The BJP offers Hindu voters high-tech communal propaganda in a shameful CD that makes every Indian Muslim sound like a traitor. This CD was withdrawn when the Election Commission noticed that it was inciting communal hatred. But the party continued its hate campaign through advertisements that hinted that every Muslim was a Pakistani in his heart.

Then we have the two main contenders in the election, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s

Samajwadi Party and Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party, who offer the people of Uttar Pradesh only the politics of caste. How very sad for our largest and most populous state!

Uttar Pradesh has no business to be poor. It is poor because it has the misfortune of having a really dismal collection of politicians and political parties to choose from. Let me give you an example of what I mean when I say that poverty in India is the direct result of bad governance. A statistic that this column has mentioned before is that if we took the money we spend on poverty alleviation programmes annually and distributed it via money order among those who live below the poverty line, every family would get Rs 8,000 a month and automatically rise above the poverty line.

This was lucidly confirmed, a couple of weeks ago, by the Chief Economic Adviser to the Finance Ministry, Ashok Lahiri. This is what he told Outlook magazine: “The Ninth Plan (1997-2002) document said that the amount of money we spend for poverty alleviation — around Rs 40,000 crore — would have given around Rs 8,000 per month per poor family, which would be sufficient to buy three kilos of food grain every day.”

... contd.