Lok Sabha Elections and my wasted obsession!

It is not easy being a 24 year old MBA aspirant during days of stunted economic growth and political instability. Though it helps that my dad is a public-sector employee without the threat of recession lurking over his head.

 

My blog might make people think I am obsessed with politics and elections. But the turn of events in the last few months have been such that I can't seem to get the damn thing out of my mind. Today I spent about 3 hours reading up about various political parties and alliances and their election agenda/manifestos etc. At the end of it I concluded that which people have known since age eternity -

 

Politicians go blind in the love of power. They completely forget the cause for which they should be contesting an election.

There cannot be 75% votes for any one party and it will no doubt be a coalition government. (The very thought scares me. There should be a way if the resultant PM is the likes of Mayawati, we as public are able to discard her as our national leader.)

 

If we look at a hypothetical situation where every constituency elects the best people's representative for  lok-sabha, we can still not guarantee that the party with the best national leader will win the election, since all parties are mixed baskets - rotten apples and nice apples.

 

In another situation, If people casted votes for party 'X' since it has the best prime-ministerial candidate, it does not mean the local representative at the lok sabha will do any good for his constituency. He might be the biggest convict in your locality, for all you know. If Rahul Gandhi for instance is your next dream leader, it will mean electing congress in local constituencies and you might just have to vote for a 80 year old murder for that lok-sabha seat of your constituency!

 

Also, the point to note is, the affairs of the state are handled by the state govt. and so the entire mess of  how do you maintain sync in lok-sabha and rajya-sabha elections. Plus you never know which small party or independent candidate will go shake hands with whom. Uff!

 

The conclusion being it is anyway a Catch 22 situation for 'aam junta' like us. And we cannot deny it, there will still be security slip-ups and corruption no matter which ever party rules. Ours is a bloody big country and running it in a corporate setting is such a stupid pipe-dream.

 

Ideally, there have to be 543 clean-record educated candidates for EACH and EVERY constituency of India. I am not talking about 'cool, suit-tie' leaders but a very well planned system where these candidates go through rigorous training for understanding the problems in their constituency and state-of-affairs of the country in general AND THEN they go campaigning in such a way that they win both urban and rural votes. Let's face it, most of our population is in the villages and they care 2 hoots if you are from IIT. But if you really ARE from IIT and able to answer their questions about food, clothing and shelter - you have BOTH rural and urban votes. City lads love it if you are that crème with the nation as your cause.

 

And these educated people will make educated choices - the professionals like IAS, IPS officers, bureaucrats etc will help them learn these nitty-gritties and make wise choices.

 

Oh I know I've been brooding too much over it and I also feel terrible for being the only-words-no-action bloggers, but I don't know how to start! Else I swear I would have. The logistics are just so complicated and daunting! And this is where the doom begins - so many of jinus blogging and unable to use technology to make a real difference. Sigh!

 

* A quick snippet - 

UPA = UPA +Trinamool - SP

NDA = NDA -BJD

Third Front = Communists + assorted regional parties

Expect this equation to keep changing till we go to the polls and after it as well.

Resources - http://www.indian-elections.com/ and today's edition of TOI and HT!