I have kept the title simple and quite broad because that's how I would like to describe the day. And I welcome myself back :P
It all started on April 16, a day before the elections in Karnataka. I have always been a supporter of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and was going through their facebook page. I had received the mail the previous day saying they have very few volunteers from Basavanagudi and needed some help. I pulled myself out of my comfort zone, pushed the thoughts for the need of a holiday, sleep and relaxation and decided to dedicate one day to the cause I believe in. I decided to become a booth volunteer for the AAP.
The meeting
For this, I had to attend a meeting the previous day at the AAP Basavanagudi office. I was apprehensive of showing up only in the last minute but the statistics put my doubts to rest.They were in severe need of people. We had only about 62 volunteers to operate in the whole of Basavanagudi and strategic planning was absolutely necessary. It was decided to post a few volunteers in 4 centres having maximum number of polling booths. We also had to stick together because the other parties outnumbered us by large margins. After learning about the rules and regulations and the basic discipline needed, the meeting concluded on the note that we were basically going to have fun and learn a lot! I wasn't let down.:)
D-day
I couldn't be a inside the booth to check if the EVM's are working fine (one member from each party is supposed to be at the booth by 6 a.m. as witnesses to the mock poll ) since I don't have a Voter's ID. Starting out at 6, I met the area coordinator, Siddharth, who took me to the first polling centre, Kamala Nehru school near K.R. road. We started by putting up one banner (of allowed dimensions), a table (discarded by a roadside restaurant) and 2 chairs borrowed from the Congress volunteers. There was an intimidating guy in white shirt and pants with a thick gold chain and a thick ring on his finger who guided all voters to his bench, ordered his minions around to find their names in the list and write it out on slips of paper (we were supposed to do that as well). They were all so organised and had so many resources at hand. We could possibly never get the voters come to us for help. But then surprisingly a few people came, wore the white AAP caps, and walked away! That is when a lady constable started screaming around asking us to remove our caps (even though we had the permission to wear it and it wasn't against the rules). The scary guy and his minions looked at us menacingly and we removed our caps not wanting to fight.
Then came my next stop, S.G.P.T.A. school in Thyagrajanagar. We had no infrastructure- no tables or chairs-all we had were our caps. People just did not come to us even when I stood at the entrance with the appropriate electoral roll in hand. The other volunteers were pointing, laughing and passing a few comments but that did not deter us. A lady came out of her house with her voter ID and asked us to help her. Her name was not there in the S.G.P.T.A school list so we had to literally search through the entire bunch of papers to find out. That is when she graciously offered her veranda to sort the sheaf of paper, lent us a stapler and also sent her son out with glasses of water. We ultimately found her entire family's names and were grateful for the hospitality!
This is when I met Roshan, who was a part of Shantala Damle's ( from Loksatta) campaign in the assembly elections and an active volunteer for AAP. His enthusiasm was infectious. We spoke about the various issues in campaigns, in parties such as AAP, about candidates, about AK (of course! ). His experience and encouragement reinforced my decision to volunteer! :)
The neighbourhood campaign
We realized that searching on laptop is much faster (obviously!) so I decided to get my laptop to the campaigning place-Mahila Mandali school, 2 roads away from my house. I came home, had some breakfast, voted (The most important thing! ) and came to the location where our volunteers were sitting. But we only had two chairs and no table. There weren't many voters as well (it was close to 12'o clock). So decided against getting laptop. That was when Congress and BJP volunteers started getting their lunches in autos and tempos and we got ours in a two wheeler! Me and Rabinarayan Sahu, the two volunteers sat with a table (brought from Rabi's house) and spread out all the voter's lists we had. It was only then that people started coming to us too! So to be taken seriously, you needed a table. chairs and many many papers :P. But the number of people was not too impressive. We waited till 5 p.m. talking about Orissa and Naveen Patnaik, corporate jobs, engineering, elections, AAP etc! We also chatted with the neighboring BJP desk aunty who was miffed because neither the MLA nor the candidate from BJP showed up. After helping around 15-20 people, we closed our desk at 6 p.m. and cleaned up the area.
The dismal voter turnout was felt at the booth-level. It looked like only the volunteers were populating the streets after the white lines. We even confirmed numbers from the booth officers and it was as low as ever. The people who voted were either families of BJP supporters (our aunty next desk seemed to know everyone who came to vote! ) or few youngsters before 10 a.m. Only if everybody votes can the system change. Putting up clean, honest and credible candidates isn't enough when the votes are so polarized and tilted in one party's favour. If people start caring about the nation and take elections atleast a tad bit seriously can the outcome change. A lot of complex factors govern a voter's choice. Some vote for the party, some for the candidate, some because of familial upbringing, some because of social media, some let their principles decide and so on. If everyone votes, all these complexities balance each other and the pattern is no more predicable. The more random and unpredictable the electorate's choices, all candidates tend to have almost same probability of winning (simple math!). That to me seems like a fair election.
Another issue here is that of the involvement of people in anything political. We are all ready to play armchair activists (I didn't coin this ) sitting in front of our laptops and liking posts, videos, blogs etc. But when it comes down to the field, we are deterred by family, friends and our own inhibitions. This can only stop when the society as a whole, especially the middle class changes its mindset that 'getting involved in politics is bad'. Waiting for it to happen someday.
AAP all the way!
Many people have asked me before and some have even been hostile when I declared my support to AAP. Why AAP? I ask them why not? I hear reasons like Kejriwal 'running' away, NaMo is the way to go, Candidate has no experience, AAP doesn't know how to lead the country, they are too idealistic to be in politics, that getting into politics will eventually turn them into yet another conventional party. I don't want to counter every other point since cynicism and doubts are quite common. But trying to suffocate a change in the system by saying 'it has always worked this way' will take us nowhere. Maybe AAP doesn't know how to lead and they lack political experience but that is no reason to keep us out of the arena of politics altogether! However hard one tries to pressurize the 'people's representatives' staying outside the parliament or assembly, the power to take decisions still rests with our MPs and MLAs. The point I am trying to make here is to give AAP a fair chance to see how things go. The ideals are clear, the candidates are clean, there is a lot of potential for change.One may have their own reasons to vote for any other party but that doesn't mean they don't have to show respect to the efforts put at a very large scale to change the system. It takes a lot of courage in a country where every intention is looked upon with suspicion. Let us give the party a due they truly deserve, give the candidates a hearing and make an informed decision before voting.
Jai Hind!
It all started on April 16, a day before the elections in Karnataka. I have always been a supporter of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and was going through their facebook page. I had received the mail the previous day saying they have very few volunteers from Basavanagudi and needed some help. I pulled myself out of my comfort zone, pushed the thoughts for the need of a holiday, sleep and relaxation and decided to dedicate one day to the cause I believe in. I decided to become a booth volunteer for the AAP.
The meeting
For this, I had to attend a meeting the previous day at the AAP Basavanagudi office. I was apprehensive of showing up only in the last minute but the statistics put my doubts to rest.They were in severe need of people. We had only about 62 volunteers to operate in the whole of Basavanagudi and strategic planning was absolutely necessary. It was decided to post a few volunteers in 4 centres having maximum number of polling booths. We also had to stick together because the other parties outnumbered us by large margins. After learning about the rules and regulations and the basic discipline needed, the meeting concluded on the note that we were basically going to have fun and learn a lot! I wasn't let down.:)
D-day
I couldn't be a inside the booth to check if the EVM's are working fine (one member from each party is supposed to be at the booth by 6 a.m. as witnesses to the mock poll ) since I don't have a Voter's ID. Starting out at 6, I met the area coordinator, Siddharth, who took me to the first polling centre, Kamala Nehru school near K.R. road. We started by putting up one banner (of allowed dimensions), a table (discarded by a roadside restaurant) and 2 chairs borrowed from the Congress volunteers. There was an intimidating guy in white shirt and pants with a thick gold chain and a thick ring on his finger who guided all voters to his bench, ordered his minions around to find their names in the list and write it out on slips of paper (we were supposed to do that as well). They were all so organised and had so many resources at hand. We could possibly never get the voters come to us for help. But then surprisingly a few people came, wore the white AAP caps, and walked away! That is when a lady constable started screaming around asking us to remove our caps (even though we had the permission to wear it and it wasn't against the rules). The scary guy and his minions looked at us menacingly and we removed our caps not wanting to fight.
Then came my next stop, S.G.P.T.A. school in Thyagrajanagar. We had no infrastructure- no tables or chairs-all we had were our caps. People just did not come to us even when I stood at the entrance with the appropriate electoral roll in hand. The other volunteers were pointing, laughing and passing a few comments but that did not deter us. A lady came out of her house with her voter ID and asked us to help her. Her name was not there in the S.G.P.T.A school list so we had to literally search through the entire bunch of papers to find out. That is when she graciously offered her veranda to sort the sheaf of paper, lent us a stapler and also sent her son out with glasses of water. We ultimately found her entire family's names and were grateful for the hospitality!
This is when I met Roshan, who was a part of Shantala Damle's ( from Loksatta) campaign in the assembly elections and an active volunteer for AAP. His enthusiasm was infectious. We spoke about the various issues in campaigns, in parties such as AAP, about candidates, about AK (of course! ). His experience and encouragement reinforced my decision to volunteer! :)
The neighbourhood campaign
We realized that searching on laptop is much faster (obviously!) so I decided to get my laptop to the campaigning place-Mahila Mandali school, 2 roads away from my house. I came home, had some breakfast, voted (The most important thing! ) and came to the location where our volunteers were sitting. But we only had two chairs and no table. There weren't many voters as well (it was close to 12'o clock). So decided against getting laptop. That was when Congress and BJP volunteers started getting their lunches in autos and tempos and we got ours in a two wheeler! Me and Rabinarayan Sahu, the two volunteers sat with a table (brought from Rabi's house) and spread out all the voter's lists we had. It was only then that people started coming to us too! So to be taken seriously, you needed a table. chairs and many many papers :P. But the number of people was not too impressive. We waited till 5 p.m. talking about Orissa and Naveen Patnaik, corporate jobs, engineering, elections, AAP etc! We also chatted with the neighboring BJP desk aunty who was miffed because neither the MLA nor the candidate from BJP showed up. After helping around 15-20 people, we closed our desk at 6 p.m. and cleaned up the area.
Rabi, Siddharth and me :)
Lessons learntThe dismal voter turnout was felt at the booth-level. It looked like only the volunteers were populating the streets after the white lines. We even confirmed numbers from the booth officers and it was as low as ever. The people who voted were either families of BJP supporters (our aunty next desk seemed to know everyone who came to vote! ) or few youngsters before 10 a.m. Only if everybody votes can the system change. Putting up clean, honest and credible candidates isn't enough when the votes are so polarized and tilted in one party's favour. If people start caring about the nation and take elections atleast a tad bit seriously can the outcome change. A lot of complex factors govern a voter's choice. Some vote for the party, some for the candidate, some because of familial upbringing, some because of social media, some let their principles decide and so on. If everyone votes, all these complexities balance each other and the pattern is no more predicable. The more random and unpredictable the electorate's choices, all candidates tend to have almost same probability of winning (simple math!). That to me seems like a fair election.
Another issue here is that of the involvement of people in anything political. We are all ready to play armchair activists (I didn't coin this ) sitting in front of our laptops and liking posts, videos, blogs etc. But when it comes down to the field, we are deterred by family, friends and our own inhibitions. This can only stop when the society as a whole, especially the middle class changes its mindset that 'getting involved in politics is bad'. Waiting for it to happen someday.
AAP all the way!
Many people have asked me before and some have even been hostile when I declared my support to AAP. Why AAP? I ask them why not? I hear reasons like Kejriwal 'running' away, NaMo is the way to go, Candidate has no experience, AAP doesn't know how to lead the country, they are too idealistic to be in politics, that getting into politics will eventually turn them into yet another conventional party. I don't want to counter every other point since cynicism and doubts are quite common. But trying to suffocate a change in the system by saying 'it has always worked this way' will take us nowhere. Maybe AAP doesn't know how to lead and they lack political experience but that is no reason to keep us out of the arena of politics altogether! However hard one tries to pressurize the 'people's representatives' staying outside the parliament or assembly, the power to take decisions still rests with our MPs and MLAs. The point I am trying to make here is to give AAP a fair chance to see how things go. The ideals are clear, the candidates are clean, there is a lot of potential for change.One may have their own reasons to vote for any other party but that doesn't mean they don't have to show respect to the efforts put at a very large scale to change the system. It takes a lot of courage in a country where every intention is looked upon with suspicion. Let us give the party a due they truly deserve, give the candidates a hearing and make an informed decision before voting.
Jai Hind!
