Wednesday, May 6, 2009

A voter in search of a candidate


Past few weeks we can see election fever everywhere, candidates busy in campaigning and the party members busy arranging rallies here and there and everywhere in the country. This is toughest time for the ministers and candidates as they have to wander in this hot summer in rural areas to vow the public, making baseless promises to people to get vote.

This time the elections were not the same as earlier, as many NGO and student community comin forward and aspiring people to vote; more focused towards the younger generation. We can see many campaign and cartels made to promote people to vote for elections like vote for India.

One of the funniest thing in the election season is that we can see the amazing creativity of the cartoonists with there state of art sculptures in the newspapers and magazines depicting some of the ministers and candidates, have I mentioned the blaming game where the members of the either party blame each other for the any damn mis-happenings, rising prices, terrorists attack, bla bla bla…. (Lot more). The opposition need just a small reason where by something goes wrong to pull the leg of the ruling party and to highlight the issue as the main election agenda. Also the candidates make some funny comments on each other.

Recently a new trend has emerged after the shoe attack on George bush, that is shoe hitting. The trend is so popular that it has been tried on some of the renowned ministers in India like Manmohan singh, L K Advani, P Chidambaram. The ministers have got shoe-phobia these days and while giving speech in public gathering they are more focused and cautious on the shoe thing rather than the speech.

Today the campaign are emphasizing people to vote; despite of all campaigns and the awakening messages, there were less than 50% of voter casting vote in Mumbai itself. There is a reason behind this- Are there right candidate worth to vote for? Most of the politicians are having criminal cases on them, the rest are corrupt, other are so old busy to get treatment for themselves rather than treating the illness of the country, one candidate only wants to hang Afzal Guru, another is bothered about India's unused uranium deposits, someone else is worried about security, the other about defence deals and yet another about corruption or rather, corrupt people in politics and yet other want to bring back the Indian money from the swiss account. For some, it's not clear what exactly they represent. Some of these issues are important and others do not really fall under the umbrella of influence which an ordinary MP has.

Do we have candidates who truly represent us, no matter how diverse, different, intelligent, silly, emotional, irrational, scientific, religious, greedy, rich or poor we are? Yes, there are times when we vote for or against this or that party because some party appeals to us and some parties fill us with loathing.

The people have lost their faith on the Indian politics system. It's become a bit of a downer as a voter. You can't, it seems, really go by the candidate. And, as it happens according to surveys, 60 per cent of the electorate knows that -- it votes by party. There is a tendency of the people to vote for the particular party, without knowing the candidate. They should know the candidate and vote for the right candidate rather than voting for the party.

Under these circumstances, the search for the good candidate has left me flummoxed. There is a need of overhauling in the current political system in India and more and more young generations to take participate in the political system and contribute towards the country. As together we will and we can lead to a prosperous country and developed nation.

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