What has made this election really interesting here in Kovalam is the Congress party candidate for the Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum) constituency (for details on this constituency go to the excellent Elections India site and type Trivandrum, Kerala in the box in the upper right corner of the page) - Shashi Tharoor.
Some of you may recognize Tharoor (seen below in a poster with Sonia Gandhi, President of the Congress Party) from his writing (both fiction and non-fiction) or from his time with the United Nations (he was a close second behind Ban ki Moon in the 2006 competition for Secretary-General).
I know nothing about Indian politics but I can't see how Tharoor can have anything but an uphill battle. The media is already having a field day with him pulling out old news like his supposed insult of the national anthem, his poor Malayalam skills (the language of Kerala) and a supposed pro-Israel stand. It is hard to see how an average Malayali man or woman would think that Tharoor could honestly empathize with their problems. But again, that is my point of view and I could be completely wrong.
Below are some other election posters, besides Tharoor's. Note the large symbols that figure prominently on each poster - the hand in Tharoor's, the elephant in the BSP's and the sickle or scythe and sheaf of grain in the CPI's. This is because in many parts of India a substantial proportion of the voters are illiterate and the ballot will require them to identify their choice by the logo rather than a candidate's name.
