US Presidential Primaries

Seems like I’m being routine and talking about same thing that every Tom, Dick and Harry on current affairs television is talking about these days, that is the issue of the US presidential primaries for the Republican and Democratic candidates. I cannot help but weigh in on a very important and highly over looked fact that I have observed over the course of the last two months. The so called front runner presidential candidates have been more or less been selected and now it is just a question of which individual among them will be their respective party nominees.
What is striking to me about this whole process is the path that has been followed in electing these candidates as the front runners. In fact I’m questioning the very idea where in two very small states namely Iowa and New Hampshire effectively select and seal the fate of the all the candidates running for election. The hype that is created by the media in this regard is stupendous, and in effect it is the media that elects the candidates and not the people. Coming to the states, it really strikes me that two states with a combined population of about 4.5 million which is about 1.5% of the entire US population wield so much clout in US presidential nomination races. Something about this fact just doesn’t add up. I can understand why Iowa and New Hampshire were so important in the nomination process. These were two important population centers in the 1800’s when Iowa was a farming state as it is now and New Hampshire was a stake holder in the American Industrial revolution, which has long since passed. Though America is the cradle for innovation and progress, over time nobody has cared or dared to re-orient the importance of the other states in elections. It is understood that today’s large states of California and Texas were sparsely populated in the 1800’s but now they are the heart and soul of the American continent in both demographic and economic terms, but yey they have little or no significance in the nomination process early on. It is as if UP and Bihar in India were given the same number of Lok Sabha seats as Nagaland and Assam irrespective of their populations. Due to the lack of election reform in the US presidential nomination process, two states with a voting population of about 2 million decide what the rest of the 300 million can get to pick from, effectively muffling the choice of the larger and more diverse states.
The reasons for Iowa and New Hampshire being the first states to start the primaries might be different than the ones I have mentioned, but for neutral observer like me it seems that the choice of the few is forced onto the many, and that for some reason doesn’t seem right when electing the person who will soon be the most powerful person in the world.