Category: Politics

Girls: They got voting rights!

We were travelling in a public city bus in Bengaluru. My son then eleven years old, suddenly noticed that there were few seats in the front and yet I asked him to stand behind in the middle of the bus.

He went, “Can we sit there?”

I said, “No, they are reserved for women, see that LADIES ONLY“.

He was appalled, “They always get special treatment”. I hear the middle-schoolers frustration where girls rule the world. With a smile I said,”Stop watching Disney Channel”, and asked him to sit in one of those seats and I would stand beside him. He did not want to sit anyways for the joy of looking through the streets of Bengaluru, where the driver maneuvered through the busy traffic.

After a while the bus came to a dead halt in the middle of the road, he asked, “Why’s the bus not moving”, I looked around and told him that there is a strike ahead, people are blocking the road. Police guided the bus to pass thru the crowd, where a bunch of girls were protesting with placards.  He asked “what’s happening?”

“Girls are protesting for something…”

Actually girls were fighting for the case where Bengaluru was shocked by the heinous incident of a elementary school girl raped by her teacher. I just did not want the kid to know this terrible incident.

Then came a statement out of his mouth that has stuck in my head to this date.
“What more do they want, they got voting rights!”
He was studying about American History – womens civil rights  at that time in his school.

Here we are in a huge election season, electing our first female president of free world with a vitriolic campaign from both sides. My children are actively involved in the process. The eleven year old is now a teenager following the debate process; analyzing it. Yes, DJTs latest locker room rant is out in the open. My younger one, elementary grade son comes home from school and asks “Pops! who are you voting for?” I joked “Donald J Trump”
“Eeew, if he wins I am moving to Canada!”
Personally I don’t consider DJT as a man (This is my locker room rant, don’t quote me on this, baliki main tho yeh kahoon ki woh purush hii nahi hain, mahapurush hai – AAA), if I say it out loud girls will hate me, hmm! what would Caitlyn Jenner think.

Hillary R Clinton should be winning with a landslide victory after DJTs comments. Let’s looks at the stats. She garners around 38% of women votes (source: CNN/ORC), discounting 10% of them as  unmarried, remaining 28% of their spouses are supposed to vote for HRC, 0% of men oppose to their wives (source: WhatsApp).

Sure most of us condemn the objectification of women especially by our presidential candidate DJT. But our focus should be on the women in the society who are doing marvelous things, most recently there are women like Elizabeth Warren; who single-handedly brought down the CEO of Wells Fargo, FLOTUS; who is out to raise women across the world from illiteracy. Talking of objectification, KimK is the epitome of women objectification, like my son said, Girls have right to vote her out of social media.

(It has been extremely difficult for me to put this post articulately, also I am biased, so in the end may the best woman win the Election 2016)

Note I have not hyperlinked KimK, those who don’t know her should be proud of themselves, those who know why check her out. Hint Cailtyn Jenner was her father 🙂

Delhi Democracy

Delhi Elections

What Delhi did on Feb 10th 2015 is historic as one of the best days in Indian democracy. Critics across the world had written the obituary of Arvind Kejriwal and his party after he quit as Chief Minister for barely 49 days. The current prime minister Mr. Modi branded him as AK49 akin to AK47. That was the low ball to use as a sitting PM – which would cost him on 10th. Later AAP dug their grave when they ran for Lok Sabha elections especially Kejriwal contesting against the then most popular figure across  India Mr. Modi himself. AAP was decimated in the elections, even Delhi their strong hold had lost all the Lok Sabha seats. It was a loud and clear message from Delhi – don’t mess with us.

Fast forward few months or so, AAP is back campaigning for Delhi. Critics and opponents branded Kejriwal as ‘Bagoda’. In the beginning when AAP went door to door, people slammed their doors on APP’s face, rightly so; they ware hurt. Then the biggest thing happened in Politics, Kejriwal openly apologized to Delhiites for quitting. He held various small discussions and attended all media interviews and said, “I made a mistake by quitting as Delhi CM, I should not have done that”, the media repeatedly asked the same question over and over and his answer was a humble “sorry”. Kejriwal had committed a political suicide. Even Congress jumped into the elections claiming absolute majority now. It is seen as a weakness of a leader to admit his mistakes. Politicians in the past have committed grave mistakes, but when media confronts them, they have either thrown fits or always talked around it, never really addressing the question.

Political pundits might attribute the AAPs landslide victory to the failures of BJP, the negative campaigning  – top leaders including the sitting union minster denigrated the opponent as “chor”, a weak man who coughs all the time, para-trooping Ms Bedi at the last moment. None of this would have mattered. At the end it was the Delhiites that had decided that they wanted to give a second chance to this young and humble party, which looked and acted like a common man. Kejriwal’s apologies seemed sincere and rest is history.