(Rahul Joglekar is a London-based journalist.)
Imagine if Vikram Chandra was hosting an episode of The Big Fight and the seven politicians taking part were: Sonia Gandhi, Narendra Modi, Mulayam Singh, Mayawati, Mamata Banerjee, Jayalalitha and Uddhav Thackeray? Now imagine, this is beamed LIVE to a national audience as they debated policy, personality and ultimately the possibility of each of them getting into government.
Roughly, that's what is going to unfold on live television in the UK today. The two main prime ministerial candidates - David Cameron, leader of the Conservative party and Ed Miliband, leader of the Labour party will be joined by leaders of five other smaller parties to debate with each other.
But who are the candidates? In this first blog about the UK elections, lets take a look -
2. Ed Miliband, Labour Party (currently have 256 seats out of 650): He's the challenger. He took on his brother David Miliband who wanted to be the leader of the Labour party and won. But will he succeed to take the crown from the other David - David Cameron? His media image is a bit problematic - lots of people call him an awkward TV performer, but he's recently been performing very well. Labour was in power for three terms before David Cameron under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The Labour party is always keen to build a strong relationship with India and most Indian immigrants have traditionally voted Labour. When this correspondent asked him about his media image during an interview he simply replied, "I don't care".
The others (and their Indian twins):
5. Nicola Strugen, SNP (currently have 6 seats out of 650): She belongs to a party that has spent most of its life fighting for Scotland. So in many ways she's almost like an unknown entity to the rest of the country. But she's a also a very good talker. NDTV extensively covered the Scottish referendum - and she and her party are very popular in Scotland. Her party came very close to breaking up the UK, a few months ago. She will play it differently claiming that is about fairer representation for Scotland. Very loosely, she remind me of Jayalalitha -- a vote winner in the South of the country with very little resonance elsewhere.
7. Leanne wood, Plaid Cymru (currently have 3 seats out of 650): A small regional party from Wales that critics argue has no relevance to the rest of the UK.
But remember, the UK hasn't had TV debates for many years. In fact in 2010, the last election heralded the era of the TV debate. The argument seemed to be - that parliamentary form of democracy isn't about the top leader, like it is in presidential style politics. But increasingly, in so many parliamentary democracies, it IS about the top guy and to be honest, a debate makes politics slightly more interesting and watchable for people who otherwise don't really care about it.
Lessons for India? Well, the world's largest democracy can take away a some inspiration from an open LIVE debate like this one. But will be get our own version of a TV debate in 2019? I know a few TV programmes who may be hoping we do.
(Lots more about how each of them performed in the debate soon).
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