Silver lining from Bihar Elections

Politics has always interested me and I closely follow political developments. Many incidents stun me like how Vajpayee led NDA lost power or even how Congress managed to gain so much ground in last elections. Today's development has been equally surprising to me, Nitish Kumar reigning in with a land-slide win.
Most election results are quite understandable with elections being won by money, muscle power or cast/religion equation. This is a sad situation but this has been the way all along since educated people would hardly vote and the class of people who would vote, would easily fall for any of above. But, I guess with the advent of news channels slowly people are waking up to realty. They now at least can figure out the lesser evil. I think that is how you can explain even with adversaries of likes Lalu Prasad who in muscle power can fight naxals or Ram Vilas Paswan whose paper on cast/religion calculations can be considered a worthy study in advance mathematics or prince charming Rahul biting the dust against Nitish Kumar.
I believe media in general has played a huge role in making people aware of faces behind the masks. For me there definitely is a silver-lining in Bihar's election results that voter today isn't as blind as it used to be 15-20yrs back and although slowly it is making the right choices but still a long way to go.

Jaane bhi do yaaro

As the curtains are drawn on the year's biggest entertainment extravaganza, the action does not seem to stop any time soon. IPL's growth has been phenomenal not only it has attracted the best talent from all quarters but also conjured the best possible resources. But, a rise which could be any organization's envy has been coupled with some or the other controversy right from the start. In the first year it was dressing up of cheer-leaders, the second IPL being played in foreign country to guard against any untoward incident but could not escape the wrath of a certain self-claimed impersonator. But, third edition of tournament has beaten all the previous records, started with upsetting our beloved neighbour but towards the end brought large chunks of Indian high-flyer to ground.
If there is one person who is to be credited with IPL's success it can only be Lalit Modi, IPL has been in totality is his baby with him making more appearance than even Sachin Tendulkar. In my view, what Steve Jobs is to Apple likewise Modi is to IPL.
It is now amply clear that IPL's behind the scenes deals are as murkier as it could get. The latest controversy which has been on for over three weeks now has engulfed Shashi Tharoor, a decent but naive politician, Lalit Modi, N Shreenivasan, owner of CSK, Prafulla Patel and scores of other businessmen and politicians where each one swearing in the name truth to be on the right side of law but all of us have fair idea about everyone's position.
Seeing all this drama, what immediately comes to my mind is Jaane bhi do Yaaro, a dark comedy about the Indian political scenario. What we are witnessing now must be climax of film where a suitable deal is being worked out that takes care of all the deal-makers interest abjuring to any type of ethics. I wonder among all this falling off how difficult it is to build large organizations without any serious allegations around it. I think it is a herculean of a task of creating something like Tatas anyways that would be a completely separate topic.

Confused ideology

BJP used to be a party with a difference. A party of leaders with clean image, strong national views and learned. Leaders like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L. K. Advani, M. M. Joshi talked sense that could strike chord with the educated and frustrated lot. Eventually they could get their hand on top job. Their performance was marginally better in comparison to their predecessors. They had all bright next rung leaders as in Arun Jaitly, Sushma Swaraj, Pramod Mahajan and at times it felt this party is going to stay on top for quite some time.
But, somewhere along the line they seem to have lost their focus. It became evident with their defeat in 2004 elections. Since then they never seemed to be on the recovery path. Apart from their forte Gujarat and couple of other places, BJP has lost a lot of ground. Now they seem complete directionless. Every now and then they would make sensational comment about radical Hinduism and end up clarifying it rest of the time. At some point, they were people with ideology but now they seem to be confused. The latest example being all turmoil occurred with Jaswant Singh's book. The book claims to be a work of research. It does not hypothesize or postulate anything, it claims to be based on facts. I am not vouching for his book nor do I share same views on him but I definitely do not consider it anti-national or for that matter proponent of any ideology. BJP seems to have different thinking. They claim their heroes and ideology is betrayed by this. I fail to understand when the book does not propose any ideology how come it betrays other and the heroes it downs are the ones who banned BJP's mother organization (RSS). After spending decades in party, shaping its policies and thinking; the treatment mooted out to Jaswant Singh does not seem to be right. In a way it seems stupid of party to do such a thing. The top leaders are shying away from taking responsibility of ousting Singh, it just does not seem to be a wise decision.
Party has continuously lost ground among masses, there is hardly any star leader to take guard at top after L K Advani. This is a time when they should unite themselves and resurrect the party because country not only needs a stable government but also a united and firm opposition which can only lead their way back to top.