Politics for dummies

I have given the wannabe politicians of this country, who must be in their mid-twenties and thirties, a list of ideas which have provided their earnest followers with rich dividends. If you want to climb to the top of the political hierarchy, you must diligently follow one approach and you shall be rightly rewarded in the ballot box.

Before I give you the list, here are a few things you must know about the electorate and in general about the people of this country.

1. They are down right selfish, what else do you expect in a resource constrained environment? They praise you when you give them concessions and hate you when you don’t. (Didn’t you see Mr.Bainsla - the gujjar head, who spoke so much against Ms Vasundhara Raje saluting her when she announced concessions to his community?)

2. People Identify themselves more with their language, religion, caste, and other such groupings. The Indian identity is reserved for India-Pakistan cricket match.

3. People don’t understand economics. They can’t appreciate when you fix the budget deficit, fiscal deficit of the country or set right the Balance of payment there by putting the economy back on rails. They respond better when you give them free TVs, free electricity, fertilizer, waive their loans etc

4.They are emotional. This is an unique characteristic of the Indian population. They vote for you if you lose someone in your family or meet with an accident. Many elections are announced when such mishaps happen –Mr.Chandrababu naidu knows it better.


If you understand the above concepts, it will not be tough to lap up the following recommendations to attract the electorate.

1. Pro-linguistic drama.

a) You could be a person who cannot pronounce many words right in your language (forget the writing part). Yet, you must send your party men (rowdies) and threaten the commercial establishments to replace their name boards from English to local language within a given time. It may make your already tourist-unfriendly state worse but don’t worry, foreigners don’t vote in our elections.

b) You can conduct a one-day fast to “pressurise” the centre to recognize your language as a classical language. You don’t need to know what that status means for your language, but be sure to rush before someone else takes it up.

c) Thackeryism. This is a proven strategy wherein you ask people who don’t speak your language in your region to get out so that the sons of the soil can get that job. Though the very jobs you want “your people” to get are themselves snatched from sons of the foreign soil, no one will question you about it. People can’t think that far.

2. Pro-culture drama

a) Suddenly, you can appoint yourself the custodian of our Indian culture. Ask the bar-dancers to stop or risk being prosecuted, close down the bars by 11pm, give the police an additional job of moral policing, and you’ll surely strike a chord with the majority. You can email Mr.R.R.Patil (Home minister of Maharashtra) to understand the nuances better.

b) Anti-Love. Select such men and women in the society who couldn’t find a person in the opposite sex to have fun or the ones who have a skewed opinion about the opposite sex, love and life in general. Recruit them into your party and these guys will “protect the culture” really well by chasing away couples from parks during Lovers day and by damaging the shops that sell greeting cards for lovers.

3. Anti-Muslim/ Pro Muslim

Look, the society is made of many fools who cannot see the virtues of the secular values enshrined in our constitution. Interestingly, though sacred texts like the “Bagavad Gita” asks its followers to see only god in all things -living and non-living, and enunciates the concept of ‘oneness’ in all beings, there are many misguided youngsters in India (both Hindu and Muslim), who miss this truth. You can harness this to your advantage depending on whether Muslims are in majority/minority in your region. Accordingly, you can ask them to “go to their country”, or give them reservations and appoint a worthless committee for their upliftment (like the Rajinder Sachar committee).

4. Anti-Industrialisation (pseudo pro-farmer)

You can threaten the industrialist who invests in your region with dire consequences if he doesn’t do “justice” for the farmers and block him from doing business. You don’t even have to tell him what will amount to doing justice. If you’re forced, then you could ask for something impossible which will eventually send the poor guy packing. Though the people of that town may dislike you or even hate you, you can be sure of votes in the larger level. This brand of politics off late is also knows as “MamataLitics”. More commonly this is the strategy followed by Indian communists who seek to achieve equality in the society by bringing the rich to the level of the poor.

5 .Support for strikes

When a bunch of government employees go on a strike, usually in protest of being asked to move their lazy bums and do some work, you could “be with them” and support their rightful demands. Though it has the risk of inviting the public ire, you can trust the public memory for being short. Moreover it can win you chunks of votes from trade unions.

I hope with that, I have sown the seeds of the next generation of politicians in this country ;) I invite my visitors to give more ideas to the budding leaders.