Its raining crap

Home Truths In the land I come from, in Kerala, half-informed debates on public policies, regulations and laws were common place across any congregation above 2 people. During my younger days, matters of faith used to be a private matter. Personally too, I have always felt uncomfortable discussing attributes of one religion versus the other.  I have also been led to believe that religious tolerance and acceptance in the state of Kerala was much higher than the national average. As much as I can remember, the fiercest rioting and arson in Kerala have happened on political agendas rather than anything overtly religious. Here again, it was the Communist parties with their militant trade union ideologies that always used to find itself at either ends in these clashes. However, unlike in many other parts of India it used to be the youth cadres of the Communist parties and RSS (and not BJP) which used to engage in these political battles especially in the northern belt of Kerala. (th

Tales of late self realisation to a naive political observer   Not sure what's running though the minds of people who have been following the Maharashtra Civic Polls 2017. I was quaintly surprised at the emergence of BJP as a front runner in this. What have people voted for? - The candidates, their ideology, their past performance, or the expectations of a better future? Or is there something more latent - like hope, ambition, aspirations, or negative emotions like discontent, feeling of oppression, dejection etc.? To unravel this, I do not have access to the statistics that the  psepologists refer to, nor have I been a keen observer of past trends. But I've been able to put together some basic data and understand BJP's performance in various elections since they won legislative elections in 2014. In more or less every election involving a civil body or a legislative bye-election, held in India since 2014, BJP has improved its vote share if not emerging with a