabad defeat? Can it also be safely assumed that those who have deserted the BJP will not hurry back to it again? If the Congress is seen to be courting Muslims in a divisive manner and pandering to the mullahs who are now openly rejecting secularism, things can change overnight with one wrong decision, provided there is a good leader to exploit it without engaging in mindless communal provocation. It may be recalled that one reason for the BJP holding the gains it had made in UP was the no-nonsense and decisive leadership shown by Kalyan Singh as Chief Minister, something that the state had perhaps never seen before in the long years of Congress rule. May be that is one reason why Mayawati is holding her own, despite serious corruption charges - there is no honest and effective counterfoil available in any other party today. May be that is one reason why brand Gandhi has failed to work for decades in its home state. If the Congress can find and project a new, credible alternative, who knows what might happen! Or if, following the example of kings of yore who treated their marriages as political, even military, force multipliers, Rahul Gandhi marries a dalit girl from the state, it is more than likely Mayawati may never recover.

It may be recalled that in the couple of years preceding the Lok Sabha elections this year, the Congress had lost the assembly elections in most states that went to the polls. But in the final round that mattered the most, it delivered an unexpected knock-out punch to the BJP. The many surprises in these bypolls also suggest that no political party can take anything for granted based on past electoral results. If anything, they should expect to be surprised in future.

Given our fundamentally flawed and society-dividing model of democracy, a few slip-ups and a slight re-alignment of political and social combinations is all it takes to upset all calculations and projections and produce unexpected results that, as we saw in the recent Maharashtra elections, can hide unacceptable failures. No wonder independent India has produced so few great leaders of the calibre and integrity that the freedom struggle threw up.

This is the age of Mayas, Mamatas and dynasties.

ELECTION RESULTS: TERRIBLE NEWS FOR BJP?

Almost everyone seems to think that the results that have been declared today for the assembly elections in Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana and Maharashtra are, as Barkha Dutt said in a tweet, "terrible news for the BJP". Some analysts like Prannoy Roy also believe that the Congress is on a roll.

The one thing that most analysts agree on is that Maharashtra has not be won by the Congress; it has been lost by the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance. As far as Haryana is concerned, the Congress has suffered a clear set back, despite an opposition in utter disarray. Its seat tally is down sharply from 67 to 40, six short of majority. In the morning, when trends were showing that the Congress was heading for a clear win in Haryana, Jayanthti Natarajan was claiming that each candidate had been personally chosen by Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. Now that the picture is different, the entire blame, in true Congress tradition, is being passed on to Chief Minister Hooda.

I will not attempt to analyse the reasons for the defeat of the BJP in Maharashtra - it was never strong in Haryana - but will briefly examine whether it is really bad news for that party, as everyone seems to think?.

In the immediate aftermath of victory or defeat, everything appears exaggerated and we often jump to conclusions. But we must remember that, in the wake of the Lok Sabha elections, a BJP victory was not expected by anyone anywhere. Therefore, had there been a surprising result in its favour, while it would have been something for the party to celebrate, I am not sure it would have done it any real good in the long run. There is a big difference between holding on to power and wresting it. So, a BJP victory in Maharashtra would have given it a massive adrenaline rush, no doubt, but may actually have worked against it.

Defeat leads to introspection which often leads to dumping of the dead-wood that otherwise cannot be shed. Victory papers over everything and all looks well. What the BJP needs now for its own good, therefore, are not victories but defeats in states where it is not in power.

Have we not seen what happened after the party's comprehensive defeat in the Lok Sabha elections? Many voices were raised against the many ills that have weakened the party and made a mockery of its claim of being 'different' from its main challenger, the Congress. But what has been the net result? The coterie and the leaders almost wholly responsible for turning a near certain victory into defeat have closed ranks and dug in their heels. They are just not stepping aside and giving way to others who can substantially steer back the party to the values that made many Indians overlook the rough edges in its ideology and vote it to power in 1998.

A victory now, therefore, would have only swept under the carpet the issues that the BJP must grapple with honestly, if it wants to have any chance of coming back to power at the Centre in 2014. It would also have put life back in those who are responsible for weakening the party. The defeat should ensure that failed leaders both in the state and the Centre are not able to strengthen their positions and continue to weaken the party for much longer.

There is a real opportunity here for the BJP to re-invigorate and strengthen itself systematically with fresh blood to take on the challenge of the Congress in 2014. Dr Manmohan Singh is not going to be available to the Congress then to rout LK Advani's replacement in a Presidential-type face-off. Nor is the Congress going to project another non-Gandhi as its Prime Ministerial candidate.

I don't think any one is in any doubt that Rahul Gandhi will lead the Congress in the next general elections. He is already being systematically projected by the media, both visual and print, to the nation almost daily, as the Great All-knowing Leader who is the blessing that India really needs. He must be a good human being sure, but leader? Having watched him as closely as I could for a couple of years, I am convinced that he might just be the best thing that can happen. Not to the Congress. To the BJP. Surprised? More on that some other time.

So, over the next four years, the BJP has to do just a few things right. One, it has to be very careful and deliver good governance in the states governed by it, and hold on to power there in the next assembly elections that will be due before 2014. Two, it has to re-kindle the once strong but now forgotten anti-Congress sentiment - read resentment against dynastic rule - by publicly refusing tickets to sons/daughters etc, to win back the lost trust of the people. This is really important even though it may not appear to be so now. Three, it has to find a leader who will make Rahul Gandhi look like Rahul baba compared to him, and put him in charge neither too early nor too late. The timing is important. The face-off in the next election too will be Presidential; Rahul's challenger must be someone who can credibly rub home the message, through all the thick smoke that will be generated to 'hide' Rahul, that Rahul is in the race because of his family, not his ability.

Just as the defeat in Maharashtra can be a blessing for the BJP, for the Congress, its third successive victory in the face of the apathy of an increasing number of voters who have lost hope, and the Bhindranwale-like rise of Raj Thackeray that it has facilitated, might prove to be a curse not only for the party but even the state of Maharashtra. This victory could well set in motion dynamics similar to what India saw in the eighties. If that happens, the Congress could be in serious trouble. Indians may not overlook all and vote emotionally every time, particularly if there is a ready alternative available. There is more to worry about for the Congress in this victory than rejoice.

Let us see which party learns the lessons that it must. For India.

Picture: ibnlive
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Related reading:
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2. Will Modi accomplish his 'Mission Impossible'?

BHARAT AND INDIA: ARMED REBELLION AND MENTAL SECESSION

The recent elections in Maharashtra have brought a harsh truth to the surface: rulers of Independent India have failed the people of both Gadchiroli and Mumbai, Bharat and India. How does one draw this seemingly illogical conclusion despite the fact that Naxal-affected Gadchiroli saw a high voter turnout of 63%, while India's commercial capital, despite being hit by India's worst terror attack less than a year ago, could enthuse only 43% voters to get their fingers marked, even though the city was shut officially to enable every one to vote?

Gadchiroli is one of the 160 districts of India affected by the Naxal movement that is active in the states of Bihar, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and parts of Orissa, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh. The Maoists, as the Naxalites are popularly called, are engaged in an armed struggle against the present Indian state because they believe that it has failed to empower millions of Indians who continue to suffer unbearable poverty and exploitation.

There can be no denial that even 63 years after Independence, there remain a vast number of Indians who are leading a sub-human existence. According to the Planning Commission, 300 million Indians are below the poverty line while some estimates suggest that as many as 77% Indians live on less than Rs 20 per day. Naxalites hold sway where the poorest of the poor Indians live. In these areas, schools and primary heath centres are virtually non-existent, there is little or no road connectivity and there are virtually no employment opportunities. To cap it, the already wretched existence of the people has been made even worse by corrupt officials, politicians and feudal landlords. If in other parts of the country, 84 paise of each rupee meant for the aam admi is siphoned off by corrupt officials and politicians, you can imagine that in these 'extreme' areas, virtually nothing has ever reached him.

We have to, therefore, understand that conceptually, Naxalism represents an indictment of the form and frame of the state that has failed to meet its most fundamental obligation to its people despite being in position for so long. Most of us living in relative comfort in the cities have a one-dimensional view of the Maoists. However horrifying and unacceptable that may be to us, we must remember that there are still a few among the affluent lot whose hearts not only beat for these unfortunate, helpless and exploited fellow Indians, but they have even given up lives of comfort to be with them and guide them in their struggle to get out of their very dark pit.

Kobad Ghandi, who was arrested last month, is an unlikely political mentor of the Maoists. He hails from an affluent family from Mumbai, was Sanjay Gandhi's classmate at Doon School and did his Chartered Accountancy from Oxford. His wife, who died of malaria last year, also was from Mumbai. Yet, the couple gave up the good life and chose to devote themselves to what is essentially a noble cause. Ravi Sharma, an agricultural scientist from Andhra Pradesh and Anuradha B his wife, both arrested yesterday, also did the same.

If the cause that the Naxals have taken up is so undeniably just and one that rightly shames free India, then why is it that in Gadchiroli so many people turned out to vote for the politicians who have been exploiting and failing them for over half a century? Is it not damning evidence that the alternative that the Maoists promise and have delivered so far is worse than what the netas have? The Maoists may be in almost complete control of many areas, but that is manifestly more due to the power of the gun in their hands than the ideas in their heads. They are employing a very old and failed ideological tool to obtain a social solution in an entirely different age and setting. The very poor man may know that they are working for him, but by now he has also discovered that this is not the deliverance he is looking for. So, he has been forced to choose between the lesser of the two evils before him. He simply has no other choice.

Since 2005, Naxal violence has claimed an average of sixty lives per month. And, as the recent beheading of police inspector Francis Induwar in Ranchi and the killing of 17 policemen in Gadchiroli shows, the danger posed by Maoists is too real to be ignored any longer. Dr Manmohan Singh was not wrong when he says that Naxalism poses the greatest internal security threat to the country. Home Minister P Chidambaram has also shown rare political resolve to use force to defeat this challenge that some politicians have been exploiting - anything new? - for petty political gains.

No matter what bleeding-heart liberals and human rights activists bubbled in Delhi might say, it is the sacred duty of the state to ensure that the law of the land prevails and that ordinary citizens are not terrorised by anyone promising a better future at the point of a gun. One can keep arguing in TV studios about state-sponsored terrorism, ideology etc, but that must not deflect us from the task of ending the prevailing anarchy with minimum loss of time and life.

The people of Mumbai, by keeping away from the voting machines in these troubled times, have also unmistakably conveyed the message that they have lost faith in the ability and intention of politicians to do what they are expected to. They too have have sent a signal, again, that the manner in which the country is being governed generates no hope in them, no matter which party is in power. This is particularly true for the elite and the middle class as they are the ones who have stayed away from the voting booths.

The people of Mumbai, unlike those of Gadchiroli, have not voted because they can afford to not vote for the lesser evil. Why? Because they have another option. They can, as Rajdeep Sardesai says, "secede mentally if not physically" from the Indian state and become "resident non-Indians". As long their comfortable lives are not touched by the failures all around them, save for a few minor irritants that they have learnt to live with, they don't give a damn about what happens elsewhere. They lives are not confined to and stymied by the many failures of India that have kept nearly 900 million Indians in darkness without hope. They can manage with and without the state and its unresponsive instruments. They know voting is not going to change anything. So they don't want to waste their time and effort taking part in what has become a mockery of democracy.

This "mental secession" of the elite from the rest, of India from Bharat, is what led to the mess in the first place. The biggest mistake newly Independent India made was to do little more than change the colour of the skin of its rulers. No effort whatsoever was made to replace the colonial tools of governance, deliberately designed by the British to maintain a clear and unbridgeable gap between the elite and the natives. The British had a motive for creating an elite that looked up to and aspired to be as much like them as the colour of their skin allowed, and as distant from and superior to the natives they were expected to keep firmly in control on behalf of their masters.

When free India opted for an inherently flawed model of democracy not suitable for a large and diverse country like India, even that exercise remained confined to the legislature only. The judiciary, administration and police remained as colonial as they were before Independence. The involvement of the people in governance has, thus, remained mostly limited to casting their votes every few years. The rest of the government machinery remains as aloof and arrogant and above them as it always was. In fact, over time, even politicians, the only ones that normal Indians have a say in choosing, have also become equally, if not more, removed and distant from the people whose voice they are supposed to be.

Of late, there is a democracy-killing trend that has gathered great momentum. A few hundred political dynasties, big and small, have emerged across the country and taken vice-like control. Though there are over a thousand political parties in India which should indicate that the democratic process is robust, exactly the opposite is true. There is no inner party democracy in most parties and many of them, big and small, are no more than family fiefdoms.

This has happened primarily because politics, like the colonial administration, police and, to some extent the judiciary, is becoming a platform for plundering India. That is what the British did too. But they were here precisely for that purpose. This was not their country. It is India's misfortune that the elite they created and the politicians who have succeeded them, are doing exactly the same, exceptions apart. The only difference now is that the loot remains largely in India, if it is not rotting in Swiss banks.

This is not the value system or the model of governance that is going to deliver the people of Bharat from the misery being inflicted on them by the ruling elite of India. All that it is going to do is to ensure that the Bharatiyas who break out of their hell-holes, despite the government or due to it, will also choose the easy way out and mentally secede from Bharat. They too, like the present elite of Mumbai and elsewhere, will seal themselves in their comfortable bubbles and just shut themselves out from the misery and poverty that writhes but a few feet away.

Yes, Naxals post a grave threat to the security of India. Yes, they are employing unacceptable tools and an ideology that has invariably inhumanly oppressed the very classes it is supposed to uplift. But is any one else in the country seriously committed to the task of trying to lift almost a billion souls out of despair? Let us not hide behind 'trickle down' theories and some such nonsense to justify our insensitivity and failure as a nation.

The example of China is before us. So we can't pretend that it can't be done, and wave the 'empowering' flag of democracy in front of the deprived and the hungry. Our models of democracy and governance have failed thus far and the disastrous direction that they have taken of late will ensure that they will not succeed in future too. So, while putting down of the armed rebellion of Maoists is essential, it will succeed only if we show even greater resolve and firmness in simultaneously putting away the tools that have failed Bharat and perpetuated colonial India.

I read a tweet somewhere which said that we must ban from politics the 400-odd families that have taken over India. That may sound silly, but it tells us that dishonest cosmetic changes will not work. This nation did not fight for Independence to live with armed rebellion on one side and mental secession on the other. Both are equally dangerous and both need to be addressed urgently and honestly.
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5. Covering up the mother of all corruption scandals
6. Conspicuous consumption and conspicuous poverty

MAHARASHTRA GOES TO POLLS

Guest Post by Anil Mavinkurve

Maharashtra, a great state as the name signifies, was indeed a great state once upon a time. It now rests on its past glory that has been fading rapidly. It is now a poor shadow of itself and states like Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh have almost become equals.

This is a state that is:

• in the midst of one of the worst agrarian crisis in the country in recent history

• afflicted by Naxalism that is making deep inroads in the eastern districts of Gadchiroli and Bhandara districts,

• affected by massive power shortages, where 80% of the state goes without power for 12 – 15 hours every day,

• Plagued by large number of irrigation projects initiated and have not been completed for twenty years or more,

• Vulnerable to external and home grown terrorist attacks,

• Industry that has gone to seed and cannot provide the basics to attract new investments.

• Growing social disquiet with caste based inequities and against migration from other states.

• People crushed under the tremendous burden of sharp price rises.

It would be a “no brainer” to write off the ruling political dispensation and start drafting its epitaph.

Any opposition party would have rubbed its hands in glee and ensured a rout at the hustings. Sadly, they are weak, divided, focused on inane non issues and have endangered their prospects in many constituencies by high command politics.

The Congress-NCP alliance at the helm of affairs for the last ten years has been a case study in masterly inaction with Mr. Vilasrao Deshmukh the head priest of this effort. The picture becomes more sinister when you see the massive corruption, callousness, and utter disregard towards governance.

The Shiv Sena – BJP alliance is going round trying to catch its own tail. Power is theirs for the taking. Will they grab at this opportunity??....I think they might be successful in snatching defeat from the jaws of a certain victory. An angry sibling is most certain to play spoiler once again and split votes to ensure that he still remains relevant.

The BJP does not have any charismatic candidate to lead them. Gopinath Munde seeks to take on the mantle of Pramod Mahajan but unfortunately there is just no comparison. He has in his desperation to ensure Poonam Mahajan’s candidature, endangered at least two seats where BJP were certain victors. Nitin Gadkari, an otherwise efficient administrator, has just not risen to the occasion.

How is Maharashtra going to vote today? It certainly is a big khichdi.

Guessing the voters’ minds is a hazardous occupation and best left to pollsters. We would all like a change, just for the sake of change if not for anything else.

You never know. We may yet surprise everyone and return Congress-NCP back to power and coin a new maxim….”In Maharashtra, you can fool all the people all the time”.

Come October 22^nd and our destiny shall be clear.