the Bengaluru blog

Words don’t convey much. Pictures do. So here is the picture:

(Source: TOI)

Finally Bengaluru is waking up to understanding what it means to vote. And specifically to vote for a absolute majority. It does not matter who won these polls. One thing is certain that people have given a party an absolute majority. So that it can silence its critics and complete its proper functioning for the rest of the term. The BJP is on a roll as far as Karnataka is concerned. And here is why:

• Yeddy – Being a farmer, he can understand farmer’s sentiments. Being a CM he admits to his shortcomings and tries to constantly improve upon them. Being a senior administrator his focus is sharp – develop the city.
• Weak opposition – RV Deshpande commented in today’s newspaper that if Bengaluru’s elite had come in plenty to vote, then Congress would have won. Bullshit. If they had actually come in plenty and voted, Congress in fact would have lost miserably. Who does not know congress ? They are known to introduce those mouth watering ‘economic reforms’ which in effect are just triggers to price rises. RVD, I think you are too old to reason it out this way.
• Dirty politics – We don’t know where DG is hiding now. But HDK was his calm self (does he have much options?) – according to him, if this is what people want, then they must be ready to face price rises, and power cuts just because they elected the BJP ? – read as an absolute majority. Damn you parties, price rise is because of us population. What can they do about it? This world just got affordable to many more people, who have joined your ranks to claim their needs -  power, water, education, transport – so why will things not get costly? Milk dearer by Rs.3, petrol by Rs.2, diesel by Rs.3, so on and so forth. And by the law of the land, since diesel got costlier, like a theorem having corollaries, everything else in India is now proportionately costly. And add to that tax, vat, surcharge, birth cess, death cess, road cess, flyover cess, metro cess, political cess, voter’s cess – and you are in a big MESS of cess.
• The next time you eat that milk laden icecream just think how you are contributing to the price rise and you will realize you are the problem, not the political parties. The amount of subsidies on fuel is so high since the past umpteen years, that we have to cough up a hell lot to offset the situation. I dont see any difference in this price rise thing whichever party comes in. Show me one instance where there has been any price decrease on anything after or before any elections?
• Bickering congress – no amount of youth oriented political angles could fight against a determined party working towards development. A chance lost is 100 more opportunities permanently lost.

But is it all then rosy for the BJP ?? – Not exactly. Here is what they need to do on an urgent priority.

• Develop Bangalore fully and permanently with sufficient thought about the future
• Understand that Karnataka does NOT mean only Bangalore. Yeddy wake up and address other lesser privileged regions before they revolt
• Tackle infighting within party and dont show the cracks to everyone
• Handle the Reddy dominance in money power in a tactical way
• Complete huge infrastructure projects without slippages. Dont keep bragging about some elevated highway that NHAI constructed and stop swallowing JNUURM funds.
• People have belief in BJP as the only party which cares for Karnataka. Dont screw up that perception.
• Show other parties that you are secular enough. Stop piggybacking Hindutva and work towards the ultimate progress
• Make karnataka fully literate like Kerala.
• Use Bengaluru’s best technologies in other districts.
• Continue citizen friendly measures

Beyond all this, increase in power, milk, water costs is perfectly justifiable. Bengaluru cannot afford giving everything free to people anymore. For good services, there is a high cost. Take the case of water supply. Slapping huge bills is one way of avoiding unnecessary water usage. You should keep the same bill thousand times more for corporates for them to inculcate a sense of belonging and savings.

Someone in BJP commented after the elections:

We had said we will make Bengaluru a Singapooru, we have achieved it now

 

For heavens sake #Yavanoobba, do you have any clue what Singapore looks like or functions like ? Did you ever realize that Bengaluru is much much bigger than Singapooru now? And did you know Singapooru is not just about ring roads and IT Firms? Have you ever thought about how they manage their garbage? Or how they excel in every other field other than IT ? Or their uniform taxation on all goods ? Or the kind of transport system that’s available there? Or that it is one of the safest city in the entire world ? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then you would also agree Bengaluru is nowhere near Singapooru, and will never be for the next fifty years at the nearest of future.

SINGAPORE IS BUILT BY ITS PEOPLE OF DIVERSE CULTURES. BENGALURU IS SCREWED UP BY ITS PEOPLE OF DIVERSE CASTES AND CREEDS. FOR THEIR OWN SELFISH ENDS. EACH TIME, EVERY TIME. WHAT MATTERS IS THE HABITS, AND ATTITUDE, NOT THE LANDMARKS OF THE CITY.

So BJP, concentrate on making Bengaluru atleast 25% of Singapooru. Good luck. You have MY vote.

The last fortnight of political parleying around Delhi by the BJP has been nothing short of showing off gloriously, the filth inside the party. Money doing the rounds, resorts getting business, MLAs on their 'fitness' regimes and a bullied crying CM on the TV. Well what can I say, its enough to beat the TRPs of any soap on TV. Add to that the decoration, music, lighting and thrill that TV9 adds to all this, and you have a real box office hit.

Give the opponents some reason and they are always available to whine away and bite more of the CMs flesh than they can chew. Also seated on the knife are cool headed, least bothered stalwarts from the chaddi wearing RSS. Throw a brick or a boulder at them and they still do what they do best. Laze around. Citizens always do what they have been doing. Crying hoarse over infrastructure instead of asking for some better governance in the first place. Any development whether literal or metaphorical can happen only when the game is played right. What we have are the politicians from the 50s and 70s era who are experienced at mud slinging rather than any developmental politics.

What did not take a Sadananda Gowda or a Venkiah Naidu or a LK Advani or a Rajnath, took one Sushma to solve?  And must we all believe a mining baron of 5500+ crores of income will listen to a matrushri rather than his own intuition? This has not only shown that no one in the top level of the party is capable of handling a crisis and unless these are all laid off  (corporate management rejig if i may call so), one can say a goodbye to BJP in the next elections as well. This notwithstanding the 'success' they have had locally.

Sobha is out (she deserved to, didn't she?). Why would a revenue minister managing revenues of a mining department owned by his brother take easily a lady of rural development ministry questioning the ongoings between the former two ministries? Not only did she interfere there, but also managed to say 'cheese' in every photo having the CM leading to some ridiculously obvious rumours which were all unwarranted. Whatever the stature of the RSS lady, the final verdict is there on the wall. The IAS officers can never escape a transfer in their lives. It will be news if even one completes the full term in one place.

Now to the speaker (how ironical!). How many times have you heard Shettar actually speak? Or for that matter how many times have you heard about him in the newspapers that otherwise crow about Yeddy and Sobha beside him? Not even once. There is a serious problem in understanding that he actually holds any clout at all in the present scenario. Finished is the turn of the Reddy's in gunning for Yeddy's head. Now common opposition, its your freaking turn! Enjoy.

Who won this game? There is only one answer – the media. They enjoyed making a mockery of everyone including the public (yes us!). All the way upto showing on TV Yeddy and Reddy eating cake after cake shamelessly without any explanation.

Alright now enough of this masala movie. Get back to your favourite soap on TV guys!

The political parties are at their favorite game again. Dirtying Bengaluru. The other day I was driving near the Hebbal Flyover and I was thinking "well its been sometime now and there are no posters in Bengaluru dirtying the place all around". And as though to grant my wish, I came across a rather unbelieveable sight.

This

and these

Suddenly there were pictures of all kinds of people from the Congress party crowding around DKS, who is now taking over as president of the regional congress party along with Deshpande. While the famous Times Of India editor HS Balram did point out that DKS did a good thing by organizing a rally at Doddaballapur,

PARTING SHOT Thanks Congress, for small mercies
Wisdom has at last dawned on the Congress. The swearing-in ceremony of R V Deshpande as president and D K Shiva Kumar as working president will not take place in Bangalore, but 50 km away in Doddaballapur. It's Shiva Kumar's idea, we are told. "We have earned the ire of Bangaloreans with rallies that cause traffic gridlock. So we decided to organize it outside the city," he says. Good beginning, DKS. Now we know why you have been named 'working' president. Please ensure that the roads in Doddaballapur are not jammed.

little did he realize what mess that would create all the way to the BIAL. The mess is what you see above for many kilometers of drive.

On another side, while I was appreciating our BSY or Yeddy for maintaining a rather low profile, he started publishing posters all over south Bengaluru proclaiming that he was laying yet another foundation stone for yet another flyover – this time two of them at Agara and Iblur ensuring that a mess for another one year or more is created for the residents living in HSR layout making life hell for them.

Alright you people are doing the job, mustering support of citizens whatever. But please be responsible enough to atleast take off the posters once you're done guys!

On a rather side note, Janata Dal Secular president unfortunately could not do any such thing in Bengaluru, since he died. He was perhaps the only person I appreciated for some reason. (I thought he looked cool ) But at a young age of 51, he passed away breaking the JDS further into tatters.

Whats amusing about the poster above Yeddy has advertised is that the minorities minister is always invited for all his functions! and So is Sobha Karandlaje. Sangliana who spoke so much against the CM and Home minister is also seen!

This is politics!

Technorati : BJP, BSY, D K shivakumar, DKS, Doddaballapur, H T Sangliana, Shobha Karandlaje, bangalore, bengaluru, bharathiya janata party, bial, blog, christian, congress, deve gowda, dirty, editor, h s balram, hdk, hebbal flyover, jds, merajuddin patel, minority, muzrai, north, parting shot, politics, poster, road works, times of india, wakf, yeddyurappa, yelahanka

Finally the time has come with its own problems and solutions. The Dance of Democracy section has started appearing in our very own Times Of India which keeps raising a big hue and cry in every day’s paper on the various issues concerning Bengaluru. As though its the only one concerned. After the government handover debacle last November, its finally election time in the state. The state goes to elections on three days of which two are now over. Different television channels (again belonging to regional parties) are talking differently about the exit polls. So there is no clear clue on which party would make it. If my assumptions are true, then it would be definitely either the BJP or an unhealthy coalition of Congress and JDS again. While coalitions solve arithmetical equations, one cant say that they may solve the city’s problems. The real reason is that after satisfying the basic arithmetics of numbers, it then turns into another arithmetical sequence of "How much can I swindle in these 4 years?" kind of thing.

(image courtesy Culture Holidays)

If you ask me, I would say, for the past 50 years after independece BJP has never been given, or got a chance to rule Karnataka. Even if they were the absolute majority party last time. This is the irony of things in Karnataka when a majority party has nowhere to go. While there is lot of bickering and bashing within Congress and dissidence within the party itself, the JDS has lost all credibility after the last year’s misgivings. I am not asking people to favour BJP. But common, here is a party that has never seen the light of the day with respect to running the government and at the helm is a simple man (he may not be very political, but he has stood by BJP for a long long time since his childhood) who might mean god to the villagers and the poor. The election results would be out in ten days and the electorate is in no mood for another nonsense coalition drama. Though everything was in our hands, still there can be a situation where nothing is in our hands. And this is exactly what the parties might be waiting for to create uncertainties again. Its time going forward that we look at other parties that have people from the public with proper background and education enough to manage a state and we must be able to choose them by way of their proven qualities than by just some election manifestos. Also considering that there was only 40% urban turnout in Bengaluru and 60% elsewhere in the second phase of polling, it only shows people are getting more and more disinterested in politics and the way the state is run. This can be a ploy adopted by parties to screw the state for another 20-25 years. We must realize this and break this jinx some day. For all you know there may be elections just around the year end once more (and this time Mr.Misra would offer a to be a coalition king maker for all you know) !

Anyways, my one cent on these crazy game of politics:

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