Show them the finger

Beginning today, 670 million Indians, voting over a three-week, five-phase election, will elect their government and to that extent shape their immediate future. A fourth of the 14th Lok Sabha — 140 seats of 543 — will be up for election on Day One. Senior ministers (L.K. Advani, Nitish Kumar, Yashwant Sinha), a former prime minister (H.D. Deve Gowda), one-time state satraps (Ajit Jogi, Giridhar Gamang), all-time mavericks (P.A. Sangma) and folk heroes (Bhupen Hazarika): April 20 is judgment day for just so many A list aspirants. Even so, in the larger reckoning, the success of this election — as indeed, of any free and fair election — will not be seen in terms of individual achievements, by the victory or defeat of a political celebrity or a celebrity politician (and it is becoming difficult to tell them apart) but by a more basic question: Did you turn out to vote?

Political theory abounds with definitions of democracy. In the Indian experience, it is simply a system that makes very few demands of its people. India is, for the most part, a relaxed society. It doesn’t make it obligatory for its young men and women to serve in the army. It doesn’t force you to stand on the roadside and wave flags each time some supreme leader drives past. It doesn’t even call upon you to take a pledge of citizenship, subsume every other identity, religious or cultural, under the overwhelming rubric of “Indian”. All it wants of you is your vote, just once, every few years or so. As such, the act of voting is not a ritual, it is an article of faith. It is this philosophy that underpins President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s exhortation: Go out and vote. This finds an echo in the Indian Express Group’s ‘Show them the Finger’ initiative — an attempt to nudge the citizen — especially the young — in the direction of his or her neighbouring EVM centre.

For those who haven’t experienced dictatorships or Saddam Hussein-style elections — where every voter votes and votes for the only candidate — democracy may sometimes seem a bit of a yawn. Indeed, it lends itself to boring attitudes and facile questions. Unlike, say, the United States where the affluent and educated vote in larger numbers than others — fulfilling their role as the vanguard, it would appear — upper class, urban Indians tend to treat election day with a cynical apathy. They settle into holiday mood, exclaiming, “But does my vote count?” The answer is simple enough: Your vote counts only as much you want it to. In the broader view, to walk to the polling booth is to indulge an emotion — anger against an incumbent, passion for a party, belief in a candidate. Above all, it is a celebration of being Indian. There can be no better reason to vote.