Khadi Khichdi

I know that a blog has been due here for quite sometime. So here I am. I was wondering what could be a nice topic for this post and finally settled upon the wonderful topic of elections. To be frank, it has more masala than a vijay movie (he is a tam hero - both of which is a shame to Tamilnadu) so boredom shouldnt be a worry here.

People call it the greatest exercise of democracy. I really don't understand why we emphasize so much on the d-word and feel proud of it. In a sense it is not really an achievement to be a democracy. To me democracy or no democracy makes no difference when you do not know the value of it. You miss being a democracy only when you lose it and there is some helpless person at the top. There are people who feel that parties should not be in the control of a particular family. But if for years you have been a doormat and can't see yourself rising beyond it or willing to take up bigger responsibilities, it is fair that someone who has been a prince all his life and knows the pressures take over. Moreover the other members only seem too willing.

In a democracy where a huge chunk of the voters are aged between 18 and 36, this election ought to be eexciting. But are all of them going to vote? A sad no. There are quite a few reasons. The foremost one is that most of them are displaced. There are not living in the area of their voter registration. When people (read as software engineers) find it difficult to go to the doctor for their ailments, it's only fair enough that they skip elections for that important project. Another reason is lack of choice, which according to me is the most stupid reason for not voting. You are dying of thirst, you hate colas and you are offered a pepsi or a coke. Would you die of thirst rather? There is no such thing as the best choice. It is only the best available choice. We look up online dictionaries a million times to formulate an email for a client a dozen thousand miles away which probably begets only a cursory glance, but we would not even find out who are the choices available for our constituency.

Here again, I am not generalising and am definitely not saying that this apathy is intentional. It is just the way we have been conditioned. We have all those movies that wouldn't have run for a single day without showing the politicians in a bad light. And even if there was a good politician , he wouldn't survive a day without the hero. What are we making of a nation that is blessed with everything under the sun? Or the neighboring nation that has our brothers suffering from the lack of that we are blessed with in abundance? What are we doing of our children who ought to have a good chance at improving things? What do we teach them? Hate? Apathy? Greed?

We teach our children not to fight with their friends. Do we tell them to give a chance for their enemies? We teach our children that we should not beg but we praise them when they get things free on purchase. Apathy is not punished in our country, it is celebrated as a sign of intellect. Rarely do we realise that politics and government is a part of our being. It is a super employer that employs all of us.