Well, most of the people are fools in these terms. Rather long term fools. If not they would have never been voting for reservation of their castes but for those who can actually make the opportunities ample enough for everyone.
Try this simple mental exercise : One candidate says they will give reservation to Jatts in IITs and another says he will open ten new IITs in northern India. Who do you think will get votes in Haryana?
PS: This is not an India specific problem. It is world-wide problem. India has its own India-flavoured version of it. Everyone is susceptible for manipulation.
Yep. Vote bank politics is a bane of the country.
Here is another mental 'gymnastics'. Which is better if this were 2008:
1. A Rafale deal concluded without MMRCA. IAF was searching for more Mirages, they could have tried Rafales and be done with it. In 2005 or 6 we knew we were to go with a world-class non-Russian fighter. We could have done a simple initial govt to govt deal like we did later with a option for further orders after Dassault has trained partners in India.
2. Go through the circus of a competition and select a fighter and again dance around it on ToT and what not and then reject all the deal to finally go via Govt to Govt.
No politician in 2008 would have attempted this? Why? Fear of corruption charges! Plain and simple! No tender, no competition means corruption suspicion. No politician would attempt it or take risk for it in 2008.
This part is wrong. The reason why we go for tenders is because we do not know what's out there.
Half the time the military creates requirements that are outdated. Through tenders, they send out RFIs and the vendors tell the forces what they have, and RFPs are created based on that.
In 2008, the IAF had no clue which western fighter is better. There is no standard to judge that in India. But through competition, all the vendors show off the best they have in order to win.
That's why all future deals will be through tenders for both price discovery and tech discovery, but the final deal will be GTG with L1 after the tender is scrapped.
Corruption in India is such a sensitive topic that we go overboard about it... and forget everything apart from that. I would rather have a controlled corruption but timely delivery. How many Indians will vote for a person who says that I will ensure timely completion of projects but there might be some corruption in it. No one ever.
In China, before their current crackdown on corruption, they actually followed this policy. Their priority was growth and results. Corruption was controlled but no one went overboard with bureaucratic controls to remove it while hampering results.
And in India? I believe in 2012, people were actually harping about why a Jan-Lok-Pal is not being implemented. Another layer of bureaucratic control.
No, you can't have a system where a little bit of corruption is okay. Because there's nobody drawing the "do-not-cross" lines. If even a little bit of corruption happens, then that deal was compromised from the start, and there's no way we are getting what we are paying for.
China is extremely corrupt. We do not have their level of corruption, and we shouldn't either. The Chinese corruption has no checks and balances, there are no "do-not-cross" lines anywhere. That's why they can send thousands of people into work camps for organ harvesting without any legal recourse for the people.
Another example: The other day I was reading about PV Narasimha Rao, the only real PM India had in long long time, that too by accident. When I asked my 'elders' the only thing they remembered was JMM bribery case, St. Kitts, Lakkhu Bhai Pathak. No one, not a single person remembered his contributions around Indian economic liberalization or his dealing of the financial crisis. After that I have lost any and every hope in 'voters' of India. May be they god damn deserve all the wrong treatment they get in India. Truely, people get the leaders they deserve not the ones they need.
This is a good thing. When parties know that people only remember scams and not the good things they do, then scams are the standards that the parties will be judged on. That's why NDA has been so clean. And that's also why Modi has also been so clean.
If you only see the good and stop seeing the bad, then the ones doing the bad things will get away with it. That's basically being blind to what's happening around you.
The point is, if a party does a good job, that was their job anyway. But if a party does bad stuff, then they should be remembered and targeted for it.
Otherwise a party that's been bad will simply come up and say, "Look, we did some good things in the past, so vote for us. Forget about the bad stuff we have done now". That's completely unacceptable.
There are plenty of criminals who also resort to charity and raise a curtain to hide all their filth. But we should always remember that filth first.
Let history remember the good things done. In 50 years, Narasimha Rao may get his own statue.
