Inky Pinky
Ponky
My constituency has a donkeyIt is election time and I guess this is exactly what most of us think of the candidates contesting from our own constituencies in this General Elections 2009. Every election when I have had to vote, I have had a hard time deciding which button to press on. During the last General Election, there was one party which threatened to outsource the post of Prime Minister ship , there was one which had managed to dish out social experiments, there was one led by the alleged "humble farmer" who wanted so desperately to become the kingmaker. It was like jumping from the frying pan and falling into fire. So I decided to step aside and try to think what each of these parties had actually done for the country. Ok. I meant the good things that they did for the country and not what they had done to the country. No point in negative thinking (like I keep telling my wife). After all, I had a very important job at hand, I had to vote. I had to choose my representative to the Indian Parliament to deal with matters close to my heart.
First up, it was the Indian National Congress - hmm they gave us Independence and all the post Independence good work such as getting all the independent kingdoms under the one umbrella called, INDIA. (Man, she might not be very pretty always, but I love her eternally.) And so the people rewarded them with putting them to power for close to 40 years. They gave us the Five Year Plans. Yes, that worked for some time. For a few years the Congress did manage to keep the focus of the country towards development. They also need to be given credit for opening up the economy. What else? Don’t know. Can’t think of any other big achievements. Now going to the principal Opposition party, the Bharitiya Janata Party. Hmmmm in my eyes, the poet had done something similar to what Sher Shah Suri had done earlier. He had built the Golden Quadrilateral, the North-South and East-West Corridor roads. Amazing stuff. I don’t think anybody, not even the great Jawahar Lal Nehru can boast of something that big. This was one act that has jump started development all over India exponentially. Then, what else? Yes, the guts they showed in conducting the nuclear tests in Pokharan. What else? My teeny weenie brain couldn’t recollect anything else. Now coming to the fringe parties, the so called Third Front with its myriad number of candidates vying for the post of Prime Minister of India. Let us consider a few of them. The Communist Party of India - Kerala and West Bengal probably swear by it. I would credit the Red Flag with the vast intellectual development of people in Kerala and West Bengal. Couldn't think of anything else. And lastly I should consider the local Janata Dal. However I couldn't think of anything worth its weight in salt apart from the Janata Dal was da part of the main opposition to the Congress Rule for a big part of the last 50+ years.
I was still not able to make a decision. So going further let me see how long they took to do all the good deals.. err. .. I meant the good deeds, yes, the good deeds that they did. The Congress had ruled most part of the 50+ years. The BJP for less than 10 years and the Janata Party for even lesser. So, to put it into perspective, the Congress had taken close to 50 years to get us to some state and the BJP had claimed to have made "India Shining" in less than 10 years. Now that was not too bad. One seemed to shine a bit better perhaps. But it was still a comparison of two devils. Did I have an alternative? Now dont remind me of the Third Front. The Third Front is definitely not an alternative. Time has told us to be careful of those guys. They were a recipe for instability.
Now that I had considered the positives, I was still not who would get my vote. Now I had no choice but to take a look at what they had done to the country. After all you didn't want to end up looking so much on the positives, that you didn't realize that the mane you you were all the while looking at was not that of the sheep, but of the wolf. So, now going on to the real horrible negatives..... For every Bofors, there was the Coffin scam. For every 2002 Godhra riots there were the 1984 Anti-Sikh riots. For every Tytler there was a Modi. For every lady politician who amassed loads of public money, there was some politician who snatched from the cattle (remember the Fodder Scam ?). And so on and so forth. Me, being a positive person, I did not want to delve too much into the negatives.
So, now let me take a look at the local issues. The S M Krishna led Congress Govt had done a good job. You cant have blamed him for the lack of rains and having to obey the court orders and releasing water to Tamil Nadu. Yes, the paadyatra was not the best thing to do. But the man had some good to the state. The BJP on the other hand had no history at the local politics and practically begged for a chance to prove themselves.
It was "Love All". I still could not exactly decide where to stick my finger. What do I do ? Let me get a bit more personal now. The Congress refused to name who their Prime Ministerial candidate was. Vote for the Congress and you are likely to have an Italian as the Prime Minister of this country. That did not sound good to me. Mind you, I am not chauvinistic. It was not the fact that it was a "she" that we were talking about. It was the origin or Nationality that we were talking about. I just love my dark brown tanned skin. Man, we could be a pack of scumbags, a pack of illiterate, under developed, uncouth mortals and she could have been the queen of Italy, but it still did not warrant having to give the post of being the representative of a billion Indians to her. If all Sonia wanted was to serve the country, she could follow Mother Teresa. She did not need to be the leader of the nation for that. I was now sure I would not vote for the Congress.
I briefly considered voting for some of the professionals who were standing in the elections. I then realized that my representative in the Parliament will then just remain a silent spectator, watching the proceedings without actually having the horse power to make an impact. I shooed away the thought soon. Was the Third Front an alternative ? Once again, I realize that would be one costly experiment that we could ill afford. So, now I had almost come to a conclusion. And then the NDTV news reporter mentioned about the bull run in the stock market. That was all I needed. I stuck my finger out and depressed the flower, expecting the country to bloom soon.
