My Second Vote

I voted for the second time in my 28 years of faring in this democracy.

I was 18 when I placed my first vote. Right on!

First votes are always special. Not because we get a say on who should our leader be but getting your finger inked (for the first time) brings in a sense of Instagrammable-pride.

Contrary to the airy-pride bestowed, my first vote was awkward, to be honest.

For one, I came across an EVM for the first time. For a person who is typing this blog out, a single press of a button on an EVM is no mammoth’s task you would say but duh! It didn’t have a processor. You press for the candidate and then a paper trail is generated in the VVPAT that basically registers your vote. Interesting, yet but it was reallllly slow. So slow that I know who the person prior to me voted for and goes without saying that the person next to me would have know who I voted for.

Yes, nobody told us to use common sense. We didn’t care to wait.

Second, the list of candidates mentioned on the EVM were all names I took time reading out. That’s not something I am proud of. I always brushed away political discussions citing disinterest. I stood there taking guesses despite being a citizen of the largest democracy. I was ignorant and ‘akad-bakad-bambay-bo’ed out to choose one.

Well, guesses don’t fuel our country’s governance wheels. Every vote counts and I just wasted one of mine.

That brings me to ponder if one is lucky enough to vote right when one’s ditto 18, and rounding off India’s average life expectancy to 70, the votes one can place in a lifetime is around 11.

If I count Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha independently then roughly 22 votes.

Alas! Not all get to place their first vote at 18. Just 22 shots at choosing a leader and wasting one due to ignorance is nothing short of shameful.

It has become a clichè to quote, ‘every vote counts’ but does it not count?

The stakes are high and the chances one gets at it are like what the count of fingers on the hands and legs combined?

The basis of voting in a democracy is choosing a leader who mirrors the vision that majority dream of. And currently Hinduism is what most Indians have placed a bet on as a mainstream agenda a leader should disseminate. Not employment, education, food security, health or poverty, mind you. Just religious supremacy.

If it satiates the ego, why not?

High time we call a spade, a spade and oust ourselves of the blind beliefs that feed our limited imagination. India in 2047 should be an India where we make sustainable choices, where literacy is no more a far-fetched dream, where hunger becomes buried as a word in the dictionary, where innovation and growth is caste, creed, religion and sex inclusive and where the GDP is driven by the majority instead of a collective few.

Remember, choosing without rationale is allowing demagoguery of political opportunists to toy with our faith. And our faith doesn’t come cheap.

Signing off. Jai Hind!