Polls

The election fever has me all wired up. Sitting outside, but not as an outsider, I watch my country going to polls with a sinking feeling. If I were back home, whom would I have deemed fit to lead my promising nation? Do I place my faith on a party that's ruled by a hopeless dynasty, on a coalition that has all the unlikely-to-ever-last-a-day partners, or on a group that defines itself purely on the basis of religious ideologies? I am stumped for an answer.

With every election, a new candidate rises up to the "challenge". Don't they get it?
It's us, the general public, who really is the challenged...WHOM do we vote for? The man with the shady past? The one with a murderer title written on his forehead? Or simply the politician who gives himself to the public once in every five years?
Some picks that have left me seething in the run up to this election -
There's Azharrudin, former Indian cricket captain, who traded his country's honour and reputation for personal wealth, and wealth alone. Banned for life from doing what at one point he did best, he now seeks to redeem himself. And how? By wanting to "serve" the very country he decided to barter.
I watch one of his interviews as he declares himself a worthy candidate. His responses to questions about his past deeds are not just unsatisfactory, they are plain disappointing.
The man barely manages to utter a single sensible word, gulping his sentences, vainly trying to convince a starved nation that he has indeed turned over into a honourable man, with noble intentions only.

Sanjay Dutt calls himself the "grassroot party worker". What makes him assume that donning a ujala-white kurta-pyjama, a bright red topi, and preaching Gandhi-ism, is going to induce people into believing he is now a sparkly clean man? The "star" in him will win him votes with the very few celebrity-crazy out there. But this is a nation brimming with a population wishing for a terror-free country just as much as they are seeking food, education and a roof over their heads, and here, this man will have to more than just deliver dialogues from his movies. Gandhigiri or netagiri.

I am more than shocked by Varun Gandhi. I'm disgusted. Here is a man who is young, highly educated, comes with a so-called modern-outlook, and what the heck, also boasts secular roots! But come election time...one has to win - by hook or by crook. Through secularism or religion-ism. And he chooses the latter.
Did he think it was best to garner those few votes in favour, than risk collective support by vouching for unity? Did he assume his words would go unnoticed by the media, and thereby the combined Indian populace? Or did he dare imagine that safe under a powerful surname, he would be left untouched by criticism and action?

In all the instances above, I only talk of known and recorded individual pasts that make each of these candidates unfit to ever represent any section of our country. They put me to shame. But they are not in it alone. Many more like them have stood the test of times (read polls) in the past six decades, and many of them have gone on to take serious posts in the Indian political system. They have called the shots, charted their paths, amassed personal fortunes for their future generations, and led us to believe that they indeed stand for us. Us, the general public. And what do we do in return? Some of us decide to join the bandwagon, some of us join their fray, and some wage a lone battle in this world of gimmicks. Some of us choose to do nothing about this seemingly worrying trend, talk about it occasionally and then pretend this will never affect us. That's the least efficient of the lot. And I belong to that last category.