Ripples on the brain

Does being a successful entrepreneur and an alumni of BITS / IIMA qualify one to represent people? Agreed that the guy, if elected, will probably fall in the 99th percentile of MP’s in terms of education. Agreed that he shows a semblance of vision for his constituency if you go through his website and manifesto, which I have never seen from anyother candidate in my constituency. Agreed that everybody likes his rags-to-riches story. Agreed that he’s probably 100 times more hardworking and successful that me. But that still doesn’t convince me that he can be my representative.

Right from the time this guy shot to prominence, a lot of my friends who have been his classmates at one institution or the other have told me that his actual story is not what he makes it out to be in the press. His other utterances in his interviews about him being discriminated in educational institutions doesn’t seem to be true. So, I really have my doubts.

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What is this thing about Young India or some such campaign that Times of India runs about the oldest Parliament (in terms of the average age of MP’s) representing the youngest country? I’m not a fan of the idea of having young MP’s just for the heck of it. Unless a guy is well-qualified, has done some extra-ordinary social work in his short lifetime, I don’t think I’ll vote for a guy just because he’s young. If we were to go by the thinking of this campaign, we will bring in a lot of Varun Gandhi’s to the Parliament. TOI seems to simply cash in on what it thinks is its target segment.

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The best case scenario, at this point, would be for Congress to get near simple majority and Pranab Mukherjee to be the Prime Minister. And if I’m allowed a little more liberty, I’ll say this should happen without its ally, the DMK, getting a single seat in Tamil Nadu. I don’t know the exact numbers, but I know none of the things above will happen. The worst thing for the country as a whole would be the Third Front drama playing out for another one year before another election gets imposed. If people like Deve Gowda get one more shot at the limelight, it will show all the voters of the country in poor light.

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A lot is being said about the IPL being shifted out of the country. Mr. Swaminathan Aiyer makes his own conclusions in TOI, which seem to be a stretch. IPL is not an event of national importance for the common man. To me, it is akin to the high and the wealthy betting on horses of their choice, just to flaunt their wealth. While I can’t hate Chidambaram enough, I think he called it absolutely right in this issue. He didn’t give IPL an iota of more prominence than it deserved (while taking care not to dismiss it entirely) and made sure it came nowhere near something as important as a General Election. I think it is one of the very few times where the Indian Government has been very proactive and has given the message loud and clear that the safety of the general public is more important than the safety of some 8 teams. If we don’t have the bandwidth to provide security for two different things, then we need to admit it and do what is possible. The massiveness of Indian electoral exercise should not be under-estimated. All the talk around losing tourism revenues because of the exodus of IPL is all humbug. I don’t even care.