Political (in)action

With elections approaching, netas are doing everything they can to woo voters, but the aam aadmi refuses to fall for false promises

Political (in)action

With elections approaching, netas are doing everything they can to woo voters, but the aam aadmi refuses to fall for false promises

More power to NDA
Several TV news channels and dailies have predicted that the Congress-led UPA will get more seats than the BJP-led NDA in the Lok Sabha elections. And astrologer Bejan Daruwala has predicted that the NDA will win the elections, but L K Advani will become the next PM only for two years.

And my intuition says that the NDA will undoubtedly win the elections and will govern for the full term. That's because people are fed up with the current government's failure to curb cross-border terrorism. Even Prime Mister Dr Manmohan Singh agreed to this on April 10.

Come elections and political partiesu00a0 touch upon dormant issues like BJP's Ayodhya plan which once again features in their manifesto.

Also, BJP's poster boy Narendra Modi was criticising the government even as the commandos were bravely taking on the terrorists at the Taj.

Will somebody remind him that the Parliament attack took place during their tenure, and Masood Azhar was escorted to safety by their very own Jaswant Singh. Why are sensitive issues policitised during elections?

The forthcoming elections will be India's most undemocratic exercise ever. Violence, money power will be used to woo voters and in the end we'll be ruled by thugs, irrespective of which party comes to power.

Elections enable us to change governments every now and then, but this makes no difference when the key players are undemocratic themselves.

The Congress is nothing but a Nehru-Gandhi fief. The BJP seems incapable of truly democratic and inclusive behaviour. The CPM, which runs another kind of parivar, has reduced its leaders to pygmies. Every regional party is a one-man (or one family) show.

The most hopeful sign is the entry of independents such as Meera Sanyal in Mumbai, Arun Bhatia in Pune and Captain G R Gopinath in Bangalore. And even though they won't win, they represent a trend towards better candidate quality.u00a0