thiruvananthapuram — Nikhil’s Musings

And what did Malayala Manorama do?

by Nikhil

Welcome back!

There was a tweetup with Dr. Shashi Tharoor a few days back. Manuscrypts wrote about the event. Chupchap followed. That leaved me with nothing much to talk about.

No, you got that wrong. Part of my question to Dr. Tharoor (How difficult is it to work with the Left govt. in bringing development to Trivandrum and is this why Chandran Tharoor Foundation does work that could have been done under the MPLADS?) found a mention in Malayala Manorama, Bangalore ed. dated 7th Nov ‘09. Yes, the report did mention my name, though partially. So, if you can read Malayalam, here it is for you.

Believe me, the Nikhil mentioned is me.

Tags: bangalore, chandran tharoor foundation, malayala manorama, manorama, mplads, shashi tharoor, thiruvananthapuram, trivandrum, tweetup

November 10, 2009 12 Comments

A dozen kb of fame

by Nikhil

Now, The Hindu said something interesting

Update:

One of the Q/A from the my email reply to Nita Sathyendran

2. looking through nikhil’s musings it appears u have a lot of info on Kerala why is that ie. why unlike most blogs by most mallus u stuck to Kerala, specifically Tvm issues ( local content) in a very postive way…and not cribbing as is generally done.

Ans:Blogs that sling mud at Kerala,its people,the skewed development indices are dime a dozen. Most of these people are arm chair critics staying far away from the state(in literary and figurative sense); they find it fashionable to criticize the state and the people. Hartal,unionism,communism,eve teasing,lack of development, bad roads etc being their cliched weapons against the state. They are not interested in doing something for Kerala or investing in Kerala. Incapable cynics there are, to say the least. How many of them have thought of ways to tackle hartals? How many of them would invest in the state? Is eve teasing only Kerala’s problem? How many of them who flashed their blogs with pot holed roads,wrote about the JNURM Volvo buses?

Tags: metro, scorpiogenius, the hindu, thiruvananthapuram, trivandrum, tvmrising, tvmtalkies

October 22, 2009 11 Comments

Shashi Tharoor’s win in Trivandrum:Analysis

by Nikhil

The dust has settled down.Now over to some number crunching.My 2 cents.

Shashi Tharoor got 44.3% of the total votes in the Thiruvananthapuram parliamentary constituency.More than half of Vattiyoorkavu and Thiruvananthapuram Assembly Constituency voters voted for him(Fig-2).

Neelan and the much discussed Nadar factor(they form 18% of the PC) did not work much against Tharoor.Was it because of Neelan’s image?Or did the Nadars not believe that Neelan would get a cabinet berth in the Mayawati lead govt.Bah! Remember, Mayawati started her election campaign in Thiruvananthapuram, whatay colossal loss.

Trivandrum LS Polls 2009-Assembly Constituency wise

Fig-1:Thiruvananthapuram LS Polls 2009-Assembly Constituency wise-1

Just around 5% of Vattiyoorkavu and Kazhakootam voted for Neelan. Nemom’s 7% voted for him.On expected lines Neyyatinkara,Kovalam and Parasala had a lot of Neelan votes,but he still was behind CPI’s Ramachandran Nair in these assembly constituencies.Ramachandran Nair got about 31% of the total votes.

The order of the top two candidates was consistent across ACs.
PK Krishnadas (BJP) was at #3 in Nemom,Thiruvananthapuram,Vattiyoorkavu and Kazhakoottam assembly Constituencies;Neelan at #3 in Neyyatinkara,Kovalam and Parasala.Majority of Muslim votes across ACs should have gone to INC,while the major chunk of Muslim votes left in these ACs went to Neelan.(Eg.Kovalam)

So what worked for Tharoor?The neutral voters,the CPI-CPI(M) rift and the whole anti Left sentiment be it due to lack of development in the city, anti incumbency.The Christian votes would have predictably gone in favour of Shashi Tharoor.He has successfully tapped the Nair+Ezhava vote bank,I would conclude.All these together ended up in favor of Dr.Tharoor.Guess what I heard from someone before the elections,”orithiri vivaram ulla ellarum Tharoorine kodukku” turned out to be true.

Fig-2: Thiruvananthapuram LS Polls 2009-Assembly Constituency wise-2

Tharoor’s and Ramachandran Nair’s votes were more or less equally distributed across ACs.A slightly higher contribution to Tharoor’s kitty came from Thiruvananthapuram and Vattiyoorkavu ACs.With Parassala,Nemom and Kazhakkutam contributing over 15% to Ramachandran Nair’s votes,even here you could see a uniformity in the vote distribution across ACs.We should be proud of the voters of Vattiyoorkavu,Thiruvananthapuram AC,Kazhakoottam and Nemom for spoiling Neelan’s party.The Nadar+Dalit factor did play a part in getting most of Neelan’s votes;79% of his votes came from Neyyatinkara,Kovalam and Parassala.

Fig-3:Trivandrum LS Polls 2009-Candidate wise

Now, a look at how Thiruvanthapuram has been voting through the years(BSP not included as its only share worth mentioning was in 2009)

Vote Share Trend-Trivandrum(CPI,INC,BJP)

Fig:4-Vote Share Trend-Thiruvananthapuram(CPI,INC,BJP)

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="436" caption="Fig:5- LokSabha Poll 2009-Votes"]

[/caption]Here is a link to the spreadsheet I made just to get a hang of the numbers.

Download the whole data sheet which includes a pivot table(3 of 4 sheets password protected,mail me if you need the password).Happy analyzing.

Right click,"Save as" to download

PS: On a lighter note, the candidate who is an MP even after losing,ya no points for guessing that, fared miserably.MP Gangadharan(NCP) whose clock was all over the place,got 2972 votes.Talk about pipe dreams or bad times.