The election commission seems to be working over-time to ensure that the forthcoming elections are “free and fair”.

The following two articles in the ToI suggest so:
Voting to be caught on Camera

To ensure fair election, the district administration has embarked on a novel way of deploying cameramen at poll booths on May 10.

Voting mark will be more visible

Instead of a small mark dabbed on the index finger, this time there will a straight line from the top of the nail to the bottom, and beyond.

At least, they are initiatives of some sort you might say. The cynic inside of course refuses to believe that this is going to be of much help. When security guards at polling stations can collude with party candidates, there is little reason for that camera to work properly in an election booth. Similarly, there is little or almost zero reason for longer voting marks to be indelible.

JD (S) has released a 16 page manifesto and is using the smaller size of its booklet to its advantage. Deve Gowda proclaimed that the reason why their manifesto is smaller is because they are offering only real and possible promises. Promises which they can meet. He lashed out at the Congress and BJP (who have more than 50 pages in their manifestos), stating that those pages are filled with false hopes and cannot be achieved. What an idea, I say to myself. Even the number of pages of your manifesto can be used to achieve voter attention.

What next? The font-type may be used to reflect a secular ideology? Or maybe a stable government?
We might have some party leader saying, “no Times New Roman font has been used in our manifesto, since the name itself reflects an empire was bureaucratic and ultimately was destroyed. We, instead, have used Wingdings. Completely nonsensical, but looks good enough.”

Possible eh? Enjoy.

We were away for a week-long vacation, and that explains the silence around here.

The vacation did us more good than we had imagined. A week cut-off from mobile phones and internet connection is, trust me, a good thing for you.
I, of course, had withdrawal symptoms but in the end emerged victorious.

Coming back to Bangalore was a good thing (There is a lot of ‘good’ used in this post for some reason). I saw some witty advertisement hoardings asking Bangaloreans to vote in the forthcoming elections. There are equally witty radio ads as well. As a law-abiding and civic-sense-prevailing concerned citizen, I too want to vote. I have voted in the past, and will most likely vote this time around as well.

However, in the past, I have voted for candidates solely on the parties they represented. A Vajpayee’s persona automatically translated to a vote for the BJP, a Manmohan Singh translated to a vote for the Congress and so on. I knew little about the candidate of my constituency. This time around, I want to know more about whom I am electing. Ideally, I would want to engage in a discussion with the candidate to know about his/her long-term and short-term plans for my constituency. His/her knowledge about various issues and their standing on certain points of debate. All this, sadly, is not possible in our country. Of course I haven’t tried it yet, but I am not clear even about the starting point. Are there public forums held by potential candidates where they encourage discussions with the public or foster debates and exchanges of ideas? I haven’t seen them. All I have seen so far are rallies where the candidates proclaim various goods (that word again) for the masses (that word again). No concern about basic economics or about real issues.

Faced with such a situation, how should one vote? How should one react to those ads running all over Bangalore’s radio stations, shouting at you – “Ree, vote maadri“. Sure, I want to vote for the right candidate. But, how on earth can I evaluate whether he/she is the right candidate or not?

On a related note, Chilli sends the following links via mail:
The ABCs of the Candidates
The Background information of the various Candidates