Although I am 26, I never had an opportunity to vote as I was shuttling between Hyderabad, Goa and Bangalore for education and job and did not reside at one place which made it difficult to apply for an ID. After shifting to Bangalore I now finally got my ID made. There was a sudden rush of excitement as the election dates were approaching. Besides the excitement I also faced confusion as to whom to cast my vote for. There was a problem of plenty. Every Tom,"DICK"(pun intended) and Harry had his/her own party. All of a sudden every minister tried pulling a Vivekananda or a Martin Luther King in their campaigns.I put myself through great stress by listening to some of them so that it would ease my decision.All I saw was mockery of the entire system and one another's party.It made no sense even remotely to make a decision based on this.According to me no party deserved even a bleak chance based on their campaigns.Coming to the advertisement campaigns of these parties. Advertisements on "Ab ki bar Modi sarkar" and "Congress ke karyakartha" and the viral jokes on them on the internet only made it worse. Rahul Gandhi's women empowerment and other blah blah being shown in video format only made me reach for a glass of water.Being new to this state I barely knew about the local candidates and their deeds. All I knew were a couple of candidates as they were "famous" and were, not because of their good deeds. I then googled about how much each of them actually executed from their proclamations, weighed my options and finally arrived at a decision.The decision I made was merely a compromise as none seemed like a perfect PM candidate to me. So at that particular moment I had to pick the less worse from the bag of horrible.So after a lot of political mumbo jumbo I narrowed down to three options one being "None of the above." some how "None of the above" was ringing loudly in my mind. So I decided Ill let my gut guide me at that moment.I hit the bed with no thoughts in my mind. The next day we decided to hit the booth a little early to avoid the rush.I marched towards the booth with great excitement. I was expecting to see a lengthy line of people holding out their IDs and cursing the long line,wiping their sweat out because of the scorching heat or rubbing their stomachs because of hunger pangs.But, there was none. There were hardly 4 people.There was this archaic building resting on its final pillar. I sometimes wonder how the government officials manage to find the most archaic building for their jobs.Inside the building were the government officials seated in 2 rows and were pondering over the papers placed in front of them. It still aches to see that the government folks don't master at their work in spite of their reiterative training.Every detail these days are available on our phones as apps and so were our electoral details as a message. As usual they were unaware of the features of these new advancements and did not even bother to learn in spite of us explaining to them. Then, finally a guy came along and made them understand about the new advancements. We were then directed towards the booth to cast our votes. To my surprise there were 5 more independent parties added to my list to elevate my confusion levels in that limited time. I had to act fast.I finally narrowed down to one final decision and pressed the button for the party of my interest. I then went to another department to get my finger inked. We finally came out and did what?? Selfie ofcourse!!...It really was a tough decision and I was not happy the way it opened up. I sincerely feel the local politicians should do a lot of home work to promote their parties and save people from this sort of confusion.It was sad to note that Bangalore this year had a very low turn up of voters. People here, especially the youth raised their voices and drew throngs for causes like the Nirbhaya rape case, LGBT rights and for some petty, megre crap like valentine's day celebrations or keeping the bars open till 1 am but just shunned themselves when they had to execute a right. It is because of them we need to endure some idiot whom I fear might rule us for the next five years.I hope there is some solution to all this. Better systems, better facilities or setting the date that does not coincide with a long weekend etc etc. can make this experience a wonderful and a worthy one.
sincerely
a very unsatisfied voter.
sincerely
a very unsatisfied voter.
