Thread: India's partisan governors

I hate the CPM and company but I have to tell you this, out of all the parties in India, they are the least corrupt and they have the best mobalization of workers out there. When it comes to politics, I respect them.


About 1/3 of our MPs (including state reps) have criminal records against them in some form or the other, what do you all expect?

At least you people are lucky, you read about it in newspapers, when you are part of that social circle, you feel even more fustrated about the future of this great country of ours.

Originally Posted by Sameer

I hate the CPM and company but I have to tell you this, out of all the parties in India, they are the least corrupt and they have the best mobalization of workers out there.

Try doing business in Bengal and you shall see their corruption quotient. All their unions and their leaders are corrupt.

There will come a time when labour reforms cannot be avoided anymore. God forbid, if the Left is part of the Centre, that day will probably never come.

The Left paties are the least corrupt. I think this is commendable. They have the right hearts, but their ideologies are increasingly driven by emotion and are redundant in today's world. One good thing about the Left being in the UPA though, is that they seem to have a leash on the Congress. Be it Volcker, Sikh riots, or the appalling misuse of Governors, the Left are primarily responsible for taming the Congress.

The delegates at the Congress plenary in Hyderabad shouting for Rahul Gandhi to accept a party post- I think that pretty much sums up the Congress. I find it absolutely bewildering that in a democracy, blind faith in a dynasty still rules the roost amongst those people.

In my own city Bangalore, the situation is no different. Deve Gowda's son is set to become the next CM. He has a number of rowdy gangs under his control. The sense here is one of utter cynicism, this grand political theatre of the absurd unfolding in the State Legislature and beamed on our television screens. Disgusting.

Most of those Kangress workers who were chanting for Rahul.... you can pretty much guess their education level, besides it is well known among the delhi circles that all this was a carefully planned stage show. There is nothing great about Rahul, believe you me although i have not seem him with that Columbian chick for a while, wonder what happened?


The Godwa tamasha is also testiment to the intellectual ability of the Indian voters, the guy cant even speak proper english and he will head India's most dynamic state, pathetic, we all know that he has gangs with him yet he gets elected... :( and the BJP could care less, all they want is power at all costs...


You know for all the blame we give to our politicians, we all know who is a crook and who is not (very few of those) but somehow all we seem to do is talk talk talk and never vote vote vote. As I said before the reason why those clowns are in power is because only the poor bother to vote and they vote based on ethnic, cast, votebanking lines. You cant blame them for the mess because they are kept poor by the netas because it is in the neta's interests to do so and they are mostly uneducated.
ONE STEP in helping out this country would for all of us educated citizens to spend one day very few years on voting and also i think its high time we pressure the GOI to allow radio stations (private) to have their own news services so that the poor can really know what is going on in their localities and what those netas are really upto.


Its sad to see that in a democracy that is India, all we do is complain without bothering to vote and then wonder why criminals run the country? Our mentality needs to change...

Sameer, you keep on advocating that the middle class and urban educated have to vote to make a difference but will it have any impact. The middle class is represented only by a small percentage of the overall population. Naturally the netas dance to the tune of the remaining population.
For eg, a drainage canal near my house in Chennai was blocked and encroached by slum dwellers, resulting in the roads getting flooded during rain. The ward councillor who opposed the encroachment was trounced during the sunsequent corporation election, inspite of receiving votes from the majority of the residents...

Originally Posted by Sameer

Most of those Kangress workers who were chanting for Rahul.... you can pretty much guess their education level, besides it is well known among the delhi circles that all this was a carefully planned stage show. There is nothing great about Rahul, believe you me although i have not seem him with that Columbian chick for a while, wonder what happened?

Mommy must have told him to lay off, since the Gandhis cannot afford a Colombian connection after fending off the mafia referrences to "mommy's" Italian heritage.

Originally Posted by 667medic

Sameer, you keep on advocating that the middle class and urban educated have to vote to make a difference but will it have any impact. The middle class is represented only by a small percentage of the overall population. Naturally the netas dance to the tune of the remaining population.
For eg, a drainage canal near my house in Chennai was blocked and encroached by slum dwellers, resulting in the roads getting flooded during rain. The ward councillor who opposed the encroachment was trounced during the sunsequent corporation election, inspite of receiving votes from the majority of the residents...

Actually the Indian middle class is approx 340 million and 30 million are joining it on average each year. So the not making a difference argument due to small size does not hold true.

I remember hearing from a BJP hopeful 6 years ago that the problem was that probably only around 20% of the middle class bother voting, if that could triple, we would diversify the vote bank. Just because it did not work out in your area does not mean that it would not work in general.

As far as slums, I for one am glad the HIgh Court has started to take matters into its own hands with the illegal construction saga in delhi, let us hope that within the next 10 years they have more guts to demolish illegal encroachments for good.


In any event it is the duty and responsability of every Indian citizen to exercise his right to vote, this is something we should not forget, it does not cost much, only one day out of 4-5 years. There should also be a third option in the ballet, ie i choose noone option. I firmly believe that much would change in this country if the middle class and up played a more proactive role in their localities, in fact voting should be mandatory for all citizens just like taxes.

I am reminded by what happened to Naidu last year in the elections, here was a man who at least had a vision, he was not perfect but at least he followed sensible economic policies and put Hyderabad on the map, sure he should have done more for the ruralites but if you look at how the urbanites did not even bother showing up to vote en masse, then you quickly realize why he was voted out and an idiot was voted in.

btw all of us voting is ONE STEP, the first step at making this country better, there are other inefficiencies in the way the political system works in this country that need to be rectified.

In Mumbai after the Shiv Sena came to power the middle class and the educated realised their folly and since 1998/99 they have been making an attempt to vote, just to keep the Sena goons out of power, and its working.

Originally Posted by lemontree

In Mumbai after the Shiv Sena came to power the middle class and the educated realised their folly and since 1998/99 they have been making an attempt to vote, just to keep the Sena goons out of power, and its working.

The SHiv Sena govt was probably the worst govt in Mumbai's history, noone wants a return to that,, even if it involves voting for a Kangress coalition, a corrupt nexus owho have been successful at sucking up most of that agri subsidy money into large scale projects due to bribe.

Sameer,

Bangalore did not vote either for Deve Gowda or the Congress. Both the parliamentary seats here were won by th BJP.

I agree with you in principle - that the electorate must take responsibility for electing the scum of the earth into power. But the sense here is of utter helplessness.

If you visit Bangalore today, you will find that the infrastructure is struggling to keep pace with the city's growth. The airport is probably the worst in India after Delhi and Kolkata. Our roads are crying for aid, and the huge influx of peope from other states has made matters worse. What is even more worse is that the Congress led government here did next to nothing on all this.

Deve Gowda, in his false image as a humble farmer and savior of the downcast, launched a broadside against Infosys and other IT companies for the excellent work they were doing. I prefer the naxalites to Deve Gowda. He stalled work on the international airport here, and went to wild lengths to stop the plan of the Bangalore Metro - all this because he and his sons were not involved in any of it. Had they been made part of the plan, they could have milched more money.

People in Bangalore and in the state are very astute. There is a growing sense of disenchantment here about all the sordid fuss that is happening. In fact only yesterday, Kumaraswamy ordered his party workers to remove banners glorifying him, because it has incurred the wrath of the people in the city. We dont want another Kolkata or Mumbai - great cities reduced in their steps due to a total lack of planning and foresight.

If one is to go by the indicators here, as long as scumbags wrest to power, Bangalore is all set to do another Mumbai or another Delhi.

Karthink,
Since kangress came to power in maharashtra in '98, they havent spent a peny on infrastructure, education, power gen. All the development work has been put on hold b'coz buget is in deficit. But this hasnt stopped in mlas & mlcs getting skoda octavia for personal transport, governer getting merc, ministers getting accords etc etc etc.

Skoda Octavia ?

Blimey, I could do with one of those.

But its hardly surprising that they haven't spent a peny on development. Coalition governments in states are by nature, inefficient.