Democracy at its best

I was having time pass chat with my friend Vijay . Our chat touched everything, work, family, IPL, vacation plan, economy, politics and lot other. We were worried about the state of politics back in India. He suddenly asked why don’t I join politics like he and other friends use to ask me since my uncle has some connection with politics. He told me he would extend his full support if I join politics. I asked him what level of support would you give me? Extending support of sending morality boosting mails and few encouraging comments in my blog? He was laughing when I said so. But the fact is mails and blogs are the maximum support we, the IT professionals, are giving to anything.

We worry lot, wants everything to be improved in India as we see best of world during our foreign trips. We record our concerns, condemn in a strong way, but the place we register our voice is least heard and not counted. Our issues and concerns are not talked during election campaigns because we do not participate in election process. All election campaigns are anything but the promise of poor empowerment and price control for middle class families. Poor, farmers (now poor and farmer are used interchangeably) and middle class are participating in the election process than anyone else. They have become the only target audience during election campaigns. (Confession - I never cast my vote in any assembly or parliamentary elections, I just participated in local body elections at the request of local candidates due to less number of voters in my village ‘punjayat’). Even during Karnataka election, there was news about Narayana murthy not casting his vote due to his trip outside India.

In my village, mostly poor, people consider voting as their right, a way to show the world that they are still living. One old lady told me once that only dead people would not cast their vote. Most of them do not know who are the candidates, who is heading the party they are voting for. Old citizens take their children or grand-children’s opinion on which symbol they should cast their vote. My grand ma asks me before every election. People who can’t walk are lifted to polling stations to cast their vote. Voting gave them the sense of satisfaction. They benchmark elections to estimate how long they lived. I have heard lot of old people sighed to me that this might be the last election they were voting. Voting duty has integrated very much into their life. As long as they breath they vote.

People who are participating most in elections are sitting at the bottom of income level while people at the top of the pyramid do not cast. Will people sitting at bottom of pyramid vote if they are empowered and economic situation of them are improved? To my sense they wont because something else (money?) will take the voting spirit out as it happened to us. In my opinion, this might be the reason poor are kept poor. In India, poverty is glorified, poor people are equated with honesty and sons of soil. Contrary to that farmers and poor people are driven out of their place to make industrial area happen. They are driven from ‘then’ poor area to ‘now’ poor area. Political parties which register their protest (and does nothing finally) are considered champions of poor. Those parties will be voted to power next time which will again make sure that poor are kept poor. For politicians, poverty glorification is very easy and useful for ringing their vote bank whereas empowerment takes people out of voting system.

Democracy needs people to vote; poverty glorification will continue to keep the people in the system. We, IT people, will take vow to make sure this continues by choosing not to vote!!!