Indian election reality check
The media has been completely preoccupied with Varun Gandhi for a week now. His speech is juvenile and is not unique. In any case, divisive policies that create citizenship categories are far more evil than mere words. You can also argue that it is exactly these policies that create demand for leaders who speak such language. If the media continues this for a few more days, I can almost guarantee we have a future leader in Varun Gandhi.
You may wonder, “Doesn’t the media have anything else to talk about ? I mean this is the worlds largest democracy with the biggest problems. Surely, there must be some issues that are worth talking about with only a few weeks to go !”
Truth be told. There really is nothing to talk about.
There are no issues that are important enough.
The election is going to be largely
- an enumeration of the strength and concentration of narrow interests.
- an enumeration of the population that can be attached to a narrow interest in the next elections.
It is “counting” stupid – not “voting”.
To prove me wrong is not easy. You would have to show me an issue that can make even the most chauvinistic voter endorse a larger interest when they have a narrow and exclusive choice. Case in point : The Sri Lankan Tamil issue is a non starter even amongst the loudest Dravidian voting groups.
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PS: Please go out and vote. If you are a free agent this is the only way you can register your presence. Again pardon my cynicism, but this voice has to be heard. There are plenty of blogs and media sites which are currently celebrating the great Indian democracy.
Reality Check India 
See vicious circle, people should be reading my blog ;-).
Reg. election I have said it earlier voting and keeping aloof from political process is nothing more than a blind ritual.
Gaurav, Illuminating posts on your blog. Just take it further to its conclusion.
I too think it is helpful to visualize a largely vicious spiral and a largely virtuous spiral. This means that upon iterating the same process of selecting the “lesser of the two evils” on the country, the virtuous spiral will have a tendency to get slightly better each time. The vicious spiral will tend to get worse upon each iteration.
(IMO “Better” and “worse” are aggregates relative to external independent reference points – say relative to South Korea or China or Brazil etc) Obviously there will be small groups or individuals benefiting from a vicious circle as well.
So what concrete foundation is propping up the vicious spiral today ? I believe the power vested in individuals to offer citizenship categories to rigid groups without the burden of data is that concrete foundation !
There have been astonishingly few studies on the distorting effect of such a system on the voting process.
I will comment on your blog in detail later..
Sad but insightful RC…good post.