I won't vote for either. I hope ashu dai doesn't take it personally. :-) Nepali politics is messy, dirty and highly ilogical. I don't think people like Ashu , GP and other Sajha posters for that matter can succeed in today's Nepali politics. Its not to say that Gagan Thapa will survive and succeed either. For the former educated group, Nepali politics does not follow any logical pattern, its not even politics as it understands it. For the latter who is willing and eager to join the politics, it is not as easy as shouting slogans in Ratnapark. Ashu group will think its not getting enough working oppurtunity to implement its ideas and vision for Nepal and feel underworked and failed, where as Gagan group will think its been asked to do more than it is capable of doing and feel overworked. The result: both groups stop working and thinking and be no different than their predecessors! Gp ji, Kissinger writes in his book, Diplomacy, that running a country is harder than what some analysts think. The analysts have the liberty to take one issue at a time and base their analysis on that one event. The statesmen don't have that liberty. They have to take all the issues at once and make decisions on the spot. Sometimes they have to act on their instincts. For Ashu and other educated people who have been discussing/debating politics here and in other places by highlighting one or two key issues, without taking into consideration the overall picture, it will be quite difficult to understand the working of the Nepali state, if and when they involve themselves in the active politics of Nepal. Also you have to understand that the people they will be working with or the people who will be implementing their plans will be the people who have been in Nepali civil service long enough, and who see the things quite differently that ashu and others see. So this group will not be able to bring any significant change in the society, if not fail outright. Gagan and others who ahve been basing their politics on their harsh and uncompromising, rigid rhetoric and by addressing the popular issue(s) of the day, will find it extremely difficult to balance their "popular" vision and the national priority/vision. So both group is likely to fail in toady's Nepali politics. The fact that this group gets arrested every now and then shows how bad they are in playing the political game. Its not challenging the authority with harsh rhetoric, but to weaken the authority by playing a game of "chess" with it, hoina? So who succeeds? I think only those people who have stopped thinking and hav given up any illusion to change Nepal, and who believe in "pashupatinath ko desh- j huncha ramrai huncha" succeed in Nepal. In other w ords, people who have no vision, who have no interest or intention to change Nepal, who are thick skinned and who don't want to work succeed because they will neither feel overworked nor underworked (because they don't work at all) and will not be frustrated because they didn't involve themselves in politics to change the soeciety and the country at the first place. Its sad, I know but its teh reality of nepali politics today. We can always be optimistic though- bholi ta surya awasya udaucha, hoina? "Hope gets us going"