If there was a general election tommorow, who would you vote for?

[DomainK]

Interesting to see conflicts in BJP at the far sight of power. Congress may be right. BJP will self destruct.

[someone]

Interesting to see conflicts in BJP at the far sight of power. Congress may be right. BJP will self destruct.

It's the other way around. Will Congress self-destruct completely? Of course, with the recent events, there has been some damage to the Congress party. So this 2014 elections is again going to be about Congress losing it rather than opponents winning it. Congress needs to get their act straighten up and undergo damage limitation. If only the India public voted on the base of development, food, economy instead of the religion, India would be much better today with better leaders. Actually, it's gonna interesting to see how many people vote especially the youths, so the more people vote, the better it is for the country and perhaps damaging for Congress.

[JaFanatic]

[Sachin=GOD]

Here's a woman who is certainly going to be one of the BJP's star pracharaks in the next elections: Change of role, anyone? Poonam Saxena, Hindustan Times April 06, 2013

When Smriti Irani, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s recently appointed vice president, was still a schoolgirl in Delhi, her parents invited an astrologer to predict their three daughters’ futures. He declared that while her two younger sisters would do all right, “badi ladki ka kuchh nahin hoga.” Stung, Smriti told him, “Check on me ten years later!” Her parents — her half-Punjabi half-Maharashtrian father and Bengali-Assamese mother — had no big dreams for her either; they just wanted her to get married to a good boy. But Smriti had other ideas. Growing up in Delhi, the self-confessed quiet bookworm wanted to become a civil servant or a journalist. Her father thought that neither profession would suit her. So she did the next best thing she could think of. She packed her bags and left for Mumbai, because it was, she says, “the city of possibilities.” Then adds, with a laugh, “But the day I left, the only thing certain was my failure.” And it certainly did seem like that. Smriti decided to enter the Miss India contest (“I thought free mein grooming bhi ho jayega!”), where nobody thought she would win (she didn’t). But even there, she says she told the other contestants, “In the years to come, you will talk about me, not the winner!” No one knows what that year’s beauty queen, Lymaraina D’Souza, is upto these days, but you can hardly say the same for Smriti. Back then, though, nothing seemed to go right for her. She would turn up for TV auditions (someone at the Miss India contest had told her she was a natural in front of the camera) and keep getting rejected. Meanwhile, she had a loan — she had borrowed money from her father — to pay off. She took the first job she could find — clearing tables and cleaning the floor at a new McDonald’s in Bandra. “All I wanted at that point was to graduate to the next level where I would be the one standing and welcoming guests to McDonald’s. That meant more money.” Her first TV break came when she got a call from the producer of a show called Bakeman’s Ooh La La. “The regular anchor, Neelam, had fallen ill, so I was asked to fill in,” she recalls. That’s where TV producer Shobha Kapoor (Ekta Kapoor’s mother) spotted her. One thing led to another and Smriti was signed on to play the lead role of Tulsi in the Hindi serial, Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi. But the director and crew took one look at her and decided she must have come to audition for the role of a bai or some other inconsequential character. “‘You can’t possibly be playing Tulsi!’ they told me,” says Smriti. Kyunki… ran for eight years and Smriti became India’s most famous television actress even as her character, Tulsi, became India’s most loved bahu. She says she never saw even a single episode of the serial though: “I was working 20-hour shifts! Where was the time?” Shailaja Kejriwal, then the executive producer on the show, explains the Tulsi phenomenon. “Tulsi became the emerging middle class Indian woman, the kind of person who was “safely pretty” (pleasant but not desirable by others), who was a good but not docile bahu, and someone who would rather save a domestic situation than think of herself. Everyone wanted Tulsi to be their daughter or sister or daughter-in-law.” Tulsi was a role tailormade made for an aspiring woman politician’s fast-track entry into politics. POLITICAL BEGINNINGS In 2003 (Kyunki… was still at its peak), Smriti joined the BJP, which was then in the process of inducting high-profile showbiz stars into its fold. Why did she choose the BJP though? “I come from a family of swayamsevaks,” reveals Smriti, “though that’s probably a bad name in your paper! My maternal grandfather was a swayamsevak. My mother was a karyakarta and had an association with the Jan Sangh. It’s just that no one from my family had been office bearers or got into electoral politics. But I thought that if one wanted to bring about genuine change, this was the way to go.” Her rise in the party has been steady and swift. In 2004, she was made the vice president of the Maharashtra Youth Wing. In 2010, she became the all-India president of the BJP Mahila Morcha. And in 2011, she became a Rajya Sabha member from Gujarat. But Smriti faced what was probably her biggest political challenge within just a year of joining the party: the BJP fielded her against the Congress’s Kapil Sibal in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections in Chandni Chowk. She lost. But Smriti claims that that one election was worth ten years of political experience. “Many people wrote me off after that,” she says. “But I thought differently. I was not going to get disheartened by one initial hiccup. I think this attitude of mine comes from Rudyard Kipling, an influence right from childhood.” Would she contest the seat again in the next election? In fact, it is being said that with her star on the ascendant, she could even be a future ministerial candidate. Smriti moves smoothly into formal partyspeak: “I’m already a Rajya Sabha member. What the future holds for me depends on what the party wants me to do. Speculation is part of political life, especially given the expanse of the media today. But the idea is not to fuel speculation for personal gain. The idea is to project your party. I have never used the media to propagate anything about my political future. I have kept a low profile for a decade!”That is certainly not true any longer. For the last year or so, Smriti has been one of the BJP's most visible faces in media interactions, holding her own forcefully in noisy TV political debates, always with her bindi, sindoor and sari — or some would say, Bharatiya nari image — intact. Her most infamous encounter was with the Congress’ Sanjay Nirupam on ABP News where the latter remarked, ‘Aap to TV pe thumke lagati thi, aaj chunavi vishleshak ban gayeen.’ Smriti, in turn, accused Sanjay Nirupam of having a ‘sadak ka goonda’ attitude. ABP News anchor Kishore Ajwani who moderated that particular debate, says of her television style: “She makes good use of TV and I think she realizes that it can be an impact multiplier for a politician. Politicians try to use the limitation of time on TV to their advantage by outshouting the other side and she has been quick to learn that too.” In her defence, Smriti points out, “I am naturally argumentative!” GROWING IN THE PARTY These days of course, she is known as one of Narendra Modi's most ardent supporters on TV debates. She’s one among a clutch of women politicians batting for Modi on TV, sometimes derisively dubbed the Gujarat leader’s Charlie’s Angels. Smriti is not amused. “It’s a very sexist jibe. How many men would be called something like that?” she asks frostily But ask her why she thinks Modi is the best choice for Prime Minister and once again, she responds with bland formality, “Our Prime Ministerial candidate will be decided by the Parliamentary Board, but yes, I can talk about Modi as a leader. What strikes me about him is his ability to give talent an opportunity.” This is a long way from her stance in 2004 when she attacked him, and demanded his resignation over the Gujarat riots. Political analysts say those were still her greenhorn days. Facing disciplinary action from the party, Smriti withdrew her statement within hours. And now an impenetrable curtain has fallen over that chapter. Today she does all the right things in the BJP. She’s available for party work at all times. (Even years ago, when she was still shooting for Kyunki… but was required to campaign for Vasundhara Raje Scindia in Rajasthan, she would feed her baby — she is married to a Parsi, Zubin Irani, and has two children — catch a flight to Rajasthan, do the campaigning, take a flight back, attend to her baby and then shoot at night for the serial.) She is in demand for rallies and campaigning as she is fluent in Hindi, English, Gujarati, Marathi and Bengali. She is very much part of the BJP's new generation of ambitious, aggressive women leaders. Given the average age of Indian politicians, she’s almost an infant - just 37. So yes, the future does look bright. The astrologer who predicted that Smriti would never make anything of her life clearly wasn’t very good at his job.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/India/Change-of-role-anyone/Article1-1038627.aspx One of the very few TV stars to have made a successful transition to politics.

[Sachin=GOD]

Mathematical models to assess electoral fortunes of UPA, NDA, Third Front in 2014 General Elections

Failed mathematician turned psephologist, Anand Walunjzcki, used highly sophisticated and dubious mathematical models drawing from set theory, differential equations, probability theory and stochastic calculus to estimate the odds of success at the electoral hustings in 2014. It is hoped that the reader is left sufficiently impressed and none the wiser after going through his analysis. 1. NDA: The National Democratic Alliance is the biggest opposition to the ruling Govt in India. It is hoping that a combination of anti-incumbency, promise of good governance, a dash of Hindutva, Modi’s charisma and a push from from key allies will propel it to power at the Center. However, it has to overcome an ever bigger hurdle before that: declaring its Prime Ministerial candidate. This will be the outcome of a highly stochastic and convoluted process, a nether world straddling the occult and the sciences where the likes of Walunjzcki ply their trade. where, x = probability that Narendra Modi is PM candidate, F= Force with which BJP may attract chiller parties defined as F = KN1N2/d2, N1 and N2 are Lok Sabha seats of BJP and chiller parties and d = distance maintained by BJP from extreme Hindutva and K is the RSS constant, Y is a Poisson random variable to model the chaos and disarray within the BJP. PM candidate: The NDA’s Prime Ministerial candidate must be at the intersection of 4 attributes: adherence to Hindutva, dynamism, secularism (can be defined in myriad ways), and must possess the X factor (whatever that means). This obviously places a question mark (make that many many question marks) over the NDA’s choice of PM candidate. 2. UPA: The ruling party UPA predominantly of Congress and consists of other allies. The mathematical equation is given by: where G is a convoluted integral involving the CBI and the smaller allies and Log (NDTV) to the base of 2002 acting as an amplification factor. PM candidate: Though there is confusion about whether Rahul Gandhi will condescend to become the Prime Ministerial candidate out of a sense of noblesse oblige, what is certain is that the eventual candidate has to either have Gandhi genes or be a handpicked nominee of the first family. We have accordingly sketched out a Venn diagram as per Walunjzcki’s specifications: 3. AAP: Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) may not win any seats in the Lok Sabha elections but is expected to be a pain in the ‘you know where’ for all the other parties. Walunjzcki’s Venn diagram illustrates this point more vividly: 4. Third Front: The Third Front is the most complex alliance involving interplay between random variables such as Mulayam Singh, Laloo, and other tiny ‘chillar’ parties which are best modeled as white noise. Describing this alliance mathematically is beyond the scope of Walunjzcki, who never managed to complete his doctorate in applied mathematics. So Walunjzcki has merely flagged the various factors and more sophisticated treatment is deferred to more skilled and capable practitioners of this discipline. Third front’s chances = where x,y,z are the chances of winning of SP, Left and DMK respectively that could keep BSP, TMC and AIADMK out respectively and Px/Py is the probability This complex equation can be simplified by the Walunjzcki theorem as follows: PM candidate: The Venn diagram as to what qualifications are required for a Third Front leader to become a PM is equally complex. It actually does not denote the qualities but the vote bank it stands for. So who shall be the PM candidate for Third Front? Simple. Refer to this Venn diagram.

Link

[Mariyam]

^^^ Who/what are Mahadalits?

[Sachin=GOD]

^I think they are a category of dalits in Bihar...

[saneindian]

^^^ Who/what are Mahadalits?

Nitish Kumar's contribution to Indian polity, basically an attempt to divide the dalit vote. In Bihar there are some 22 castes under SC category with Ram Vilas Paswan's Passi caste (traditionally toddy tappers) being the biggest and politically most powerful. After coming to power, Nitish Kumar in an attempt to have social engineering, created a new category called Mahadalit in which he's put all other 21 castes under SC and excluded the Paswans from the list. Logic being Paswan's usually take all the benefits available to the SCs, hence a new definition was needed to ensure other SC communities also get the benefits under SC quota.

[Mariyam]

Nitish Kumar's contribution to Indian polity, basically an attempt to divide the dalit vote. In Bihar there are some 22 castes under SC category with Ram Vilas Paswan's Passi caste (traditionally toddy tappers) being the biggest and politically most powerful. After coming to power, Nitish Kumar in an attempt to have social engineering, created a new category called Mahadalit in which he's put all other 21 castes under SC and excluded the Paswans from the list. Logic being Paswan's usually take all the benefits available to the SCs, hence a new definition was needed to ensure other SC communities also get the benefits under SC quota.

TFS. That a political parties/ politicians have to regressive social engineering is appalling. The problem with this kind of structuring is that once people have been accorded a certain status, and the associated freebies, it becomes very difficult in the future to rescind these 'benefits'.

[PriyankaSR]

There are limited choices. I don't like Congress but I dislike BJP even more. Too much of a communalist party. So I am gonna go with Congress for now. The only reason I will ever support BJP will be Narendra Modi. But I am only saying this as a person who feels safe under his rule unlike the Muslims.

[CSK Fan]

There are limited choices. I don't like Congress but I dislike BJP even more. Too much of a communalist party. So I am gonna go with Congress for now. The only reason I will ever support BJP will be Narendra Modi. But I am only saying this as a person who feels safe under his rule unlike the Muslims.

+1. BTW, the results of the poll on this thread is very similar of the results of online polls in Pak where PTI was winning all such polls by a huge, huge margin. Adn of course the poll is only for those with internet and most of them are NRIs

[someone]

Seems like the Congress campaign has already started. NAC tells govt: Give job scheme minority focus http://www.asianage.com/india/nac-tells-govt-give-job-scheme-minority-focus-174

[jiggo]

NAC is joke of front headed by none other incompetent Sonia Gandhi. So it's seems Congress is well on it's way to buy the votes of naïve muslim votes by promising jobs that won't exist after general elections are over. These minorities keep getting fooled election after election.

[CSK Fan]

NAC is joke of front headed by none other incompetent Sonia Gandhi. So it's seems Congress is well on it's way to buy the votes of naïve muslim votes by promising jobs that won't exist after general elections are over. These minorities keep getting fooled election after election.

Yes, yes please keep believing that instead of admitting your own failures and you will never ever come to power

[1983-2011]

muslims are only 14% in india, and bjp cheerleaders think that congress comes into power just because of them:hysterical::hysterical: bjp needs to realise that muslims will never vote for a party which has advani, uma bharti, modi and are in bed with outfits like vhp, bajrang dal and their master RSS

[Sachin=GOD]

muslims are only 14% in india' date= and bjp cheerleaders think that congress comes into power just because of them:hysterical::hysterical: bjp needs to realise that muslims will never vote for a party which has advani, uma bharti, modi and are in bed with outfits like vhp, bajrang dal and their master RSS

14% of India's population is a very, very large number when you consider that they don't vote for the BJP and nationally Cong gets the highest % of their votes - that can (and is) easily be the deciding factor in any election.

[jiggo]

Yes' date=' yes please keep believing that instead of admitting your own failures and you will never ever come to power[/quote'] There is nothing to believe, the facts are there. After 60 years of Congress rule, the muslims still lag the nation's other communities. But time and time again gullibility and naïve gives Congress is easy votes.

[gs]

There is nothing to believe, the facts are there. After 60 years of Congress rule, the muslims still lag the nation's other communities. But time and time again gullibility and naïve gives Congress is easy votes.

Hit the nail on the head!

[1983-2011]

Of gains and losses, who's the real winner?

[Clarke]

There is nothing to believe, the facts are there. After 60 years of Congress rule, the muslims still lag the nation's other communities. But time and time again gullibility and naïve gives Congress is easy votes.

Heck, India lags behind most other nations in all major indices including governance. But then you have UPA/INC/Vadra defenders on this forum, what's to expect from the "mango people of the banana republic" ?