Yeh Dilli hain mere yaar.!! In my 18 months of stay at Delhi, there are many things that were memorable. They range from 6 rupees Tandoori roti, the under nutritioned rickshaw pullers, the angry car drivers, noisy CNG buses to high flying Thiranga at the Connaught Place, the Republic Day parade. Apart from these, the omnipresent Paneer made the cuisines exciting as well as boring. One thing that I noticed in Delhi is its unrelenting romance with power and politics. Power is to Delhi what money is to Mumbai or tech is to Bengaluru. I understood it within the first three months of my stay there, when I saw a homeopathy doctor with a revolver tucked to his `90s style trouser.
This romance of Delhi with power and politics is what has made the current assembly elections the cynosure of all the happenings in the country (atleast w. r. t. politics). The campaign for the election was high octane with BJP coming with full force to counter the "Muffler Man". All is done, voting is over. Results are awaited. Exit polls are showing a majority to AAP. If the exit polls turn out to be true then this would come as a major embarrassment to the ruling BJP. Especially to Mr. Shah who used lots of strategies to counter the AAP's influence.
Ironically, I think, one of these strategies backfired fatally to Mr. Shah, and that was the induction of Ms. Bedi to the party and making her the CM candidate. One of the cartoons in "The Hindu" rightly depicted this irony, the arrows fired by BJP at AAP, manifested as feathers on the AAP's Gandhi Topi. I can't say that Ms Bedi would turn out badly in politics but to her merit I think she should have been given some more time to understand the intricacies of politics before she was anointed as the CM candidate. Her speeches have not been influential, rather have been dampener, but her credentials and experience in bureaucracy provide right pedigree to turn her into a good politician. Time is all she needs.
Coming back to the elections, politics of Delhi has some considerable influence on rest of India and a defeat in this election would come as a timely wake up call to the BJP and would make it to relook at its 9 months rule. Though the govt has taken a lots of right steps but there are some missteps too. A defeat here would mean a more vigilant govt = more development steps+ curbing fringe Hindutva elements - rhetoric talk.
I would personally want AK and AAP to come out as victorious. Yes, AK fumbled the first time, but he seems to have learnt from his anarchist phase of life that politics is not about rhetoric talk. As is the case with Ms. Bedi, time is all AK needs. Time on the political high seat. Has Delhi given both AK and Ms. Bedi the time they need?
This romance of Delhi with power and politics is what has made the current assembly elections the cynosure of all the happenings in the country (atleast w. r. t. politics). The campaign for the election was high octane with BJP coming with full force to counter the "Muffler Man". All is done, voting is over. Results are awaited. Exit polls are showing a majority to AAP. If the exit polls turn out to be true then this would come as a major embarrassment to the ruling BJP. Especially to Mr. Shah who used lots of strategies to counter the AAP's influence.
Ironically, I think, one of these strategies backfired fatally to Mr. Shah, and that was the induction of Ms. Bedi to the party and making her the CM candidate. One of the cartoons in "The Hindu" rightly depicted this irony, the arrows fired by BJP at AAP, manifested as feathers on the AAP's Gandhi Topi. I can't say that Ms Bedi would turn out badly in politics but to her merit I think she should have been given some more time to understand the intricacies of politics before she was anointed as the CM candidate. Her speeches have not been influential, rather have been dampener, but her credentials and experience in bureaucracy provide right pedigree to turn her into a good politician. Time is all she needs.
Coming back to the elections, politics of Delhi has some considerable influence on rest of India and a defeat in this election would come as a timely wake up call to the BJP and would make it to relook at its 9 months rule. Though the govt has taken a lots of right steps but there are some missteps too. A defeat here would mean a more vigilant govt = more development steps+ curbing fringe Hindutva elements - rhetoric talk.
I would personally want AK and AAP to come out as victorious. Yes, AK fumbled the first time, but he seems to have learnt from his anarchist phase of life that politics is not about rhetoric talk. As is the case with Ms. Bedi, time is all AK needs. Time on the political high seat. Has Delhi given both AK and Ms. Bedi the time they need?
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