The most entertaining elections ever.

For educated middle class Indians elections are boring. The same ugly corrupt faces competing to promise free handouts to the poor at taxpayer expense and then trying to buy votes by distributing cash, saris or pouches of alcohol. All parties are more or less same, you just try to choose the one you think is the least villainous of the lot. If you vote at all. This time it is different. Two mavericks, who are probably the only 2 politicians in India without billions in black money, are creating all sorts of problems for the other gangs. One is Mamata Banerjee in Bengal. When she withdrew support from the government last year the Congress thought that she will self destruct in her state because of her eccentric and authoritarian behavior but she won a resounding victory in the gram panchayat elections in July, trouncing the Congress and the CPM. It appears that she has been cleaning up the rotten administration in the state, totally corrupted by the 30 year rule of the CPM, so that the cost of business is one of the lowest in Bengal today. It maybe the reason why David Cameron chose to visit Bengal his way to Sri Lanka a week ago. The other is Narendra Modi of Gujarat who is the Prime Ministerial candidate for the BJP and is promising clean government which is anathema for civil servants and other politicians. How are they supposed to make tons of black money so that their families are secure for generations if this fellow carries out his threat of reducing corruption? Is the man completely loopy? The excitement is drawing in foreigners. When Goldman Sachs raised India to marketweight in expectation of Modi's victory the Congress went ballistic. Our most revered Commerce Minister, Anand Sharma called it " most inappropriate and objectionable ", to which Jim Rogers, Chairman of Roger Holding said," What Indian politicians are saying if you criticize is that you can't comment if you are an outsider. That is one of the problems for India, and this is why India has been a disaster for so long." " The best-run Indian state has not done as well as the worst-run Chinese state since 1980," he said. " So, I am saying, throw all the existing politicians out and find a new set from wherever or however and start again." Howls of anguish, blatant lies and foul abuse: this has to be most exciting elections ever.