My Take On The Indian Election Results

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I want to write a quick post about the Indian election results. I will just jot down my thoughts here in this post.

• Very glad that the divisive BJP was trounced. I just hope that the Indian electorate bury them completely, rendering them insignificant in the Indian politics. Unless that happens, the danger is always there. We saw what they can do even if they have power only at the state level. Karnataka is a very good example.
• Glad that the communist parties got knocked off. I wanted them to learn a lesson for what they did in West Bengal.
• But, sad that Congress is emboldened by big numbers. In fact, Congress party is back in power because their allies (especially on the left side of the economic spectrum) kept them grounded. An emboldened congress party with smaller number of allies to rely on is going to be a disaster. I won't be surprised if they face a fate similar to India shining NDA in the next parliamentaty elections.
• It is important for Congress party to realize that they won so many seats not because of their economic liberalization programs but because of the welfare programs. The tremendous growth achieved by India in the past few years has no relevance in their victory. It is the welfare programs like loan waivers, NREGA, Sachar Committee Report, OBC reservations, etc.. got them the crucial votes.
• Just because they have posted big wins in UP by going alone, they should get cocky and use a similar playbook in other states. They will lose big time. For example, if they try to go alone in Maharashtra, there is a good chance for Hindu fundamentalists groups to get power. Even though NCP has lesser number of sheets, they vote share is comparable to that of Congress party.
• I just hope that Chidambaram and Montek Singh Ahluwalia are kept out of Finance Ministry. I don't want people who believe in per capita rights to pollution control our country's coffers.
• It is important for Rahul Gandhi's to build upon the youth vote they got and slowly wean them away from facist parties.

Anyhow, these are my initial thoughts on the election results. Good luck to Dr. Singh and his government and I hope they do well and help bridge the class divide in the country.

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Welcome to Krish On Politics 2.0

I have gone into a long hiatus when it comes to political blogging. For the past one year, I had my hands full in both my personal and professional lives and gave up on political blogging totally. Since I am slowly getting everything under control, I am planning to go for another version of my political blog, Krish On Politics 2.0.

Those of you who had followed my rants in the past know that I am an advocate of liberal and progressive politics. I will continue to do it but with less rhetoric and more substance. In my previous avatar, I focussed on spewing venom on social conservatives and economic right wingers. In the past one year, the world (at least, the ones that matter to me personally) has changed considerably. US has elected Barack Obama as their President and Indian electorate has denied a chance to fundamentalist BJP to take a crack at governance. For the next 4-5 years, I am not worried about religious bigots screwing up with governance. The crash of economy has finally knocked people into senses and made them realize that the free market ideals advocated by the people on the right are narrow, ideology based, commonsense defying rhetorical nonsense that drove down prices artificially, lead to overconsumption, drove people in hordes to get into the debt trap and, finally, sucked out the tax payers money to protect the brains behind such an arrogant, self serving, threat based ideology of right wing capitalism. There is a new world order and people around the world are realizing how this approach by right wing zealots had driven the world to the brink of bankruptcy. People are more aware now and they are less threatened by the wrong and vicious propaganda using the terms like socialism and communism to keep them on leash.

Towards the end of the previous version of my political blog, I was talking about my rudimentary economic philosophy, which I called Sensible Capitalism, still based on the very idea of greed but advocating the progressive ideals of equality and fairness. I was pushing it as a more working solution than the Bill Gates' idea of creative capitalism which had altruism as its central dogma. Anything that has a tinge of altruism will not open up the imagination of people whose neural system is tuned towards the right side of the political spectrum. Rather, in the sensible capitalism approach, we will realize the self serving value of certain actions which were dismissed in the past as altruistic. I strongly feel that such an approach to capitalism has a much better chances of succeeding than the one with altruism wrapped all over it.

I can give an example of how the idea of sensible capitalism differs from the greed based unfettered free market system promoted by our friends on the right. Let us take the case of India where more than 2/3 of the population live in rural areas in an impoverished state. If we ask our self proclaimed economics professor in India, he will suggest that we eliminate all rural areas and build 100 designer cities that will make all the social problems go away. Folks whose neural capacity is not demented will immediately see the bullshit value in this talk and they will immediately understand how this is not doable in a democratic country. Instead, in the sensible capitalistic approach, we will treat this rural population as a market waiting to be captured and find out ways to reach them. A good example will be Unilever's Shakthi Programme. Micro Finance is another way to achieve the same thing. In the Sensible Capitalistic approach, we learn from Neuroscience that both the idea of Free Minds and that of Blank Slate are not valid and we will encourage smart government regulations that will keep the market forces in check without trampling innovation. Neither the idea of unfettered free market system nor the idea of complete government control are valid. We have seen the effects of former in United States and the effects of latter in the license raj period of India. What is actually needed is a non-ideology based solution that de-regulates certain segments of the markets if it is going to help spur innovation and regulate the segments that is going out of control crippling the innovation and freedom. The idea is still rudimentary in me as I am not an economist or someone who ran into an Economics Dept. to escape rain. But I will be using my understanding of scientific methods while approaching the socio-economic issues. Let us see how far it gets. For the past one year, I have been following Umair Haque of Havas Media Lab and his radical ideas to foster innovation. Some of his thoughts align closer to mine and I will be quoting him more in this version of my blog.

It doesn't mean that I won't be talking about the social conservatives and religious fundamentalists in this version of my political blog. I will definitely be talking about it but I might keep down the rhetoric a bit.

Few housekeeping stuff before I jump in to do my posts

• The frequency might be lower than the previous version of my blog
  
• You have to be registered to post comments. You can use either your Google Account or OpenID to comment on the posts. I believe in freedom of speech and expression but I also believe in taking responsibility for it. If you don't have the balls to own up what you say, then don't say anything here because it crosses the freedom of speech/expression limits.
  
• As I did in the previous version of the political blog, I will bring in some of the thought leaders to post on topics of their interest. Any attempt to abuse them will not be tolerated.
  
• As usual, any thoughts expressed by me are mine alone. Neither my family or any organizations to which I am personally or professionally attached are not responsible for my thoughts expressed here. Also, I am not responsible for the comments posted by others and the guest posts made by others. You have to track down those individuals and take up any issues that might arise from their posts. I might take down some comments that are abusive and are crossing the limits of fair use, if there are any complaints.
  
• As usual, this site and my thoughts will evolve with time.
  

Finally, here is a call to my marketing team. The long hiatus has brought down the regular visitors to my political blog. I hope you guys take it upon yourselves to bring the traffic back to levels it was before I stopped writing. Good Night and Good Luck.