Will rita be bjP’s cm face in UP?

Rita Bahuguna Joshi, a Brahmin, who joined the BJP last week, might even be the party’s face in Uttar Pradesh, to counter Congress’ Brahmin chief ministerial candidate Sheila Dikshit. Bahuguna Joshi was upset with the Congress for projecting Sheila Dikshit as its CM candidate and also with the importance given to Pramod Tiwari, who has been her bête noire in Allahabad politics. Bahuguna Joshi’s initial plan was to join the Samajwadi Party, but the SP was not willing to give her the Lucknow Cantonment seat, which she represents. That seat has gone to Mulayam Singh Yadav’s second daughter-in-law, Prateek Yadav’s wife Aparna. Bahuguna Joshi’s brother, Vijay Bahuguna is already with the BJP, which helped her make up her mind. The BJP too agreed to her once it sensed that the Brahmin vote in UP was slipping from its hands.

Every four years, during the presidential election process in the United States, a question invariably comes up, “Which candidate is better for India?”

This question is best answered if one realises that American politics has been a massive stage-managed show based on an illusion of choice, with the illusion mesmerising an entire population into believing that they choose their political leaders and vote on issues that are dear to them. In reality, the Republican Party and Democratic Party work together behind the scenes and act in tandem on important issues. Voters are asked to make the choice between these two parties only on issues that do not matter to those in power. Even in these cases, the voters are manipulated into voting along racial and religious lines so that there is an appearance of the two parties having an equal share of the vote and competing against each other. Occasionally, when it appears that a candidate who is not part of the system could win an election, those in power are not beyond using illegal means to keep out such people from succeeding.

The share of American voters, who have seen through this game, has grown in recent years, and the support for Donald Trump in the Republican Party and Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Party during the 2016 primaries was the direct result of an increase in the number of voters who have gained an understanding of the system. Even though it is possible that neither candidate is actually against the existing setup, there is no denial that the support for them is from people who are opposed to the system. Among the candidates representing the two dominant parties who have made it past the primaries, Donald Trump is perceived as the candidate who is against the corrupt establishment, while Hillary Clinton is seen as part of the establishment and as the most corrupt candidate to run for President in the history of the country.

The fact that the Clintons have used politics to make hundreds of millions of dollars and have funnelled vast sums of money from around the world to the Clinton Foundation, has only strengthened the belief that they are extremely corrupt people who sell influence in exchange for money and power. The most famous case related to the Clinton Foundation is their effort to raise money ostensibly to help the victims of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. However, the money was not used to help the victims, but for other purposes including investments in insurance businesses and luxury hotels. Bill and Hillary Clinton, as the UN Representative and the US Secretary of State, respectively, also controlled the flow of money from other sources into Haiti, and the contracts to rebuild the country in the aftermath of the earthquake were given either to friends and relatives like Hillary Clinton’s brother or to firms that donated money to the Clinton Foundation. It is little wonder that the moniker