Only Capt. Gopinath (Independent) had arrived on time. Ananth Kumar (BJP) arrived a bit late but immediately greeted each and every individual in the hall and asked them to vote. When the organizers decided to go ahead even though there were only 2 candidates, Prof. Radhakrishna of JD(S) arrived. Krishna Byregowda (Congress) never turned up at all.

The session was mostly about questions asked by Mohandas Pai (Times of India) to the candidates and gave them roughly a minute each to answer.

Most of the questions were good and thankfully the answers were also forthcoming.

IMHO, Prof. Radhakrishna was rambling more than making sense. Since Krishna Byregowda didn’t show up, I don’t know much about him even though he has spoken well in interviews. Ananth Kumar and Capt. Gopinath were both impressive, made a lot of sense and had vision. It is going to be very tough to choose between these two candidates for me.

Plus points for Ananth Kumar include that he has been an MP four times, been the Civil Aviation Minister, etc. and he answered questions to the point. He indulged in rhetoric about why Congress has brought India down, and why things were great during Vajpayee’s tenure – ignoring these aspects, he seemed like a good candidate.

Plus points for Capt. Gopinath include that he has been an entrepreneur himself – Deccan Aviation made flying possible for the average person, he has been in the army and fought a war in Kashmir, and he voices Bangaloreans’ concerns well. He was vocal about the state of the Metro and questioned why trees in Lalbagh has to be cut down, and the whole crowd cheered for that statement.

Towards the end of the session, the audience also got turns to ask questions, but it turned out to be rhetorical provoking questions rather than questions with real value.

For more details about Bangalore candidates, read the full interviews at SmartVote.in. I’m sure there are more sites out there for the other constituencies in India.

I think there are two takeaways from the day for me.

First, vote for the candidate, not the party. If you think voting for an independent candidate is going to be a “waste” of your vote, think again. Is it better to have 500 excellent people in the Lok Sabha regardless of which party they belong to, or is it better to have 500 people, whose usefulness is doubtful, belonging to 2-3 big parties in the Lok Sabha?

There are good people stepping into politics trying to make a difference and we should encourage them. After all, we don’t jump into politics, let us support those who do. For example:

1. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who was an engineer in the team that built the first-ever Intel CPU chip, founded BPL Mobile way back in 1994, CEO of Jupiter Capital VC company, and is now a Rajya Sabha MP (Website, Twitter)
2. Capt. Gopinath, as I already mentioned (Website, Twitter)
3. Mallika Sarabhai who is a noted Indian classical dancer, has a Ph.D and an MBA, and is now dipping into politics as well. Just listen to her, she makes so much common sense. (Website, Twitter)
4. Dr. Shashi Tharoor who has served as the Under-Secretary of the United Nations, is the author of 10 books, and won several journalism awards. (Website, Blog at HuffingtonPost, Twitter)
5. Meera Sanyal, chairperson and country executive of ABN Amro bank. (Website)

And so on.

These are well-qualified and well-off candidates who I believe are in a better position to serve the public. As Capt. Gopi insisted, he wants to do his own business as well as work in politics because unlike others, he does not want to make politics itself a business for him.

Second takeaway from the day was that the biggest problem is not the candidates or the system, it is the apathy and indifference of the voters. I’ve heard various statistics that less than one-third of the people in Bangalore actually go out and vote, which directly relates to why the politicians cater to those who actually do vote, then how can we complain that nothing is being done about the infrastructure?

If things continue as-is, our public life will go on deteriorating while we expect our private enterprises to continue prospering in spite of all the social problems.

As Deccan Herald put it:

You’ve got the dope,
you are the antidote;
Shut up and vote.

Please spend a few minutes off of IPL and think about why you are/are not voting, think about why people around you are/are not voting, and think about the candidate that you are voting for. See How to choose your Member of Parliament for guidelines.

If all this wasn’t food for thought, may be some cynicism (or astute observations, depending on your point of view) by The Comic Project is what you need:

Last but not the least, the election dates are listed on Wikipedia and you can follow the social media conversations at Blog Adda.

Update : Despite all the media attention and campaigning, 54% of Bengaluru did NOT vote. I am ashamed of Bengaluru at this moment.

When there is a concept of retirement for many other careers like engineers, bankers, CEOs, etc. why shouldn’t the same apply for politicians?

If the reason for a retirement age in the private sectors is that the capacity to contribute becomes lesser, the same applies for politics. If the reason is that they should have a relaxed retirement life, the same applies for politics.

If the old people retire, it will give a chance for younger people with fresher perspectives to come in (with the hope that ‘remote control’ possibilities will be minimal), and at the same time the bureaucracy gets refreshed more often with lesser influence by the older people.

Of course, I know it’ll never happen, because the law would have to be passed by the very same people whose careers will be shortened.

Why do I say that?

1. The Bangalore Ultra Marathon was announced eleven months ago that it will be held on December 16, 2007. The BSNL Bangalore International Marathon was announced by the Karnataka Athletic Association just about one month two weeks ago that it will also be held on Dec 16, 2007. They knew very well that the Ultra is happening on the same day! I don’t know what is the inside story, but I think it’s pure one-upmanship, they got ticked off that the preparations and publicity for the Ultra seemed to be going well.

2. The organizers of the BSNL Bangalore International Marathon do not take running seriously. If they did, they would not organize a training camp for just ten days. Do they really think they can convert a new person interested in running to eventually run 42 km in just ten days?! If you consult advice by professional runners, you will find out that it takes 18 weeks to train for a marathon according to the charts whether you’re a beginner or an advanced runner. Talk to any runner on how long they took to prepare for their first marathon and you’ll know the difference. In fact, if you want to know what kind of preparation hardcore runners do, see this marathon day checklist.

3. They are not allowing women to run the full marathon! When asked for the reason, they say that they don’t expect many women to run it so they decided not to allow it. I have many things to say about that but let me stick to facts – there are many women runners out there, it’s just that the Karnataka Athletic Association does not seem to be encouraging about it. Do they know there are women runners in India such as Priya who ran 100 miles (160 km) in the Himalayas?

As a running enthusiast, these are enough reasons for me to not take the BSNL Bangalore International Marathon seriously. Instead, I’m running the Bangalore Ultra Marathon tomorrow.

In fact, there were discussions in the open-for-all RunnersForLife mailing list regarding postponing the Ultra because of this clash, but the race director Madhu strictly said no. As an aside, if I’m not wrong, Madhu is a volunteer organizing this and is not even part of the Ultra organizers company! Compare this with how the other marathons are being organized.

Even CrossOver who organized the previous marathons held in Bangalore have postponed it at least four times this year! It’s appalling that these organizers don’t take these events seriously.

Contrast that with the participants in the Ultra marathon who met on Friday night for carb-loading and had a ball of a time meeting other fellow runners.

I attended that pasta party and met a lot of enthusiastic people. One of them was a guy called Andrew. What’s special about him? He’s a 68-year old guy, and the Ultra tomorrow is going to be his 592nd marathon! That’s right, that’s three digits. He’s been running since 1976. In fact, he’s flown down from New York just to run the Ultra. He’s also participated in the Himalayan run that I mentioned earlier. Now, that’s true passion for a sport!

As for myself, I have not at all trained properly in the last two months but I’m hoping that the old routine of running 16 km every weekend morning will kick back in tomorrow and I’ll hopefully run well.

Disclosure: I’m NOT part of the RFL club, just an avid runner. I may join the RFL runs in future, but I’m certainly not biased towards them. However, I am biased towards running and runners.

I imagine the situation to be like this:

Young neta goes to old neta and says: ‘I have an interesting idea to make power available in the villages’.

O: We do not have enough power in the cities itself. Concentrate on that. Y: We can use the same idea for the cities. O: Talk to the concerned authorities. Y: Which agency I should talk to? There are so many. O: You’re a neta. Find out.

And finally, the young neta goes away grumbling… discouraged yet again.

If you don’t believe this could happen, read about how Lalu remains in power, it’ll shock you.

I still want to believe Rashmi’s words when she says

Given facts if political life such as corruption will remain – whether the young or old are in power – I for one would still plump for youth. Because young politicans – thanks in part to their fancy overseas education – have a greater stake in seeing the country progress than politicians well past the prime of their lives.

I hope the youth politicians do make a difference. Emphasis on hope.

Aside: Rashmi Bansal writes a very interesting blog called ‘Youth Curry’ where she discusses the youth trends in India. Some of my favorite articles by her is ‘Woh Ladki Hai Kahaan’ where she discusses about the freedom and opportunities for Indian girls and the article about what Google can teach youth marketers.

Rashmi is a journalist and has written many articles for Business World, she’s an IIM-Ahmedabad alumnus and founder-editor of JAM Magazine.

I voted for the Congress candidate Ramalinga Reddy for the Vidhan Sabha (the Legislative Assembly of Karnataka State) and the BJP candidate Ananth Kumar for the Lok Sabha (the Parliament of India). Notice that I don’t hesitate to vote for both parties. My vote is for anyone who does a honest job. I just hope these politicians live up to atleast half their promises.

But, still, that was a match to remember for a long long time. Sachin’s catch was the turning point of the match! Indiatimes.com has a comprehensive coverage of the tour at PakTour.Indiatimes.com.