It can only be good to light fireworks underneath the criminals.

Yesterday, Sunday was a tumultuous day as votes cast in the recent elections in 4 states were counted. From early trends it was clear that the BJP was going to win big in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan while it was nail biting stuff in Delhi and Chhattisgarh. For a while it seemed that the BJP, under Chief Minister Raman Singh, would lose Chhattisgarh because of the sympathy vote in the Bastar region where 30 Congress leaders, including Mahendra Karma, the architect of Salwa Judum, were killed in May. Eventually Raman Singh won a comfortable majority with 49 seats out of a total of 90. While it was a straight fight between the Congress and the BJP in 3 states, Delhi had a new party called the Aam Aadmi Party or AAP, which had chosen a broom as its election symbol, in a deliberate provocation to the other parties. The AAP promised a transparent government free of corruption, a Jan Lokpal Bill to tackle corruption in government and no deal with any other party as they are all corrupt. It is no wonder that traditional parties hate the AAP but the people loved it and it won 28 seats out of a total of 70 in Delhi. Not just that, the AAP chief, Arvind Kejriwal humiliated 3 time Delhi Chief Minister, Sheila Dixit of the Congress by over 25,000 votes. Pundits are claiming that this is the end of winning elections by dishing out freebies to the poor on taxpayer money but sadly, that is not the case. Raman Singh is known as " chawal wale baba " in Chhattisgarh because he was giving rice, gram and salt to the poor almost free. Shivraj Singh Chouhan won in MP by giving money to girls, distributing free bicycles to children, subsidised food grains and 24 hour electricity to rural families. Ashok Gehlot lost in Rajasthan despite giving wheat at Rs 2 a kg, pensions and free medicines in government hospitals. The AAP was promising to reduce electricity bills by half, free water and other handouts for the poor without stating how they were going to pay for them. The danger is that the Congress will see this as a victory of handouts and pile on social schemes to win the general elections next year or leave behind a bankrupt economy if it loses. We wait to see what effect the AAP has on criminal states like UP, Bihar and Maharashtra. At the very least it has put some fear in the criminals who were so comfortable till now.