Democratic Dividend

The state of J and K is permanently on the boil because of militant terrorism. The state of TamilNadu reaches boiling point due to electoral terrorism of J and K every five years. Verbal abuses are thrown about with nonchalant abandon, reputations already fragile are ripped apart and voter inebriation touches a new high.

To perform my constitutional duty and to exercise my citizenry rights, I went to the polling booth with a lot of enthusiasm. (Scorching sun and cloudy skies alternated during the day. Was it nature’s way of bemoaning the alternate misrules of the Rising Sun and the Two Leaves? There were intermittent showers too, as predicted by weathermen. Is weather easier to predict than election results?) After the polling was over, I conducted the most scientific exit-poll ever done. Statisticians say that the more scientific the poll, the smaller the sample requirement to maintain the same confidence interval. In my eagerness for innovation, I simply interchanged the if-then sequence and concluded that the smaller the sample size, the more scientific and unbiased the survey. So, I arrived at the least possible sample size namely unity. Principles of scientific survey dictate that the sample should be representative of the population. So, I chose the one who is as confused and clueless as the countless voters. I chose myself. The exit poll results are ready though I am forbidden by the strictly enforced rules of the Election Commission to announce this.

Everybody is saying that every voter in TamilNadu has been paid by both the leading Dravidian parties as a gesture of goodwill. I was wondering why the same goodwill was not extended to me. I got enlightened in the polling booth. My name was not in the voter list. (Political parties are very shrewd: why waste money on a non-voter?) When the list was getting updated a couple of years ago, I had informed the updating official that my mother was no more. Instead of removing my mother’s name from the voters’ list , the intelligent officer struck off my name convinced that I was an embarrassingly  transparent  citizen and therefore not deserving of the ‘democratic dividend ‘(being paid by the political parties under the cash-for-votes scheme) of participating in the electoral process. (Rs.570 crore was seized by EC officials in just one incident. It is no solace to know that the amount is only a legitimate transfer from one currency chest to another. What is revealing is the suspicion of the Election Commission. Political morality in TamilNadu has got into such a bottomless pit that the EC could readily entertain such a suspicion.)

Since I was denied the privilege of voting, I do not have a burdened conscience. Whichever Thuggish party comes to power, I am not to be blamed. I feel free. Freedom always comes at a price. The price is ineligibility for ‘democratic dividend’. I understand that a voter who has not been provided the democratic dividend by the candidates can lodge a complaint with the Election Commission. (Shouldn’t rules follow the practice?) Long live our Democracy!