Saturday, January 31, 2009

My politician- for better or for worse

Now that the necessity and importance of voting has already permeated the minds of the youth..I wanted to use this forum to enable voters to take the right decision when voting. Nothing very complex....just a summary of the various political parties...their agendas, priorities...a little about their history...their leaders.

Simply put..its just a choice between the lesser of the devils...all have their pros and cons...you choose the one that aligns best with your expectations.I wanted to put a sort of table for why and why not you should vote for a political party:

3rd Front

Why Not vote for the 3rd front (Left, BSP and a bunch of others):

1. It has Left as one of its pioneers which is known to be anti development. Still holding on to archaic concepts of Marxism when China has embraced capitalism and accepted that Socialism is not a practical way for routing out poverty. WB and its laggard status is a classic example.

2. It has Mayawati as its PM candidate - Known to be corrupt to the core(visit Lucknow)..she encourages mammoth birthday parties and building statues for herself. Do we want an uneducated person who has risen playing the caste card throughout.

3. They will rob the country clean if they come to power. Be rest assured Mayawati and her men will have swept the country of taxpayers money...and create a huge parallel black money market. Left leaders will create unions across the board and cripple all industry....rewinding India another 50 years.

4. The parliament will be a mockery and will not last its term...all parties haggling for power and a piece of the cake will fight among themselves.....and soon enough we will have a hung parliament.

5. The country will be a mess if they come to power

Sorry...cant think of any Whys for the 3rd front. And on a similar note, voting for independents (who may be educated enough) is also in a way promoting a hung parliament -which can lead to an unstable Govt.

Now to the bigger powers
CONGRESS (INC)

Why Not Congess
Why Congress
Dynastic politics :A party that has been standing on the 'Gandhi' family name - irrespective of how deserving/undeserving the heirs are.
Priyanka Gandhi does show some promise however



Stifled Indian economy for nearly 45 years after independence - nationalizing banks, discouraging private enterprise, Overtaxing businesses - all leading to high levels of poverty and corruption

Had the brains of Manmohan Singh, Chidambaram and Montek Alhuwalia who had the vision of liberalizing in the 1990's - But that process too unfortunately lost momentum in 2 years

Monmohan (PM) often tagged as a pawn and a weak PM at the hand of Sonia Gandhi- and kind of true considering we have seen or heard little of him in the 5 years - and you don’t expect economic policies like the ones implemented in this tenure from people like Manmohan


Thanks to Manmohan putting his foot down, Congress clinched the Nuclear deal - necessary to cater to India's power needs
Believes in giving people fish than teaching them to fish - Free electricity, loan waivers, Reservations - all crippling Indian economy in the longer term and making the poor fiercely dependent on the Govt



Minimal infrastructure development during its tenure



Alliances with the likes of Lalu Yadav and Left in a desperate attempt to form the UPA - which led to the most inactive government from 2004-09



Jagdish Tytler, Shivraj Patil, Arjun Singh, Natwar Singh, Rahul Gandhi, Sadhoo Yadav
Manmohan S, P Chidambaram, Montek, Kamal Nath, Kapil Sibal, SM Krishna, Shashi Tharoor, Murli Deora


BJP (NDA)

Why BJP
Why not BJP
A break from the dynastic rule of the Gandhi's who have done much damage to the country
Communal manifesto visible in actions like Ayodhya, Godhra, support for Varun Gandhi
Good amount of infrastructure development during its rule - Golden quadilateral, highways, ports, Electricity - Gujarat is a case in point where there has been tremendous development


Stood against the nuclear deal with the US - A cheap act showing desperation to put Congress out of power
Encouraged private enterprise, Privatization and Decentralization - bringing greater efficiency and results in organizations



Has policy visions like Uniform civil code - necessary for a uniform and stable democracy



Strong government which gives us confidence comapred to the weaker Congress




AB Vajpayee, Arun Shourie, Pramod Mahajan, Jaswant Singh, Narendra Modi, Sushma Swaraj
Bangaru Laxman, Varun Gandhi, Narendra Modi


Disclaimer : I have tried to be as unbiased as possible.
Do share your thoughts

Kshitij



8 comments:

  1. i think this post will help those people selecting the right party to vote whose minds have already been biased to a particular party due to some reason or the other. coz sometimes we vote for a party not knowing why are we voting for them...this gives a vry simplistic comparison of pros & cons of various party coming to the power...n hope it'll help ppl to take the right & informed decision...long live the Democracy!!

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  2. nice one.. do read this one: http://www.moneycontrol.com/mccode/news/article/news_article.php?autono=391401

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  3. i feel its a shame to wrtie off the educated independents and be skeptical about them.....i guess all the people reading this blog relate max to Capt Gopinath from Banglore, Meera Sanyal from Mumbai, Arun Bhatia from Pune, Tomar for Youth For Equality from New Delhi, Sharath Babu from Chennai, etc if the ones who relate are not interested why would the majority of voters villages, slums, etc ever be interested.......
    i think a major reason for that would be because we dont want the guy we vote for to lose and these guys most probably will
    having said that...the only thing I worry about while thinking of independents is that will voting for them actually make the likes of mayawati stronger by making the Cong/BJP weaker.
    :-)

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  4. @Shitij
    Exactly...though I agree that some independents are deserving...voting for them strengthens the prospects of the 3rd front and can lead to a hung parliament forcing parties to tie up with rogue parties like JMM, Bajrang Dal etc

    @PB
    Good link. Thanks

    @Srijan
    Yes. Long live the democracy

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  5. You know a funny thing.We guys were discussing about general elections few days back and we were just wondering what will happen if Mayawati will become the PM. We were imagining Mayawati talking to Obama :). Lot of my friends say that they will never go back to India if Mayawati will become the PM.

    For chosing BJP/Congress its about choosing the less evil. BJP did some development but somehow I hate Advani. His political agendas for the elections are again Ayodha and Hindutva.

    I just wish we do not have coalition government this time.I know its very wishful thinking but still.

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  6. Very concise summary for anyone new to the political parties in India. The generalisation of all the political parties although simple provides a quick primer to all of them.

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  7. A very informative yet concise post.
    But all of us would be better placed if we think of a political party to be as a private company to whom we give our country to govern for 5 years, they would make their profits and recover their costs.What we need to make sure is that while they do that as some MNC would do they take the country in the right direction.

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