Worst among equals

So much hue and cry over the upcoming elections has been made already! I mean...for god sakes it hasn't even started! Elections and politics and candidates is the only thing on the tube these days. And to think Cricket is the national obsession! Says Who!!??Well let me jump onto the bandwagon and add my two pence worth to this whole khichdi that is Indian politics. Looking at the whole thing objectively, three options for a future Indian PM stand up, and these need not be named.

Let us start with the current Chief Minister of UP who has been touted as a candidate to the highest political position in India. In 2007-08 assessment year, Mayawati paid more income tax than industrialist and Forbes-listed Mukesh Ambani. This is an indication of the personal wealth accumulated by this teacher born to a clerk in UP. You do the math.

The next candidate is of course the incumbent PM and a man with a clean image, something that his 'not-so-clean-image' party has exploited to the fullest. But he has been accused of being 'weak' and given his political background I do perceive some credence in the allegations. After all he hasn’t yet won a popular election (Lok Sabha) and doesn’t look like he will even bother contesting this time round. He cites the examples of Deve Gowda, Indira Gandhi, et al to justify his case, but these are just constitutional loop holes that were exploited before and are being exploited now as well. For all his heroics in the 90's, it is sad to see him as merely a puppet in the hands of you-know-who today. One would wish that he can just contest an election and win it and shut up all his critics...but I don’t see that happening unless the growth of a proverbial 'spine' takes place in his body.

That brings us to the last 'haloed' option, the Indian new age 'iron man' as he is called by his cronies. He was accused by the aforesaid person of having done nothing noteworthy save the demolition of a famous mosque. There is no conceivable defense in his favour on this accord but then again, he hasn't had much of an exposure to power, except when he was deputy PM in the India Shining government, which did do some good to the country in all fairness. He remains torn between the religious fundamentalists whose support he cannot do without and the forward minded junta that is apprehensive about his 'saffron' image. All in all, this guy is no better a candidate for India's PM than the others and actually no worse either.Yeah I know what you're thinking..."whom should I vote for then?". Honestly, as of now I don’t know whom I’ll vote for...but I do know that I will vote.