The Great Indian Voter is a Sham!

Apart from Sardar Harkishen Singh Surjeet, elections in India bring back a lot of things to life. Words like people's mandate, voter's mind etc. The Indian voter is eulogised as one having his own mind. Journalists in their columns and TV airtime repeatedly call the voter intelligent and mature. He is ultimate arbiter. He punishes the guilty and brings back the country on the right path. I haven't met the quintessential Indian voter yet, but if I do meet him I have just five words for him: You are a big sham!



Consider the results of Election 2004.

Chandrababu Naidu lost, Laloo Prasad Yadav won. Both man of vision: One had Vision 2020, the other Vision 20 Seats. Laloo got more than 20. If giving jobs to the unemployed and governance were issues the voter cared for, Laloo Prasad Yadav would have been cleaned off two elections ago.


Buy One Get One Free
Mr Naidu's vision did not include free power. His opponent, Congress' Y.S.R. Rajshekhar Reddy, promised free power and jobs to the unemployed. Reddy won. So dear voter, do you really think there is something called free power? Congress' Amarinder Singh promised free power to Punjab and once in power realised there actually isn't anything called free power. Congress lost in Punjab. The Great Indian voter wants free power. Give him or get lost.

Mr Naidu definitely put Andhra on the road to progress, but the Indian voter isn't satisfied with the road. He wants it all and he wants it now.



Hare Krishna, Hai Rama!

Mr S.M. Krishna's Karnataka was better than many other states in India. In fact the allegation that outside Bangalore, Karnataka was in a bad shape is wrong. Krishna was considered a clean and progressive leader. The Great Indian Voter kicked him out. If the Great Indian Voter has a mind of his own, he's got a lot of crap up there. The fractured mandate and the resultant instability is not going to end the problems, Krishna was chucked because of.



Love louts

If the Great Indian Voter is so great why does a Suraj Bhan Singh win? Why do Amarmani Tripathi or a Sadhu Yadav win? Why does he vote for Dharmendra for that matter, whose political speeches are more filmi than political?



Perform and perish?

Pundits say elections are fought on local issues. Politicians who don't deliver, the voter teaches them a lesson. Then why did Nitish Kumar lose from Barh or a Digvijay Singh lose from Banka? They many not have done a lot for the country or their state, but they did a lot for their constituency. Digvijay literally squandered national exchequer's resources in his zeal on a railway network in his constituency. Nitish Kumar was called the Railway Minister of Bihar, and more precisely Barh?



Casteist Caveman

If the Indian voter rejected communalism by throwing out the BJP, why did it choose casteism as alternative?

Political pundits dissecting the Gujarat results say it was rejection of Narendra Modi style politics. They choose to ignore that Congress won because the kshatriya votes went to kshatriya leader Shankarsinh Vaghela. Tribal votes went to Amarsinh Chaowdhry. Congress won wherever the total was over BJP's combination of Brahmin, Patel and vania votes.



Bottomline

Voters across India, barring a few states, vote for their own casteman, everything else comes later. North India is notorious for this, but check out the South Indian equations. Caste rules. The Great Indian Voter refuses to leave his pre-historic cave.