The day after the final votes have been counted

During the latest round of various state elections , we could see our great patriotic national media brimming out some very interesting pictures to us. We could see fragile , old men clutching their sticks and going to those vote booths , “they were showing their enthusiasms for the democratic process even at a ripe old age” claimed our mainstream media , we were also shown pictures of how people were voting in the insurgency-affected areas , “democracy won today when people braved their fears to come out and vote” cried our independent-minded , progressive media . As I watched all those pictures , I asked myself why these people bother to vote even by risking their very lives very time ? Does they hope that their lives will be really changed after they have acted upon their right of expressing their popular opinion ?
But think about it my dear readers , do we ever hear the media highlight those same old men after the results have come out ? In our country , we see overwhelmingly the poor people go to vote and the evidence of last 60 years is that their plight by and large remains the same. How many times have we seen our media going to the people after the elections are over ? When the media interviews a person on the voting booth , how many of those media personnel ask whether that person believes his/her wishes will be fulfilled or not after the vote ?

When we do vote for now days do we really think about the issues that we face or we just vote based upon the symbol of a particular party or our liking of a particular leader? We believe that democracy is “of the people, for the people, by the people” but the question is does that really hold true in the 21-st century? Do we really believe that our policy makers have our interests in the back of their minds when they make real, hard, serious policy decisions? If we really look at more than 60 years of our history in this country, that axiom does not hold good. Do we seriously believe that our leaders had our interests in mind when they decided to adopt the five-year plans or for that matter the policies with Pakistan? Do we really believe that our leaders had taken us into confidence when they decided to frame their policies regarding Pakistan or China? Whose interests were on the mind of our leaders when they decided to conduct their policies vis-à-vis the USA after the Bhopal tragedy? When we signed the nuclear energy deal with the USA, whose interests were in the mind of our leaders?

All this brouhaha and razzmatazz about elections and its outcomes hide the plain true fact. Elections distract our perspective from the real issues like unemployment, farmer-suicides or inflations at our hands. We need to ask ourselves this simple question, when we vote, do we vote for ourselves or for the leaders who is being represented on behalf of us?

Now think about this scenario. Suppose I am an Industrialist and I am thinking about bidding for a government tender for constructing a road. Now suppose the cost of the project involves 800 crores and the profit would emerge out as 1000 crores after all costs have been paid. Now as an Industrialist I am thinking about limiting my costs and optimizing my profits. So I offer two main political parties in the state (one is in power and another is in opposition) 100 crore each , for making the cost of the project reduced to 300 crores so that I can optimize my profits from this scenario. Now does this mean corruption? Even if it so how can the system prevent me from doing it since I have both the government and the opposition at the back of my pocket? Now as a voter how can you stop me from doing this?

Let us face the fact, that policymakers in most of the political system (including ours) never think about the common man in the street when they frame their policies. It is also true is that most of the political systems in the world are run by a very small number of people. These are the people who think and take decisions on behalf of others in the system when it comes to the real decision making. That fact is true in any kind of system including the biggest democracy in the world. That is true for all the systems. It is a common trend of mankind to think about themselves while making any decision. The decision makers and leaders in any system also are no exception to this norm. So the normal thing is that when the decision makers take a decision, they normally take it based upon their own interests. The important thing is what can we do to make sure those people think about us when they decide our fates? My sincere question to my dear readers is the system of voting is the only process through which we can remind the decision makers in our system about our preferences and interests?

I understand that it is tough finding out a real solution to this increasing irrelevancy of the Indian voter whereas he is not much needed by the system after the election results are out. After all the system has been in place for such a long time and the average Indian is more or less comfortable with the situation; and why not he should be comfortable? Is this country not an aspiring superpower? Are we not watching our country’s GDP grow by an astonishing 8-9 per cent per year? Did we not just win the World cup? Are we not hosting the IPL currently? Are we not watching new shopping malls and multiplexes crowd out our cities each and every day? So why should we bother even if our leaders struck shady deals behind our backs with foreign or Indian multinationals? After all we have Dhoni and his boys and Bollywood badshahs as well as 9 per cent GDP growth, right? So who cares whether our leaders decide to enrich themselves little bit more or our farmers continue to commit suicides in record numbers?

I do not have any magical solution to this problem. What I can say is that my dear Indian friend, please take a deep breath and think a little bit before you click that button on that AVM. Do not vote a man because either your caste or clan wants you to vote or you like that man’s charisma a little bit more. Vote for the man after being convinced that he can help you resolve your issues in your area after the vote count has ended.

P.S.: This just came to my knowledge. Just after the final votes were counted and a lot of “poribortan” (Bengali for change) took place, the central government decided to increase the fuel prices a little bit more for extracting a little bit more revenue out of the pockets of us. Now go back my dear Indian friend and start the TV. Your favorite IPL team will be batting first!