Opinion polls have a reputation for inaccuracy in India, but how inaccurate are they in reality? Has a meta-study been conducted on them? The reason I ask is that as I see it, there are two main steps where the polls can go wrong. Either they get the vote percentages wrong, or they make an [...]
Dear BJP, RE: Your performance during the Kandahar Episode Do you have anything better than this Kanchan Gupta article to explain your performance? If not, then here are some questions that arise from that article: The article blames the media for creating the impression that the entire country wanted the terrorists to be released. The [...]
Karan Thapar discusses former Chief Election Commisioner Lyngdoh’s solution to the problem of “hate speech”. Lyngdoh believes that hate speech is a consequence of the first past the post system which will often lead to candidates getting elected even with 20-30% of the vote. So, all a candidate has to do is to appeal to [...]
Yesterday I caught an interesting ad for the Lok Satta Party on some Telugu channel. It depicts a family obviously in poverty. Their hands are in cuffs. Two extended hands appear, one of them offering rice and the other offering some other food which I did not catch. The family shakes their heads, refusing. Then Jayaprakash [...]
Nilu wants to know why I support Meera Sanyal. He seems to have discerned that I support her from the fact that I have joined the Facebook group that says “Meera Sanyal for South Mumbai”. Can’t blame him for that, but I don’t only join Facebook groups when I support those causes. I join them [...]
I have piled on Sagarika Ghose earlier, but I must give credit when she is right. I think that she is essentially right here. I had written earlier that Very few politicians have tried to break out of this cycle, and I believe that the person with the greatest chance of succeeding is Modi. The [...]
A refinement of my idea here. Minors should continue to have weighted votes to be exercised by their parents, but each parent should be allowed only one vote in addition to his or her own. That way, parents don’t get credit for having too many children. (Polygynous people of whichever religion will get credit for [...]
Last May I had written: So, a weak Congress with allies will do quite well for some time. In a First Past the Post electoral system, the parties in the first and second place tend to look stronger than they are, because like Vali in the Ramayana, they will gain strength from their opponents. This analogy is unfortunately [...]
Your vote should be weighted by your actuarial life expectancy. So, if you are a 25 year old person and your current life expectancy is 50 (more) years, then your vote should be multiplied by 50. If you are 65 years old and your life expectancy is only 20 more years, your vote will carry that much [...]
I won’t make any, because I think that it is impossible to predict elections in India, but I think that Mayawati becoming the Prime Minister is the best case scenario. With our fiscal condition being what it is, in another year or so, we will have a Seldon crisis that will close off all options [...]
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