One of the things I am proud of being an Indian is the vibrant Indian Democracy and Elections. We have enough problems which can serve as good reasons and excuses for not conducting free and fair elections. But in the 58+ years of independence, one of the institutions which are living up to the founding fathers’ dreams is “Election Commission”. This is an autonomous body with guaranteed funding and rights from Indian Constitution. In the last decade, with the path shown by a dynamic Chief Election Commissioner T.N.Seshan, the commission has achieved new heights in its efforts to guarantee free and fair elections. Though there are few anomalies reported like in every election – those are statistically and operationally insignificant for a country with 1.2 Billion People. For more on EC read my earlier post “Need help in Elections? Come to India”
Anyways, coming to the topic – the Tamil Nadu State Election which is happening tomorrow May 8, 2006. The election is for electing 234 MLAs for the state assembly. Tamilnadu has been always decisive in its mandate, never a hung assembly has come here. This surprises me on how the people of the state come up with this united mandate every time – this is despite the state having a good percentage of illiterate voters, no serious issue based discussions, only personal accusations and personality based parties. This time the competition is said to be still tougher and my decision has been tough. But with few hours to go to the polling booth I seem to have made up my mind. Let us see whether I remain unchanged when I press the button :-)