Hum to aise hain bhaiyya.

This is going to be the bloodiest election ever in the worlds largest and most thriving democracy.Ask me, I actually feel happy for it every time I cast my glance westwards ho(:D).An added incentive? I've just received my voters Id card. Though I still don't know if I`'ll vote and for whom.Politics in India is pretty disillusioning. Add petty and selfish to that too. Centuries after we decided we were one nation, we still have that to prove.Somehow the fact that the Indian state transcends regional identities has been an idea too difficult for our masses to fathom.And therein lies the problem. A problem so vast and so maddeningly complex, elucidating it feels completely and wholly out of my reach. I can only feel it. And bleed for it.


We don't need Shatrugan Sinha claiming that he is the "asli " bihari babu. We don't need a family of Thackerays claiming that Maharashtra is for the Maharashtrians. We dont need Varun( I find it shameful that he puts Gandhi after his name) wanting to cut hands and gouge eyes to prove his Hindu credentials.We don't need politics of hate and politics of shame. For all the seats that it may win, it only leaves us more bloodied and more scarred than before. Actually Im not even sure of that. It may win some seats at the regional level but to succed at the center we need secularism. Ask Rahul. Ask sonia. Ask priyanka. I don't think they'll be playing any kind of regional card soon. Over and above any kind of practical reason and benefits that it may entail, it is just not the legacy they've inherited. I do think that their beliefs and political ideologies have been shaped right from the pains of being a colony through the trauma of partition and the pangs of the indo-pak wars.


Though that is not the reason we should place congress in the circus at the centre.I just find it extremely heartening that the farmers are given such predominance in all its policies.If you look at the 1.1 billion population of india of which nearly 800 million is rural, I think that makes more sense than hankering after our IT industry which I think will manage to sustain itself anyways. Apparently India Rising and India shining somehow doesn't feed these stomachs and that's why we have all these farmer suicides.


Ive been pro congress since I was 8 I think, though then it was because it was the only name familiar to me. Im still very much pro congress though Id like to see and evaluate the kind of results acheived over the their past tenure before pushing the ballot button. Right now, all Im saying is that their manifesto looks far better than the Hindutva policies I see floating around. The muslims do not stay on in india at the mercy of the Hindus who were kind enough to take them in. It is as much their land as it is of them.


More than the Lalu Prasads ,we need the educated, young blood in the thrones of power. Not that I hold Lalu's lack of eductaion against him or am making a mistake of underestimating his shrewdness. A case in point is Meera Sanyal, contesting elections in south mumbai. for her I say she's got the guts. Not everyone would ditch a high profile career to descend into the murky cess pool of indian politics. ( she used to head ABN Amro) . Its taken her courage to do that without any chance of winning.She'll get what, some 10,000 odd votes from the likes of me?But she'll make herself heard. She's made a start.


And that heralds new beginings.