General Election Threadwire - 2009.

The first phase of polls for the fifteenth General elections was concluded yesterday amid violence by naxal outfits across all the states that went to polls.Majorly the states of Orrisa,Bihar,Maharastra,Jharkhand,Uttar Pradesh,Andhra Pradesh went to polls for 124 parliamentary seats and the over all voter turnout was been impressive.Amid threat of extreme violence in the constituency of kandamal of orissa district the voter turnout has been commendable (90%)and that gives the reassurance to all of us that power of democracy is alive and kicking.The record says that there was extreme instances of violence, of a nature of genocide in this parliamentary seats against a specific community. The most interesting pattern of voting came from Bihar,wherein,people supposedly for the very first time have voted for Development.The interaction with the locals revels very distinctly and in clear terms that the impetus on development,that the Nitish Kumar government have shown,and the efforts taken that is visible in various part of the state,is the major resone for change in mindset of the voters.It won't be surprising if the entire state and the adjoining state of jharkhand(in anticipation)is swept by the NDA alliance.The mandate in the state of Bihar will no doubt will be for development and caste and other regional consideration will surely be on the back seat.In this election the impact and numbers of the, oft quoted ''Bahubali''candidates and their win- ability is minimum and the selection of candidate by at least the NDA combine is reasonably good,if not exemplary.

If one analyse and observe the pattern of polling in the recently concluded assembly elections in the state of Madhaya Pradesh,New Delhi,Rajasthan,Assam and Chatisgarh,one can see that the voter has started emphasing on issue based voting,and the same was lacking till recently.The issue under consideration is mainly local area development.The same ranges from good roads,to primary school, to agricultural inputs, to benefits form state as well as center run development and social upliftment programmes. This is for what democracy stands for and can work.Until recently in most of the states the voting pattern was caste and religion based that had little to do with other realistic issues of local and national importance.Still the largest state of the nation have not found the right reasons to vote or rather not aware to do so and it's ironical, for the state which sends the maximum numbers of Members of Parliament.We do find a lack of strong leadership with fresh bent of mind across parties in the state Utter Pradesh which is all the more ironical as it has sent the maximum number of Prime Ministers for maximum times in the last 60 years of independent India.

Most of the political analysts that includes some prominent political leaders across party lines are coming to terms that the voting pattern can not be impacted upon only through social engineering and cast calculations.Add to it at the time of elections efforts to win over a specific (read Muslims-20% of the total population)community to vote for them.It has been sixty long years since we got free,as a nation, to run it with the help of our representatives,but unfortunately the lack of clarity in policy initiatives and faulty execution, by the successive INC government compelled the nation to still be in the poor and developing country category.

I believe that we as a nation got the basics wrong,and the staggered development that we have seen in the last 60 years is unimpressive and not for the entire citizenry that ,of course, includes the 600 villages of this country where resides the 65% of the human mass. The two basic things that was needed in the initial 20 years,post independence were rationalisation in the human population parameters and proliferation of a chain of micro and small scale industries across the country.Contrary to that the population multiplied with remarkable ease and the incumbents were busy adopting and implementing the erstwhile USSR Model of industrial development,that was entirely not in line with the requirements of a newly born free nation that was very poor.But then.it happened,and that resulted in major gap between the haves and have nots,with unbearable and unimaginable deprivation in the hinterland.

The fruit of employment, of public money, is not seen in the hands of majority of Indians and still the story continues in most of the states of course,in less severity. Now the simple question in front of a young nation is how to put things in place and how to rationalise the efforts of development with equitable distribution of fruits ? Is a nations with 67% of the population bellow 30 years of age,experiencing the positive transitions towards a more inclusive society ? Are we ready to take the guard ? ''Request all you readers to stirr their minds and give comments for ideas for change,as the idea of India is the ideas for change''