Dude where's my political debate?

Political debate based on facts and figures Bch please A year from now India will have the opportunity to elect a new government a different future and the winds of change Though if yoursquore going to elect a Scorpions song Hurricane is a much better candidate As we look towards the years ahead we must ask ourselves which of the two dominant forces in Indian politics wersquod rather be led by AIDS or cancer If that statement offends you I assure you Irsquom joking we live in coalition times so itrsquos actually AIDSHepatitisDiabetes or CancerEbolaThatThingFromWalking Dead There is also the Aam Aadmi Party but itrsquoll probably get three votes or as we called it in school ldquoEssay Prizerdquo Talking point In Rahul Gandhirsquos address to India Inc he spoke about his runin with a painter named Girish As a conscientious voterinwaiting I decided to find out a bit more about Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi Itrsquod gall them to hear this but both men have a lot in common They are both their partiesrsquo respective Prime Ministerial candidates Both look to revitalise the flagging fortunes of Indiarsquos two traditional power blocks Most importantly whichever of the two wins wersquoll have to deal with the fact that if our freedom was a tryst with destiny this is the morning after All of us voters or well the 597 per cent of us that will show up have an important job We need to pick between these men and this decision must be informed by facts policies and if you live in Tamil Nadu the 40rdquo LED TVs that Mr Karunanidhi will no doubt give you However I live in Maharashtra where the only thing politicians hand out for free is quotes about peeing in reservoirs like a 17 yearold And so I decided to take a more oldfashioned approach and scoured both menrsquos speeches for indications of policy direction and worldview The good news is there are plenty of speeches on both sides The bad news is they have the political complexity of a One Direction song feat Rebecca Black Prospective leaders in a functional democracy are expected to outline how theyrsquoll use their power through statistics growth plans and nuanced argument So far Mr Gandhirsquos propaganda tells me that Narendra Modi is Dr Evil and Mr Modirsquos propaganda tells me that Rahul Gandhi is MiniMe I have also discovered due to several hoardings that Mr Gandhirsquos agenda is ldquoHappy Birthday Shri Baba Siddiquerdquo while Mr Modi is a Hindu Nationalist and b not a very good with an use of the articles I began my search at two speeches that were meant to be expressions of intent from these candidates In one corner we have Rahul Gandhirsquos address to India Inc the highlight of which involved his runin with a painter named Girish Mr Gandhi met Girish on a train from Gorakhpur to Mumbai because the chief tourist attraction in Gorakhpur is ldquoleaving itrdquo Girish the painter was off to Mumbai to look for a job because nobody had told him that being beaten up by the Shiv Sena doesnrsquot pay Mr Gandhi asked him what he would do if he didnrsquot get a job there to which Girish replied ldquoIrsquoll get on a train to Bangalorerdquo This impressed Mr Gandhi greatly because nothing says economic resurgence like large communities of homeless unorganised migrant labour I also checked out Narendra Modirsquos speech to female members of FICCI in which he spends 71 minutes talking about womenrsquos empowerment without actually mentioning how he plans to achieve it Both speeches had the believability of a Chacha Chaudhary comic and the same amount of hard statistics and projections as one The only statistic that emerged from a collective 110 minutes of speechmaking is this In 2013 the number of crude nicknames for Prime Ministerial candidates increased by 2 units named Pappu and Feku Contrast this with a speech by Bill Clinton at the 2012 Democratic National Convention which in 42 minutes boasted ten separate instances of argument backed up by solid if twisted for political gain numbers And he wasnrsquot even running for anything Does this suggest that American politics is free of petty mudslinging Far from it But I can cut through it all to find a gooey Nutella center of facts stats and tangible ideas All of them on the record one Google search away But we get the leaders we deserve and in a culture obsessed with tamaasha gossip and ideological barnstorming that is what we base our decisions on A broke farmer in the Vidarbha doesnrsquot like statistics because he is one And a hipster on Twitter doesnrsquot care about them because ReplaceMovieNameWithCatPictur Which is why wersquore doomed to infantile political debate for years to come and which is why I must make my decision based on it My choice is clear Irsquom going to vote for Girish Just so he can stop taking trains and sit in one place for 5 years that is not Gorakhpur Rohan Joshi is a writer and standup comedian who likes reading films and people who do not use the SMS lingou00a0