Last evening, my neighbour, who is also the president of the local resident's welfare association, briefly dropped in to hand over my mother's voting chit. And dropped in a line asking us to vote for a particular party. "This guy has done excellent work in his previous term as MLA", he said, "and we'll all benefit if he is gets elected".

So what I ( Read more... )

There are two notable things regarding the ongoing elections in Karnataka. The first is the presence of a large number of real estate developers in the elections. The second is the virtual non-existence of corruption, rather the removal of it, in party manifestos. These two points, I believe, are not independent. Under the current system, political ( Read more... )

Looking around the whitefield-krishnarajapuram area, one gets the feeling that the BJP is strong in these parts. The area is dotted with advertisements by the party, and the local party office is also quite prominent. No other party has any sort of visible presence here, and considering that this area is semi-urban and has a large number of Reddys ( Read more... )

"Bangalore South is not as Brahmin-dominated as you think", Rajeev Gowda had told me about two years back. "There are an equal number of Vokkaligas here. So I do have good chances of winning". Unfortunately for Prof. Gowda, Basavanagudi, where he lives, is currently represented by former mayor K Chandrashekar, another Congress Vokkaliga.

As far as ( Read more... )

If reports earlier in the day by TV 9 are to be believed, the BJP has finalised its candidates for the 28 constituencies in Bangalore. On the whole, they seem to have done a decent job of it, though it was widely reported that there was a lot of infighting and lobbying. The chief cause for concern, however, is that a number of realtors have been ( Read more... )

Starting today, i hope to write a series of posts on my blog covering the Karnataka elections, which are scheduled to be held on May 10, 16 and 22. What makes this elections more interesting is that they are going to be held according to new constituencies which were drawn up by the Justice Kuldip Singh Commission. The Congress tried to push the ( Read more... )

There has been no shortage of conspiracy theories regarding the finance minister's announcement of the Rs. 60000 crore farm loan waiver. Let me add one more theory to it.

According to a survey done by the Business Standard, which got published today, the total outstanding bad farm debt in the books of commercial banks totals Rs. 11000 Crore. The ( Read more... )

That for five straight years in a row, Lalu's budget has been significantly superior to Chidu's

It's ridiculous that the swamis of the mutts in Udupi are fighting in public like this. They are generally well-respected figures and thousands come to fall at their feet (note: wtihout touching them) every year. In this context, it's important for these swamis to set an example for their followers.

Instead they go about fighting over some ( Read more... )

Two days to go for counting and declaration of results. I hereby stick my neck out and make my prediction. Modi will win. And I don't think ideology has much to do with it.

After Krishna and Chandrababu lost in 2004, and PVN got mauled in 1996, it has fashionable to say that development won't win elections. I think it has more to do with impact of ( Read more... )