My Vote

Voting has started in Maharashtra for state assembly elections.
As many people have pointed out in last few days, the overall level of election campaign has not been impressive. Name calling for leaders has gained popularity as never before...
Congress-NCP has not done anything substantial in last 10 years of power. There are no new electricity plants set up in those years, no big projects to change the cities, to comfort the rural areas. No new irrigation projects have started in last 10 years. Dynasty politics is at it's worst. They have been playing secularity card far too often, and a recent report says that on average there has been one riot per 20 days in this regime.
Why ??? Why do people still give vote to this alliance ???

The congress-NCP has number of leaders who control the economics in their constituency... This includes sugar factory, cotton mills cooperative societies etc. These establishments are integral part of large population of western Maharashtra (aka Sugar Belt). Many big leaders of Congress-NCP hail from this part. So they are anyway going to win.

Another factor is Dalit and Muslims which favor congress over any other Hindutva-vadi party, unless there is substantial loss of faith due to a big issue.

Vidarbha and Marathvada are two regions where Shivsena has made inroads and can get huge share of seats.

Mumbai Thane Pune has been ignored by Shivsena in last few years for the sake of making headway in rural areas. Which has cost it dearly as MNS has mainly concentrated on city pockets with raising their voices for the urban issues.


Opposition also lacks star power...Shivsena-BJP does not have star speaker who can attract crowds and then fire the issues at them... Uddhav Thakre lacks the style. He speaks more like a convent student speaking marathi from books rather than a leader who has fire in his belly for that particular issue.

That's where Raj Thakre scores... The passion with which he makes a point, a non-issue also becomes an issue... Along with that he throws some numbers an all the listeners can do is to just get mesmerized and to wonder why couldn't they see all these thing happening around them ?

In one way it is like braking the law of salt... Salt was not the actual issue... But poeple could relate to that... I guess when people are oppressed, people have anger in them, those leaders become popular who give a way to vent that anger... to unleash that fury... However silly, disgusting or wrong it might be... In some way Raj Thakre is doing that... He is able to convey to the government that there are problems... He is getting headlines for that... Diagnosis is wrong ...but others are not even mentioning the problems...

Whatever it is .. We need to vote... Even if we don't really believe in Opposition we should vote against the ruling parties just to let the politicians know that they have faired poorly on the development scale... and they must improve.