Elections and Footwear

Its election time and contrary to the popular belief that posters, cut outs, banners, flex boards and mega stages for elections campaigns essentially reflect the mood of times, something else has caught the imagination of the voting crowd in our esteemed democracy. The lack of posters, banners and other advertisement entities are due to the limitations from the Election Commission (while that is debatable! They do mean unnecessary use of money, but a lot of educationally under-privileged people whom I have conversed with do not know their candidates without these).

Oh No! It’s not going to vote that they are excited about, but something else even more powerful with which THEY THINK they can transparently convey their eons of displeasure on the political system and the baseline setup. Well, the title must have given you the theme of my post this time around. For the oblivious, I have named it ‘Elections and Footwear ‘or ’throwing footwear at your leader’! Who better to choose than the Prime Minister, the Leader of Opposition, the Home Minister and a Chief Minister for the honors?! While its history that George W. Bush was accorded this treatment by an Iraqi journalist protesting the US occupation in Iraq and other atrocities, that has set a bad precedent across the world!

We must have dived to the lowest of ebbs to have concluded that this is the way to remind the politician brethren of difficult times that we have been subjected to. While it is every citizen’s right to express his/her vocal opinion about the state of affairs especially to the elected representative, how can we possibly think throwing your slipper merits better attention? The educated crowd in this country has been quite popular at thrashing the highs and lows of every politician worth his salt and blogosphere is the wall where everything is painted for everybody to see. And now, their educated brains have overworked and out came a retired TEACHER and an ENGINEER who did the honors of insulting the pride (again debatable!) of the whole nation. The whole world is watching the Indian elections and the formation of a new government in the second fastest growing economy with bated breath and this is how we behave? Education is a benefit for the financially fit it’s the moral responsibility for the educated to lead the not-so-privileged from oblivion and this is the way we teach them! SHAME ON US!

Now, do not get me wrong, I have my own share of rants (the idea of the whole blog!) against the whole political setup and policy making that we have been subjected to. But I strongly believe we are headed in the wrong direction. We should be voicing our opinions about job losses, growing disparities between the rich and the poor, a grounded education system and others important issues. Voicing this opinion can be done in a variety of ways! How many of us would vote in the current general elections?! Voting is the means by which you and I can make a statement by electing a capable leader who could be trusted in seeing people’s aspirations become reality! If you do not like a leader do not vote for him. That will have a much bigger impact than churning hideous ideas to be heard.

What were these nutcases thinking? You throw your footwear at them and they will immediately accept defeat and turn a new leaf? Stop giving them the right to manipulate the lives of people. Vote based on merits of the candidate, not on the scale of the goodies that these candidates provide during election times. Development is a long term agenda, you start right and then you can see results. All the wealth and new jobs that we have/ had (recession, you see!) were due to the steps taken in 1991. We will have to make a fresh start at doing this and also ensure that this trickles down to the different layers in the society marginalized due to caste, religion, gender etc. A minute’s mistake in electing a crook can reverberate into inactions for five complete years! We could also take our problems to the extremely energetic news media that will be more than happy to add them to their ‘BREAKING NEWS’. And for a change instead of listening to newsmen discussing if Slumdog Millionaire deserved an Oscar, how heartbroken Shahid would have been after the breakup with Bebo and numerous other discussions that let you cringe the moment you look at it, we could be talking sense!

I have seen the news channels making an impact in a few cases, it is our duty to highlight our plight. It’s for us re-shape our destiny and you simply can’t blame everyone else if it bombs. So what are you waiting for? TIME TO MAKE A STATEMENT!