Indian government and politics is based on the UK system of government. The central government has more powers, more money than the state governments. The Central Government is the governing authority of a federal union of 28 states and seven union territories, collectively called the Republic of India.
The Parliament of India consists of two houses: the directly-elected 545-member Lok Sabha , the lower house, and the 250-member indirectly-elected and appointed Rajya Sabha, the upper house. The Rajya Sabha members are elected for a term of 6 years by the state legislatures with each state having some quota. There are rolling elections every 2 years, one-third of the seats are up for grabs. To become a member of the Rajya Sabha, a person must be a citizen of India, not less than 30 years of age. He/she should be mentally sound and should not be bankrupt. He/she should also state an affidavit that there are no criminal procedures against him/her. ( That rules me out on two counts....Guess which two ?? ) .
The Finance minister of India presents the annual union budget in the Parliament. The budget has to be passed by the Lok Sabha before it can come into effect on April 1, the start of India's fiscal year. India's union budget for 2005–06, had an estimated outlay of Rs.5,14,344 crores ($118 billion). Earnings from taxes amount to Rs. 2,73,466 crore ($63b). India's fiscal deficit amounts to 4.5% or 1,39,231 crore ($32b). The fiscal deficit is expected to be 3.8% of GDP, by March 2007.
The Parliament seats are divided as shown. Red is Rajya Sabha and Blue is Lok Sabha. UP has 110 ( 80 + 30 ).
Its clear from this graph that 12 states ( with more than 30 LS+RS seats ) hold all the power when it comes to getting a majority. AP, Bihar, Gujrat, Karnataka, MP, Maharashtra, Orissa, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, UP, West Bengal. I suggest you stand for election from one of these states if you want to become Prime Minister of India some day :) . Unfortunately this logic has resulted in the formation of many local state level political parties from these states that play a big role in the formation of government.The heads of all these dumb parties want to be PM some day. Now the two major political parties Congress and BJP have been consistently loosing power to these parties. The so called national parties have not been able to get a majority for a long long time. India has had only coalition governments for a long time thanks to the multi party system.
There are about 250 people in the Indian Parliament with criminal cases pending ranging from murder, rape, extortion, kidnapping, booth capturing, Tax evasion etc. At least 50 of these are hard core criminals. Even Rahul Gandhi have a case of tax evasion pending.
So we come back to the main question.....who will win election 2009 ?
Lets say the Congress, BJP and Third Front(+other parties) divide the votes equally, they all get one third. Then what will happen is the Third Front will split and parties will join either BJP or Congress. This is where these criminals come in. They need to be with the ruling coalition if they want to stay out of jail. Here comes the tricky part .... Now comes the question ....who can get more support, the BJP or Congress. Finally it will come down to money. Seats will be bought and sold like commodity. Now you may ask, which party has more money power on its side ?
The answer is obvious if you saw the recent vibrant Gujrat summit. Gujrat attracted investment of over $ 250 billion. To put that into context ...that's 5 times the tax collected by central government. Both Anil Ambani and Sunil Mittal endorsed Modi as their PM candidate in the presence of Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata and many prominent Industrialists. These Industrialists have to get a friendly and favorable government at any cost, to consolidate their hold on the Indian Consumer in these times of financial crisis. They cant afford to lose. Secondly, they would never openly support a party unless they were pretty fucking sure it will win.
Hence BJP and its allies will come to power this election. Its inevitable.
I dare you to find a flaw in my logic. The Think Tank has spoken .....
Having said all this, I would also like to make it very clear that I do not intend to exercise my vote for as long as I live. I find the entire exercise pointless. The main reason for this is that the Indian electorate has a maximum memory of 2-3 years, how else could you explain the presence of two political parties in a particular state coming to power in alternate elections and never winning two elections consecutively. Ideally, a party that has come to power and failed should never be able to come back to power in the future, but the dum people just don't learn from their mistakes, I have dedicated my life to doing exactly opposite of what the majority does.
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