Eating is an agricultural act - Wendell Berry

Saturday, April 02, 2011

jaya ho!

this is election time in TN again.
in 2006, i had plumped for lok paritran. they are dead and gone.

i had written an open letter to 'captain' vijaykanth in 2006, hoping to see a new start in politics.
his performance, impressive as it was, in the 2 elections made it apparent that he was not going to make it on his own. a coalition was necessary for his survival.
happy to note that he made the appropriate choice.

i will be glad to see the end of DMK and karunanidhi and will be backing jayalalitha and the AIADMK coalition.
i think it will make sense for her to groom vijaykanth as her successor and hand over the reins of AIADMK to him after her time.

somehow, it does seem that a rotating system of political coalitions winning the elections is the norm.
so be it.

4 comments:

madhavi said...

don't know which crazy one is better - it seems like we as voters have poor choices -
madhavi

Pakka said...

The question is not which ruler is better, rather should we be ruled at all.

Surio said...

Since you seem to be still harbouring some delusions, I am going to point out, that we live under a kleptocratic, mercantilistic, autocratic plutocracy all over the World (My recent posts on trading talk about this, if you haven't read it already).

You may have read the Chapter on the futility (stupidity) of voting from the Freakonomics book, which was itself influenced by the shocking findings of this Swiss(!!) paper.

And just before some misguided idiot from around here starts defending the greatness of the vote and the greatness and brilliance of "Indian" democracy (either without or even after reading that links), I will submit my theory to him that it is precisely that stupid imported (from the great US of ******* A) ideology which has bred this freebie culture of Indian politics today. Sample this from the above news article:


In the old days, there were more pragmatic incentives to vote. Political parties regularly paid voters $5 or $10 to cast the proper ballot; sometimes payment came in the form of a keg of whiskey, a barrel of flour or, in the case of an 1890 New Hampshire Congressional race, a live pig.
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For all the talk of how people "vote their pocketbooks," the Swiss study suggests that we may be driven to vote less by a financial incentive than a social one. It may be that the most valuable payoff of voting is simply being seen at the polling place by your friends or co-workers.


This is even more relevant rurally than it is in those "great" urban pockets.

"Small is beautiful" economics, Zindabad.

csm said...

surio - thanks for pointing.
i am still going to make it a point to vote.
obviously the ideal system would be those which tend towards least governance. till that happens, we shall do what we have to...