Thursday 22 October 2009

Death of Democracy

Now of course, some of you will say, 'Democracy is a concept, you can't kill it.' No? Ask the Congress and the BJP. They just did. Let's explore the political scenario in Maharashtra by way of an analogy:

Consider the Congress to be the batting side, and the BJP the bowling side (since the Congress is trying to stay 'in' power and the BJP trying to get it 'out'). The performance of the Congress over the past ten years has been so poor that few would disagree with me when I compare the entire Congress 'team' to Chris Martin (batting). Now, faced with the task of bowling at a rank tailender, the BJP had the following options:

1. Tear them apart with a savage pace and spin attack ala Brett Lee + Shane Warne. It'll be a matter of minutes before the Congree folds.

2. Bowl part-timers (i.e. VVS Laxman, Rahul Dravid, Inzamam ul-Haq, SS Das etc.). It'll take a while, but it'll be fun, and Rahul Dravid might even get a hat-trick.

3. Don't do anything. The Congress team is full of such ineptitude that they would find a way to get themselve out even if you didn't bowl at them.

4. Get Brendon McCullum, MSK Prasad and Adam Gilchrist to bowl long hops and low full tosses at 20kmph. So many of the balls will be wide that they Congress actually stands to win in this scenario.

Guess which option they took?
Exactly - #4

I cannot fully comprehend how the BJP/SS managed to lose this election. It must've taken some doing, that's for sure. In a good democracy, people hope that the best people come to power. In an average democracy, people hope that the least evil people come to power. However, it is seldom that people have hoped that meteors rain down from the heavens onto every politician from every party that contested. This is one of those times.

What is most annoying is the list of reasons coming from the political parties:
1. Congress: The people have voted in favour of our governance (what governance?)
2. Congress: We have won on the back of our policies (huh?)
3. SS: We lost because the MNS took our votes (sore losers)
4. BJP: The EVMs make the Congress win (WTF!?)

Sounds more like a rule-book of fibbing. Idiots.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you realize that this is the coming of a Dark age? Over the next five years the opposition to Congress will be crushed and Signora will be supreme. If the SS / MNS / BJP or would have been in their place it would have been the same. One party getting too much power w/o opposition spells disaster.
The next five years are crucial if we have to get the public acting against this.

greySith said...

It would be a dark age no matter what would have happened. The BJP/SS did not talk for one instant about issues. And the Congress' big issue was Shivaji's statue in the sea. Both sides are totally useless. The only way in which this could have ended well was a hung house, with no chance of stitching together any sort of alliance. A re-election might have woken them up, but that was unlikely.
Whichever side would have won (in this case the Congress), it would be convinced that fighting an election on poor governance and useless issues makes you win elections.
I agree, we have truly entered a dark age in Maharashtra. The voter has never been taken as lightly as he will be over the next five years.

Yash said...

people are at fault too. American democracy for all its stupid eccentricities is more active. The most glaring example is issues discussed as a part of the campaign . In India, it is based too much on caste, religion etc. while other more important issues like the economical policies remain under the wraps .

greySith said...

That's the whole point nah... This election has been one big fail. No real issues were brought up by either side, and the only way they would have learnt something was a hung assembly. That was pretty unlikely to happen anyway. Basically, some side was always going to win with a pathetically weak election campaign.

Do want no vote button :(