Random Rants & Raves

May 7th – Day for polling in Gurgaon. I was in Pune till the 6th and arrived back in Gurgaon late at night. Neeta and I got ready at 6:30 AM on the 7th and ventured out by around 7 AM to go cast our vote.

The only problem was that we had no idea where our polling station was situated. We only had a station number – P125. We first roamed around near our sector (47, 46, etc.) and didn’t find even one polling booth. We then went to some local cops standing around and asked for directions to the nearest polling booth. They sent us off to Badshahpur village – a good 6 KM from our place. We then wandered around in the village and reached one station where they told us that P125 is not in this one but in the one inside the village. On reaching that place, they again told us that we are quite far from the place where ours should be and sent us back to Jharsa village which is closer to our residence.

On the way to Jharsa, we reached Sector 40 having another station which had booths from P121-P124. Figured out from there that our booth is inside the Jharsa village and we then went there. After again going to the wrong booth first we finally landed up in the right place. We couldn’t even park the car near it since the place was completely inaccessible by vehicles and we had to park our car far off and walk to the booth through fairly dirty paths. It took about 10 minutes to find our name in the voting list and then 10 minutes more to actually cast our votes.

I have a few observations about the entire process.

• There are no signs anywhere that can direct voters to their correct voting locations. Even the address of the polling station is not mentioned in anyplace and online.
• Polling stations need to be closer and more accessible than what they are. I understand that there need to be booths in the villages. Keep them there. But also make booths available to people from the cities with cars. I’m sure if we were not such determined voters, we wouldn’t have ventured for so far, long or such an inaccessible place to cast our votes.
• We voted for the candidate who was the most educated, qualified and completely criminal case free. I’m glad that at least we had such a choice. There are apparently locations in the country where such a choice is impossible since all have major criminal cases against them.
• Talking to my driver after the elections, I realized that in India voting follows an unfortunate pattern. People vote based on religion, caste, personal benefits and other interests rather than voting based on who or which party will actually do something good for the country.
• The problem with is that the fractured mandate that we all expect in this elections are going to make us even more cynical and disillusioned. Especially if the government is unstable and/or ends up falling and creating another election soon.
• I also have issues with “post-poll” alliances. Unfortunately, this is what most of the parties are planning to do. I think of this more as “prostitution” rather than “government”. Parties are willing to get into “bed”, so as to speak, to keep other such alliances out. What I want is clear information about who each party’s partners  are before the elections, so that we, the voters can decide whether we want to vote for them or not. For instance, if I know party A and party D are going together, I may want to vote for Party A or D depending on who is standing from my constituency. However, if I know party A is going with C and D is going with B, I might want to vote for party E instead since I don’t like the A-C and B-D combinations. But if don’t know of this in advance, well, I might vote for the wrong set of people whom I don’t want to ever see in power.
• Come May 16th, I think we are going to be treated to “political-porn” of the dirtiest kind. Each party try to “seduce” the others into “sleeping” with them so that they can get to the seat of the government. Remember the saying “Politics make strange bedfellows”? It is remarkably apt in this current situation.

I get more and more cynical watching the political “leaders” attack each other on various news channels. Yet, I went and cast my vote. Will it make a difference? I don’t think so. But now I at least have earned a right. A right to crib and criticize the government. If it’s the government I chose, I have the full rights to bash them if they don’t do what they promised. If it’s not the government that I chose, well, I have even more rights to crib and criticize them since I didn’t get what I wanted even after exercising my franchise.

What do you think?