Vote! Vote! Vote!

There were photos of Shaina NC, A.R. Rahman and other celebrities in the paper today urging students to vote. Shaina had even come to the DU campus all the way from Mumbai and egged people to exercize their voting rights. Then there was a tirade about "youth power" and how the votes of the "young" people matter a lot in modern India. (I don't know what's the yardstick for young because in politics even 38 year old Rahul Gandhi is young).

Will you vote? I want to vote, not because I actively support any party, but because I have never voted and want to see how it feels like. I like to think my one vote would make a difference. But does it? Well, that's been highly debated in the glossies especially during these election times. Moreover between the BJP and the Congress, there isn't much difference except that the BJP is overtly sectarian and the Congress is what the BJP likes to call pseudo-secular. Their economic policies are more or less the same. Both oppose the other's policies for the sake of opposition and when elected pursue the same policies.

Some people don't vote because they think voting won't make a difference as politicians will always be corrupt. All they do is talk about how the country is going to the drains and how we need real leaders(like Gandhi and Nehru) to save the country and...The fact is that it is very easy to blame the politicians for all that is seemingly going wrong with the country. How many people who are ready with their armchair analysis after every tragedy or disaster would actually be a politician and work for the development of the country? Most likely nobody.

People who don't vote(because there's nobody to vote for) and won't stand for elections; do such people have the right to criticize the Government or politicians? Yes, it's quite difficult to win elections(especially for the educated middle-class who most likely won't have their caste/religion combination right), but even standing for elections is a step towards changing the political scenario. Unless we become politically aware and active, we don't have the right to criticize politicians. It's we who elected them(even if we didn't vote. Passive voting?). As Jug Suraiya wrote "We can condemn the ugly face of politicians, but we must remember it's the same face that we see in the mirror every morning."