This election in Maharashtra has once again seen the BJP/Sena leadership spouting abusive comments about the politicos they were opposing. Someone said they were hijras, others referred to a leader as a monkey, another fast-ageing diva with rings under her eyes compared Sharad Pawar to Lalita Pawar, and so the charade went on. This despicable use of language on public platforms only shows a complete lack of breeding, and persons indulging in this kind of diatribe are clearly devoid of qualities of leadership.

The results are out?it is another victory for Sonia Gandhi because wherever she campaigned, the Cong/NCP has won. Anti-incumbency? Where did all that chatter go? The victory is despite mismanagement, suicide deaths, drought, and all the problems that beset a ruling coalition. The people have opted for them to return. Those last minute sulking rebels who created a situation for their selfish reasons will be hanging about, desperate to join the ruling coalition. May they be dumped!

Clearly the weird brand of Hindu nationalism and Hindutva, created and sponsored by parties like the BJP and the Sena, have been told by the electorate to quit this kind of divisiveness. Neo-nationalism has been rejected. And the winners are from the larger ?family? called the Congress, whether the NCP or the Congress and NCP rebels, parties with a policy of inclusiveness.

Why so na?ve?

Once again, we have had to listen to silly comments and superficial questions on some television channels. Not one new comment, not one unusual analysis. Boring and dull. One correspondent has still got Vajpayee stuck in her mind as the prime minister. That?s why we continue to sense the biases. Regardless of the sarcastic smiles and complicated explanations, Sonia Gandhi has once again won out despite the bogey of anti-incumbency, and Congress alliances are on the rise. The BJP has once again been crippled. Pramod Mahajan disappeared from the screens on the 16th.

Sushma Swaraj took over with the same old platitudes. She goes on and on about being only a few seats behind the Congress at the Centre, and none of our bright journos reminds her that the BJP dropped from 180 odd to 130 odd and that the Congress went from 112 seats to 145. Why is our media so na?ve, so partisan? And how they despise the rising and nationally accepted and respected Sonia factor. Their sarcasm is beginning to look foolish.

Silly questions

This time round, our senior politicians, answering questions after the results were announced, came through as streets ahead, intellectually, of the journalists questioning them. The questions were the same silly ones like, ?Who is going to be the next CM?? This was asked with boring regularity. If only our tribe of scribes was a trifle more interesting and erudite, with searching minds looking for change. How limited they have been in their assessments. These elections, including the byelections, have made it clear that divisiveness and polarized politics are not acceptable in a country as diverse and multi-layered as India.

There is a new generation out there, younger people, not just the upwardly mobile city youth but also a tribe of people who have real-life aspirations and who live within the realms of their reality. They seem to have shifted out of the old paradigm, moved away from the past parameters that determined who got the votes and why, based on caste and other such equations.

Something has changed and no one has tried to comprehend and analyse what the new demands are, where the new expectations lie. Our disseminators of information are stuck in a predictable groove and are therefore no longer near the pulse, the ?celebs? included.