AMMA-just missed..

Taking a cursory look at the TN results can lead one to conclude that DMK alliance has swept to power, but in reality it was just a touch and go. With most parties retaining their vote share it all boils to the strength of the alliance. Also its just easy to conclude that Vijayakanth played a spoilsport for Amma. yeah! an alliance with him would have turned the scales in quiet number of seats, but its not all.. My personal feeling is if Vijayakanth would have gone with Amma then i'm not sure whether he would have commanded this big chunk of votes. Vijayakanth did spilt the votes from all parties(esp. PMK who had a pretty bad outing this time..) and a major chunk of his votes are from the neutral voters who want to see off these two dravidian parties.. So my personal opinion is despite starting from a favorable position AMMA grossly mismanaged the campaign. With respect to governance, people want to see something extraordinary to retain a govt. They are always prepared to take a risk of new government.
Just look at the way Chennai and the Tsunami belt reacted, the reaction of the govt. at the need of the hour has made the people forget other issues which were of importance before the disaster. The failure of Amma is, to make the rest of the state get the same feel-good factor. The southern districts and cauvery delta region have gone against her. The southern districts have not forgotten the anti-conversion act and the act to ban animal slaughter in temples. Particularly churches have made sure that this remains fresh in the minds of people. The DMK carried the delta region with its manifesto of cancelling the loans from the co-operative banks and special sops to the weavers. The way Amma panicked on seeing the reaction to the DMK manifesto and started giving freebies left and right, further reduced her credibility. In short if Amma has extened some sops little earlier focussed on these two segments it could have gone better. All she needed was a valuable advisor outside the purview of sasi, somebody who can feel the pulse of the people. So in short a little over confidence and lack of planning has spoiled what could have become a memorable victory and could have altered the politcal map of TamilNadu for good.

p.s. Its refreshing to see the number of votes polled by the LokParitran's candidates. Its definitely a good sign for the future.

Freebieess.................

The announcements of the freebees by the parties in the TamilNadu election campaign is going to usher to a new trend in the way the politcal parties are going to manage their campaign in the rest of the country. Accepted we are a welfare state and should take care of BPL segment... but by giving them color TV and 4gms of gold what are we conveying??... and the DMK cheif openly accepting that these fancy stuff are just for capturing power..
The reforms and subsidies should help the people to elevate themselves in life.. not make them look for more in the subsequent elections.. There has to be a vision in announcing a welfare scheme.. for eg. the mid-day meal scheme.. it just brought it scores of children to school.. for that matter the free cycle and text books scheme.. thousands of students and parents are grateful and this is called vision.. The same thing will become stupitidy if somebody wants to build on the scheme and say that we will send a teacher home to teach the children..(like vijayakanth's PDS scheme). It is the people's money which is being invested on all these things.. so when a scheme is announced they have to come up with the plan to finance the scheme.. instead of just transferring officials the election commision should start questioning these things. To me this is an irresponsible act of bribing the people for vote. Instead of investing thousands of crores in these, why not try and invest this in industrialization and education and provide employment to the same group of people, which will automatically build the financial base(for more reforms!!!) and make the citizens move up the ladder. One suggestion would be to distribute the money to every gram panchayats and let them make the decision of what they want to do with that like laying the road, digging up wells etc.. employ those people who are supposed to be benefited by this scheme.. To some extent this is what the Women Self Employment Group does.. It has borne a amazing result.. just extend this to more people.. lift them up.. please don't push them further by giving these cheap stuff which will get you votes but nothing else.. my 2 cents..