While we all want India to be a vibrant and prosperous
country, what is our contribution towards achieving it?
I am sure many of us are involved in social activities to
bring a change but how seriously do we consider exercising a franchise right to
be a “sacred” citizen responsibility? Yes, to me, it is more sacred than
lighting the lamp in the temple in the evening. In Ms Zinta’s words, this is
more important than lighting candles in different protest marches. Mrs. Balan went
one step further to mention that we need to have the mark on our fingers before
raising it towards anyone else.
With so much activism on the part of election commission and
celebrities to motivate people to go out to vote, Bangalore South and Mumbai
turned out to be the two duds while almost all other states, union territories
have shown huge improvements in voter turnout. Why?
In the context, it is worthwhile to mention that Bangalore
South – the IT capital of India and Mumbai – the financial capital of India are
the home of most educated and elitist people of India.
I am appalled to fathom the reasons for so much apathy from
this subset of population towards participating in the democratic process. For the case of Bangalore South, few flimsy
reasons – voter list not updated and worse, that the date coincided with long
weekend, look too inconsequential to me for justifying low voter turnout. This,
despite the repeated requests from the media, that ‘V’ stands for vote and not
for Vacation.
In this context, I would like to share few statistical data
in relation to this 16th Parliament election.
- · Electorate of 81.5 core (0.8 Billion) is 4 times the next largest-US with 21.9 crore as of 2012 presidential poll.
- · It is bigger than the next 5 added together- US, Indonesia, Brazil, Russia and Bangladesh @74.9 crore
- · Highest number of first time voters – estimated @15 crore (0.15 billion).
- · Highest spend – pegged at Rs 30,000 crore or USD 5 Billion – all time high against all democracies in the world.
- · The transgender community will vote for Lok Sabha for the first time-registered with 28,341 numbers.
- · Electorate has male- female ratio @52.3%:47.6%
At the cost of being repetitive and after the 6 phases of
altogether 9 phases got over today, I am using this platform to make another fervent plea to go out to vote for you and motivate others to do the same in
the remaining 3 phases in case your constituencies are still not covered yet.
The dismissive thought of “one vote not being exercised won’t matter” at the individual level
is creating a big crack for the country cumulatively as a whole. We, the
educated lot, for sure, need to be giving a good healthy competition to our
friends from other parts of the country for India to shine and be vibrant.
