Why should I Vote?

31^st day of August and July are two special days in recent past. The former is the last day for filing IT returns and the later is the last day for enrolling our names into electoral rolls. I am a part of last minute rush in both instances and I can say with least effort that the later has much less demand than the former especially among educated people.  I hope I don’t need any statistics to make this certain. The IT returns caught the headlines almost all national news papers while the later got a small box in a corner page in district edition. The paradox is that we are convinced to pay our taxes on time but are least interested to bother about how effectively they are spent.  Another thing which caught my attention is that so many daily workers, old people and people who are not so educated are more willing to see their names in electoral rolls than those people who are educated and have an intellectual capacity to assess the kind of leader our society needs.  This brings to us the fundamental question ‘Why should I vote’?

This may be a very obvious question for a socially conscientious citizen but for others it is worth asking this question and more worth finding the answers. A vote is our gateway to democracy failing which we lose our moral right to complain against the system.  A Vote is our Voice To Elect right people to rule us and make our lives better and enable our society to prosper. It is our moral responsibility to spend some time analyzing the commitments of netas and babus of all parties and make a fair analysis which is better for us and for our future generations. The appalling trend is that the people who have a capacity to do a fair judgment stay out of system by failing to vote. Rest of the people fall prey to election gimmicks and enable criminals and robbers to rule us.  The meager 37% of polling in Khairatabad constituency in recent by-elections is an indication of how disinterested the people are with their leaders. It does not need too much of analysis to understand how many of those 37% have actually voted out of careful deliberations. We must realize that similar to the way our Vote contributes for a leader to gain power, our absence will have its dent in allowing a criminal to sit on our head.

There is no surprise in the fact that current state of politics discourages an individual to participate in voting.  Most of educated people are caught up with a disillusion that nothing is going to change the system. This disbelief further weakens our system and we should proactively respond to the challenges. If there are not many choices to vote for then create more choices, definitely not excuses. Today’s silence will force us to be silent while situation goes out of hands.

While so many people of various countries in the world are struggling for the right to vote we are constantly  failing to realize the potential of vote and allowing for  further weakening of the system.  One may think that the power of a single vote may be too insignificant. It may just be a drop in an ocean but ocean is nothing without those little drops!! Let us exercise our right to vote without fail and allow our democracy to flourish. This is definitely not our schools and colleges teach us.

INSPIRATION: Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan, Loksatta Party.