Thursday, June 14, 2012

The election

We voted in the MLC election this past Sunday. Turns out only 20% of Bangalore's graduates voted. 20% - what a pathetic turn out. This contest was for the Bangalore graduates constituency. We had a huge drive in the campus with people setting up booths to collect registration forms etc. Yet, I barely see the "spotted index fingers". Why? I have no idea.

We truly do deserve the political class we are suffering today. We hardly bother to go and vote - and then expect some miracle to happen and some revolution to sweep us off our feet.

Tsk..makes me sad.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am not sure how different the MLC elections are but people are vexed with elections in general and I don't think that situation will change until you give them an option to scratch their vote as opposed to picking the best of the worst. Bottomline: people believe that they will reap the same no matter what they sow.

Unknown said...

Agree with you Divya. Did not know stats 20% is certainly demoralizing number. This was our best chance to elect graduates, certainly citizens do not have any right to blame politicians now.

Anonymous said...

Not widely publicized !!! How to get registered was not mentioned anywhere

DivSu said...

@Anonymous - I do not buy the absurd argument about scratching the vote or the null vote or whatever else one chooses to call it. What would you achieve by it? A re-election spending few more crores? And who will stand in that re-election? Some other guy with enough muscle - then again you will go scratch your vote - then what? Another election and .. you can see how absurd that argument is? Or maybe you want to be ruled by the President in the absence of a clear leader - have fun being ruled by Pratibha Patil. And are you saying that the 80% graduates in Bangalore who did not get out to vote on Sunday, read through manifestos of everyone and decided no one was worth it? I beg to differ. There was one guy at least who was worth taking the trouble to vote for and now we've lost that chance too. Today when I came to work on a bad road with no water at home, I felt I am paying for the indifference of those 80% people who just will not care. I do not understand this attitude - people are willing to go shout slogans in an anti-corruption rally and feel good and jingoistic about it, but the same people are not willing to make a difference when they actually can (I am sorry, all that sloganeering did not make an inch of difference to the corrupt system today). People have to realize, exercising the vote is the only step you can actually take which will make any difference. If you cannot find anyone good, go to vote at least to keep the worst guy out. Hopefully some day you will have an actual good guy to vote for.

@Vijay - yeah, 20%, can you imagine :(

@Anonymous2 - If I could figure it out, so could you :) You just need to keep your eyes and ears open for information :) In this day and age of connectivity, I find that hard to buy from anyone who uses the internet for at least a few hours everyday.

Anonymous said...

Well awareness was definitely less for this one.I do not know how many graduates knew that a separate registration was needed for this one.

If you knew and if your corporate had a mass counter, you could have done your bit by blogging about it .Am sure at least 5 people would have benefited and by word of mouth, we could have spread the message about the right candidate.

I guess we should move from "we voted. you didn't " to "we registered, did you". That might help better.ie helping in the early phase !

Just my 2 cents. no offense please !!

DivSu said...

@ Anonymous - that is definitely a great idea. Will certainly do that from next time on :)

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