Pappu did not vote saala.

Yeah. There.

Elections almost done. The Great Indian Tamasha has had its 15th instalment. As things stand now I would predict a hung Lok Sabha with the UPA about 20 odd seats ahead of the NDA. The Third Front will crumble under the weight of its own contradictions with most of its constituents coming over to the Secular side. The perennial Prime-Minister-in-waiting will have to wait some more. Not that he’ll last that long.  I hope not. 

While the Nirnayak-sarkar-with-mazboot-neta at the helm appears pretty unlikely, there is another issue that demands attention. The Urban Youth vote. (Okay, thats a rather far fetched segue. Who cares!). Voting percentage in the cities stood at a measly 40%. While Delhi and Hyderabad performed rather well, Bombay and Bangalore disappointed (not really surprising). I saw one blockhead on TV make the ludicruos claim that 40 was not such a bad percentage after all. What was left unsaid was that much of the 40% came from the poorer sections of the population. South Bombay’s voting figures seemed to be competing with Srinagar’s! 

The reason for this apathy is not the “nothing will change, so why vote” crap that the media dishes out. It is something much more fundamental. Voting day is a holiday. It’s for hanging out. Meeting up with friends. Chilling. Who wants to go to some goddamned municipal school, stand in a queue for an hour under the harsh sun with probably your servant and doodh-waala ahead of you, have a fool smear some ink on your finger and then vote for somebody whom you have probably never heard of. Political ignorance is rampant in urban India. Not because they dont want to know who their MP is, but because they never need him. You have all you need. Who cares about the MP? So while the voter in Virar needs to know his MP so that he may get the long pending road sanctioned or the drains refurbished, the one in Malabar Hill will never have such mundane issues bother him. 

There are three kinds of power in India. Money, jugaad and vote. The reason why 60% of Indians still vote is because they only have that power available to them. The 10% of rich, jugaadwaala Indians who vote do so either because they are genuinely interested in the political process or because its a photo-opportunity. (The Bachchan family’s infamous middle finger gesture!)

Democracy fails in many ways. This is but one.

~ by abdaal on May 11, 2009.