PLEASED!!!!

1. That the people of India demonstrated that they are basically tolerant and want to live in peace with all communities and do not believe in murdering their Muslim brothers and sisters and other minorities as a national blame-game ethos.
2.They will listen, keep quiet, but go and vote with their conscience against extreme right wing incantations. You cannot buy the Indian voters with money and promises alone. They believe in a political philosophy. That of peace, for health and minimum prosperity for their families in their immediate surroundings. In the Bengal famine, the plaintive cry was "ma, ektu phan dao". Ma, please can I have some starch. Today, in a 6% growth economy, the cry is for a handfull of grains every day for the family, schools nearby, perhaps a cell phone to contact the brother who is away to earn in the city...and that would be enough. Indians do not want to indulge in excesses. Only the middle class do. Unfortunately they are nearing 280 million perhaps, by all accounts. And their needs are shrill. Someone needs to tame them..
3. The people of West Bengal do not feel that voting against the CPIM is a right wing vote. This must be respected and not dismissed as an "anti-left shift". It is a vote against goon politics and the Trinamool Congress gained so much, because the CPIM of Karat (both upstarts should resign as demanded by the former Speaker and Party colleague Somnath Chatterji), Yechury, Biman Bose, Konar and others are nothing but corrupt-bureaucratic-opportunist,flamboyant hucksters whose nose should be rubbed to the ground. In reality the vote of the people of Bengal was a vote of the Left Opposition.
4. Engaging in poll violence (Maoists) is a reactionary tactic. It demonstrates the lack of respect for people in general and a fancy for jungle-romanticism rather than popular mass resistance.
5. What I fear is that the Congress may have actually mastered what development by trickle-down- effect, is all about, from the perspective of the ruling classes. A practical mix of using reserves to generate more reserves and hoping that eventually this will ease poverty a little bit at a time. The people of India do not explode and paralyse the economy as in other countries. The Congress know that and so they will trudge along and the the leaders of the Left are so non-innovative that they do not know how to mobilize the public mood against imperial powers like the US.
6. So, instead you have the whiny, independent, left-NGOs dissipating and dividing the resistance with single issue heroics.
7. Watch out for the self-confidence of the Indian middle classes. When Shashi Tharoor wins with 100,000 votes--never having run before--it demonstrates a certain change, and his politics is BAD. These folks are demonstrative about their cosmopolitan savvy and nothing else.
8. Perhaps there should be a party of progressive independent women in India. Arundhuti, Shiva, Sarabhai and others. I do not think they would become turncoats.