Mostly sweet & a bit bitter

Now that the dust has settled and the picture clearer, I feel vindicated following my earlier post a day before I cast my vote in Bangalore. The only party who could morally lay claim to govern India has been chosen by an incredible & unexpected majority of voters right across the country. My delight is obvious and I can only hope now that the likes of Milind Deora, Sachin Pilot, Shashi Tharoor & P. Chidambaram provide strong leadership and accellerate reforms in this country. I am especially excited at seeing the likes of these gentlemen representing India at home & abroad. Like our cricket team, our politics too seems to be approaching a period of renaissance and I can only feel optimistic about the future.

An unsurprising outcome though which has left a bitter aftertaste for me are the results in my state of Karnataka and especially in my city of Bangalore. All 3 seats contested in Urban Bangalore have been won by the BJP and Karnataka saw the BJP record its best performance among any states in the country! When did my home become saffron? I have no idea. Despite recent events where Hindu fascist groups were on the rampage, the people in Bangalore felt it better to side with a militant ideology. Of course, the Congress did no favours to itself here by putting together a shockingly shoddy and disorganised campaign. However, I am still disappointed and feel some of the more liberal reforms this city needs (longer hours for bars, restaurants etc, abolishing ridiculous bans on creative expression, lowering atrociously high excise duties on foreign products etc etc) will not now happen. It seems like the citizens of Bangalore are leaning increasingly to the Right and that more than anything is the worrying bit. For now, I'll comfort myself with the numerous images of our Prime Minister waving the V sign with "Singh is King" playing in the background! :-)