I am no big fan of either the Congress party or Sheila Dixit, but I am glad the way Delhi Assembly elections have panned out. It makes me proud as a Dilliwala to say that the incumbent party victory in Delhi shows that Delhi-voter is a thinking-voter, not swayed by petty mud-slinging done by various parties to gain voter-brownie-points, and votes based on pure individual candidate merit. Folks who won elections in Delhi, despite a strong any-incumbency wave triggered by the unfortunate November 26 terrorist attack in Mumbai, won purely on the merit of their contributions during the past term in office.
As I said earlier I am not a fan of Sheila Dixit, and I believe she could have done much more for Delhi in the past decade that she spent in office, there are at least a few very basic notable changes she has made to Delhi. She at least tried to address some fundamental problems that Delhi has always faced – water, electricity, education, public transport, etc. As a commoner Dilliwala, here are a few positive changes I noticed in Delhi over the past decade.
- Infrastructure has developed enormously in the form of new roads, flyovers and the gleaming Metro, to keep pace with the city's choking traffic. Delhi also began to get new plush buses - benefiting millions who depend on public transport.
- Delhi's public transport has also gone green and polluting industries have been shifted out of residential areas. (Sheila Dixit earned credit for all these developments although some of these took place because of Supreme Court pressure.)
- Initiation of the “Bhagidari” (parternship) scheme, under which the Delhi administration funds Residents Welfare Associations to carry out local area development.
- Water and electricity shortages have also eased (only eased, by no means vanished) in Delhi. The government has also actively promoted water harvesting and encouraged solar power as a green alternative.
- More educational institutes and universities have developed. The government paid attention to the development of the Indraprastha University as well as technical institutes.
I sincerely hope this victory gives a “thumbs-up” to the ruling Congress party and that the chief minister is encouraged to take on more developmental projects in Delhi over her next term.
5 comments:
I am totally disappointed in Dilliwalas for voting congress into the power again. I do not know the statistics on what was the voting percentage nor the voting trend, but CONgress was mostly benefited from the projects that were planned or started during BJP rule. I somewhat agree that BJP as the main opposition party lacked the clear agenda (or intentionally sidelined by the pseudo-SICKular news media), nonetheless, people have shown that they cannot vote the right candidate/party into the power and are still emotionally attached with the Gandhi clan. To put it in simple words, CONgress supporters have not yet overcome by the rule of the "Raj" and are still "Goro" ke "Gulaam".
Well voting the incumbent government into power for a successive term shows the confidence of the residents of Delhi in Shiela Dixit and her government. But we can agree to disagree on this :-)
Pretty much when one does not have good alternate options available (or projected as not available), we tend to settle with whatever is available. Typical human nature.
It reflects poorly on the Delhi voters as they have not thoughtfully considered all the aspects and issues that had occurred during CONgress rule. For example, most of the terrorist bombings occurred during CONgress rule. Then, we have their divisive and vote-bank politics in identifying an Indian as a muslim or as a hindu to get more votes. The Voters also overlooked their opportunist and immoral alliances just to remain in power. And then, the shameful comment with folded hands from Indian PM that he is just a servant of Madame Sonia (not a servant of Indian nation) until Rahul Gandhi is ready to become a PM. So, when do we starting choosing the PMs based on their lineage.
It also reflects poorly on the media that has a constitutional duty to keep the public informed about issues of utmost importance. Looking at the voting results just tells me that everyone failed.
Yes, we can agree to disagree. Unfortunately, it does not provide the solution to the problem.
That's my 2 cents.
Anti-political party hate blog does not solve much problem either!
I believe in the "Wisdom of the Crowds," which is: collective intelligence of the public on anything is any day smarter that opinion of one or two "experts." If the people of Delhi have voted the Congress party into power, I respect that. And, I strongly feel that Delhi-folks in general are smart enough to see through petty political gimmicks; they saw merit in voting for the Congress party based on the work that it has done on Delhi infrastructure.
It will appear as a hate blog only to those who would read it with a hidden agenda... Just like the one that CONgress have.
As far as the "Wisdom of the Crowd" goes, let's see what was the voting turnout for this election. Umm... well, ECI (Election Commission of India) tells me that it was only 57%. I did get a reference of 51% from another news source, though. I guess, 57% is slightly better than the elections in April 2008 where only 43% of Dilliwala actually went out and voted. Wow!! so much for the collective wisdom of Dilliwala.
I further collected and analyzed the election data from ECI, and out of a total of 10722800 votes in Delhi, CONgress got ONLY 2509196 votes. This is approximately 23.4%. So much so for the democracy!!! and the CONgress win. Definitely, Dilliwalas deserve kudos and a pat on their back.
So, you see the numbers for Wisdom of the Crowds - just 57% this time vs. 43% last elections. This definitely tells us something (and I agree) that folks are smart enough to see through the political gimmicks, which is why, majority of them did not even come out to vote.
And as always, the areas considered highly educated or upper middle class only registered 45% of voting on average.
So, did you vote?
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