life in general: state elections & my vote

Results for the state elections (held about a week back) in Maharashtra, where I reside, are out. The alliance between Congress and Nationalist Congress Party has won more than 140 seats out of a total of 288 seats, followed by the 90-odd seats of the alliance between Shiv Sena (SS) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

As was the case in the general elections in Maharashtra in April this year, this time too the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) (the group of political people headed by Raj Thackeray that split from Shiv Sena about three years back), has got many votes, a predominant part of which would have otherwise gone to the SS-BJP alliance. I have no doubt in my mind that once aged and ailing Bal Thackeray (the chief of SS) passes away in the near or far future there will be an exodus of political workers from SS to MNS and the elections after that will have a MNS-BJP-SS alliance that will make it difficult for Congress-NCP alliance to get away with anything and everything. Not that MNS-BJP will be any less worse than Congress-NCP when in power. But at least the growing arrogance of Congress-NCP will diminish.

Growing arrogance of political parties is a real threat when a particular party and its alliance partners win elections more than once. People should have voting sense and never vote for the same party twice. In Maharashtra, Congress-NCP have managed to win a majority because of the split of opposition votes betweeen SS-BJP and MNS. In Haryana, Congress found it very difficult to scrape through as it got a tough fight from INLD, an opposition party that was not affected by any split of opposition votes.

Arrogance of political parties can be easily curbed if people vote for non-party contestants. That is, independents. Independents are not free of problems but at least they are not proven dangers that most political parties are. I have written about my rationale in two posts in April (here and here).

This time around, in Maharashtra's elections, I voted for a 27-year old Ravindra Gawai, an independent contestant. Obviously, I was not expecting him to win because it is so evident that a majority of people still go out and vote for parties. He did not win.

Who won then? See the results for my constituency in the table below. A candidate from Congress, Ramesh Thakur, won. This Ramesh Thakur is a sophisticated thug who has grabbed land illegally and who runs illegal mining operations in the hills adjoining the forest area in my constituency and surrounding areas. People voted for Congress having images of Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Manmohan Singh in mind and ended up giving way too much political power to a thug in their own backyards! Extremely unfortunate.

Table of the results of my consitutency taken from http://eciresults.nic.in/ConstituencywiseS13160.htm

Maharashtra - Kandivali East Result Declared Candidate Party Votes THAKUR RAMESH SINGH Indian National Congress 50138 JAIPRAKASH THAKUR Bharatiya Janata Party 38832 PAWAR VINOD TUKARAM Maharashtra Navnirman sena 24091 BANSODE RAVI BHIKAJI Bahujan Samaj Party 950 HARIHAR KALIKA YADAV Republican Party of India (A) 644 GURUDAS RAMDAS KHAIRNAR Independent 574 SANCHIT SUBHASH BORADE Independent 574 MD. SALIM HASHAM BUKHARI Independent 295 SHAIKH FAIYAZ AHMED Independent 221 NAMDEO CHANDRARAO KAMBLE Independent 187 ARUN K. KADAM Independent 176 GAWAI RAVINDRA UTTAM Independent 144 Last Updated at 3:48 PM On 22/10/2009

life in general: goondaism recycled

Exactly a week back, fanatic followers of Raj Thackeray (Raj T), the founder of the split faction of Shiv Sena (SS), Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), brutally attacked some Railways-exams' giving students who had come from outside Bombay for giving the exams. Shocking though it was to see it happen, it was not the first time Raj T was stage managing such attacks against north Indians. This has been happening since about two years now. But this time the hue and cry was so much that next day, Raj T was arrested by the police and kept in the police lock-up for 24 hours. This was a simple implementation of the rule of the law and MNS hooligans went on a rampage holding Bombay, Thane, Nasik, Nagpur and Pune cities to ransom.
My heart goes out to the ones who, in the past many months, have been injured—or whose shops/property have been damaged—by MNS goons. But I don't get much shocked anymore by such violence. This is India's—and in this particular case—Bombay's and Maharashtra's ugly truth.
Raj T and his MNS have now replaced SS in such violent and extortionist techniques. Shiv Sena, under an ailing and aged Bal Thackeray is more or less dead now. The rowdyism of SS is now the rowdyism of MNS. Raj T is the son of Shrikant Thackeray (Bal T's brother) and Kunda (sister of Bal T's wife Meena).
During 1966-7, Bal Thackeray, and his newly-formed Shiv Sena, rose in prominence due to their violent agitation against south Indians. Just like Raj T is now building his political capital with the huge Maharashtrian voter base using the loss of jobs for locals due to north Indians, so had Bal Thackeray used the same excuse (but against south Indians) to build his fledgling SS into a larger political party. Subtle, yet shameless, encouragement and handing out respect to such goon parties is given by Congress party to Bal T in the 1960s and 70s and now Congress-Nationalist Congress Party alliance to Raj T. The Bombay police, and Maharasthra police, are, as always, puppets in the hands of the ruling parties (be it Congress-NCP, or SS-BJP, or in the future a potential MNS-BJP alliance).
The south/north Indians issue is just a ploy to gain political capital and Bal T never meant it to be permanent nor does Raj T mean it to be now. Sooner or later, these goons come back to Hindu identity politics. Two decades after his first agitation, Bal T, turned his violence against Muslims (the horrendous SS violence on Muslims in January 1993). I do not rule out Raj T doing the same 5-10-15-20 years from now. Such is one of India's ugly faces. The mindless violent reaction that one is currently seeing in Bihar and Jharkhand to MNS is another one. In fact, it is not just Bombay and Maharashtra where one such sees dirty political games. Go to Madras, Bangalore, Calcutta, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Baroda, Surat, Pune etc and one gets to see the non-locals being treated unpleasantly.

(An update on the above is in my 2 Nov '08 post)