Exercising your Vote!!! To Whom!!!

Democracy the spine of India is tested for its flexibility once in five years by way of elections. Our present scenario rather sends a known yet questionable shock to the larger population of our country. The essence of elections is to be change agent or moreover to blunt the power being focussed to single minded individuals or organisations. The manifestos towards election by various parties which was meant to be road map on how the livelihood of general population would be uplifted has turned to be maps of appeasement targeted towards specific vote banks. The elections are to be conducted free and fair, considering the security of voters and without any influence of foreign powers on the government. The capability of the civil servants to implement electoral policies plays a vital role in rejuvenating the incumbent parliament or a new one that would be voted to power. While everyone’s opinion is ‘What went wrong?’’, the right way to phrase would be ‘What can be set right?’.

The biggest malady the country faces today is that the Political Parties which are supposed to lead the country to platforms of success are in reality standing in platforms of disaster. There is definitely a need to clarify what success to a country means, while the present scenario suggests that jingoism prevails over the welfare of the general population.  The success of a citizen is to find happiness of his /her identity in the country, the identity may be of the natural self, religious group, ethnolinguistic group, etc., While the British led the way in their colonial expeditions with its imperial policy of ‘divide et impera’ (divide and rule), the concept has been used by the book by various nations in the recent times like India (Communal Tensions and Ultra-Nationalism), United States (White Supremacy), United Kingdom (Brexit), Hungary (Anti-Semitic Political Campaign),  and more recently in Israel (Crude Laws against LGBT Community).

In India’s context democracy provided a different perspective from the long rules of monarchy to more or less Abraham Lincoln’s “A Government of the people, by the people and for the people”. As times moved forward the concept of democracy has become more distorted with a growing uncertainty on how political leaders themselves think about the question of what constitutes the people and the social fabric at large. While the present cream has made sure to use this muddle to their benefit, with the aide of social media which actually confuses the already confused voter. The decision of a voter to pick his /her candidate is more of spontaneous choice of what stays in his / her mind. The words of rhetorical cinematic Villains “People tend to forget” is a theorem that is proved on a daily basis. The inner senseless rage of a common man is the fuel for these wary politicians be it using it as wedge between monolithic communities, gaining political mileage through the achievements of longstanding team or stooping to use the nations armed forces as placards. The egoistic and narcissistic ambitions of a group single minded opportunists is pressed upon the general public. The general public act as flag-bearers even though one knows that everyone near you is an unsuspecting flag-bearer (pun intended). The advent of social media has eased the common man to be free to voice opinions, the major setback being that these opinions can be influenced faster than thoughts. While these tactics are used to good effect to profit from negative campaigning and yellow media. They best possible solution is to take experimental step on Ranked Ballot System (Instant run-off voting) rather than conventional system. This would induce healthy competition of good governance among the Political Parties.

Until then the best choice the one who is of lesser evil a candidate not the party, the simple fact is that these politicians are exaggerated representation of our own virtues and vices.