2 down , 2 to go .

If you are wondering what the hell im talking about , its the great Indian tamasha that is enacted once every 5 years( and sometimes if you are lucky , more often ) . Its the General elections - that massive exercise , enacted at a tremendous cost to the Indian exchequer , which only serves to replace one bunch of frauds with a buch of even bigger frauds . Two rounds are over , and to my utter dismay , it looks like we are heading for another hung parliament .
Why the hell am I being so pessimistic ? To you , it may sound as though Im predicting some kind of doomsday scenario for the country . What the hell is my problem ? After all - India is "Shining" . The GDP has grown at more that 8% the last quarter . The Stock markets are peaking at nearly 6000 points . The Forex Resereves are nearly 115bn dollars . So what the hell is my freakin problem , you might ask .
My problem is not the fact that the elections are being conducted , but the WAY they are being conducted . Politics in India , has descended to a new low . Elections are not being fought on issues like Industrial output , interlinking of rivers or on literacy and primary education , but are instead being fought on the worst and most insignificant issue of them all - CASTE .
Never in the past 50+ years , has Caste politics , or SOCIAL ENGINEERING , as VP Singh would prefer to call it , been the deciding factor in an election , like it is now . Whether you are voted to power or not , no longer depends on your education , your social standing or your honesty and image , but depends on whether you are a dalit , or a yadav or a brahmin , etc .
Political parties are now handing out tickets on your religion and your caste , to improve their chances of winning a seat in a particular constituency . To make matters worse , magazines and weeklys conduct their opinion polls among castes , trying to determine who has the dalits' backing or who is the undisputed leader of the Rajputs .
Which brings me to the critical question - "WHAT THE HELL ARE WE DOING" ? This election is going to determine the future of our nation for several years to come . This is going to determine investor confidence iin our country , foreign investment , industrial growth , etc ,etc . We should be electing the people most suited to take decisions that ensure the long term development of the entire country , not the short term development of one particular community . Look at the Chinese . Agreed , the have a string of problems with human rights violations . But their leaders only have one goal in mind when they assume office - the greatness of the motherland . We should be electing such people who have the vision to put aside petty issues like caste , creed and sex , and work for the upliftment of the entire country .
But nooooooooooooooooo . We Indians have such a narrow outlook that we will look at what will be directly benificial to us as individuals , and not what is in the state's interest .
And so the Great Indian Tamasha continues , with politician after politician promising sops to dalits and Scheduled Castes and Vanniyars and blah blah blah .
So which brings me to the question - Is India really shining ?
Think about it .

Till later ,

da STIFFmaester