‘You have a duty to vote in a democracy,’ you are often told and justifiably so. The first time I voted was (minimum age was 21 then) in 1984 after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in her own house and by her own guards. I haven’t missed voting in most elections when in the country.
This time (May, 2024) I felt different. There just was no motivation. No candidate from my constituency called on us or in anyway made themselves and their agenda for the next five years, known. Mainstream media is all about praising one and criticizing everything about the other. Aren’t there 543 seats and several thousand candidates? Transparency and information are also part of a democratic process.
Despite these trepidations I geared myself up on 13th May, skipped the morning walk and instead got ready as if I was going for an important function and headed on foot to the government school merely half a kilometer away. Though it was just over an hour since voting began, there was a large gathering of people around the entrance. There were two clear queues mostly of people who appeared to me to be in the age group of 30 to 50. Lines for Booths 58 and 57 was the longest and as luck would have it, mine was 58.
As I waited quietly in the almost static queue, I heard something about senior citizens from the police persons on duty. I generally don’t claim to be a senior citizen in public places or seek favours based on my age. But looking at the slow moving queue I picked up courage to enquire if senior citizens had a separate queue. The young policeman gave me a quick glance and flaying his arms around, yelled that everyone was a senior citizen there and hence there can’t be any more separations. I meekly slid back to my place in the line, properly chastised for playing the age card. And then I waited for 70 minutes for my turn.
As I crawled my way to Booth 58 I saw a chart showing the list of candidates of the constituency. There appeared to be almost 50 candidates. There were all kinds of weird symbols and unknown names which I could hardly read from one foot away from the chart! Once inside, it was absolutely clinical and I voted as Lalita Ke Ravindran (my name rearranged with a strange middle and my favourite ‘h’ missing from my given name). Thankfully, the picture on the electoral roll was mine.
I showed my left index finger to be inked and braced to the voting machines. There wasn’t just one Electronic Voting Machine, but three machines with unreadable names. I wondered if I had to vote three times. Then I realized they need three EVMs to accommodate all the candidates in the fray. I simply closed my eyes and pressed one key and lo and behold my ‘duty’ towards democracy was done! It all felt like a sham to me. Was I expected to research a lot on my own, separate the fake from the real and make a value judgment on my own? How? When all I’m surrounded by is paid media and cacophony.
As I walked back with heavy legs, hungry, thirsty and feeling a sense of emptiness I wondered what rights I’d earned for the next five years for having done ‘my duty for democracy.’