I am pleased as punch with this year’s election results. Take author and UN diplomat Shashi Tharoor’s 96,000 winning margin in Trivandrum? It’s fantastic and I thought he would have a tough fight and lose at the end.
Take much maligned former cricketer Azharuddin’s victory in Moradabad (Andhra Pradesh). Delhi CM Sheila Dixit’s sweeping victory (winning 7 out of 7 seats) is truly wonderful. Goes to show that a mini India like Delhi actually holds up a mirror of India itself – that good governance is rewarded and bad governance will suffer anti-incumbency and eventually perish (BJP and its alliance partners and their pathetic performance in Rajasthan among others). What’s more, the highly virulent Maneka Gandhi won her seat with a narrow margin, which means she will be out the next time around. Goes to show that vegetarianism and elections are two different things and she shouldn’t try to mix the two by campaigning against non-vegetarians – her campaign just didn’t t have much meat!
Another piece of good news it tearing apart the red bastion in Kerala and West Bengal where Congress and its allies did extremely well. The Left Front (CPI, CPM) has nothing else to do but sit in the opposition and crow over non-issues. This election result sounds the deathknell of communist and communal policies plaguing India for the last couple of decades.
The failure of Laloo Prasad Yadav (he won one seat and lost another) shows that inefficiency has its repurcussions. While he turned out to be an able union railway minister, his own state of Bihar was badly mismanaged and governed. No wonder, the people revolted and gave Nitish Kumar all the power to form the government.
The BJP did do three major blunders that did them in this time:
1. Attacking a neat and clean prime minister Manmohan Singh
2. Projecting Narendra Modi as PM material during the course of their campaign and getting him to campaign for the party outside Gujarat.
3. Lack of young middle rung leaders that can connect with a largely young electorate.
