Monday, March 30, 2009

Elections Elections !!! Thou art' the flavor !!!

So, again the talk of the season is General Elections-2009!!! Elections that ideally should come in every 5 years, fortunately though! Over 1000 crore INR was spent on GE 2004 and average inflation till last week was around 5.25 %.Rest is mathematics. Yes indeed that figure is an underestimation as it is an official record figure and we all know how the records are generated. But that is not the crux of this discussion. The point I wanted to make was, are we as an educated section of the populace, acting as an active part of the process or are we a dormant specie in this herd-like 1 month long fanfare. Are we amongst those who have the will to change the system or are we those who just have an opine and no will no substance. Are we an Individual in practice.

Just a line of thought, don’t we check for the record of even a help we keep at our homes. If that is so, do we actually do enough check on the candidates we wana vote for. Do we go online and check for all the candidates who are canvassing in our constituency or we just vote for a party for it being the most vigorous/aggressive of all. Do we vote basis our research and not presumptions? Do we see merit in electing the right person.Thats my thought process? In the coming days you would come across campaigns/canvassings/melodramas/inflammatory speeches/slogans and every damn thing your senses can and cannot imagine but are you able to see through the maze and use your education and conscience as the decision making tool.Thats' critical!!!

This time, try and do every damn bit of research you wana do on all the candidates and then take a stand irrespective of party/caste/creed/celeb status. But in case you are not able to convince yourself to vote for any candidate just go out on the election date and use Section 49-0 which says that - a person can go to the polling booth, confirm his identity, get his finger marked and convey the presiding election officer that he doesn't want to vote anyone.Implications;if a candidate wins, say by 100 votes, and that particular ward has received "49-O" votes more than 100, then that polling will be cancelled and will have to be re-polled. Not only that, but the candidature of the contestants will be removed and they cannot contest the re-polling, since people had already expressed their decision on them. This would atleast bring fear into parties and hence look for genuine candidates for their parties for election.

The only message I wana communicate is that no matter what, this election, just go out and participate because this is the only way we can repay back to this beautiful sovereign democratic republic called India.

In case you need assistance on the election process/candidate profile etc, please find below a link on the election details. Kindly use such tools extensively.

http://www.indian-elections.com/election-schedule-09/

Lets do our bit this time.

Mohit