Votes

It was so easy when you were in school. There were rights and there were duties. The consitution gave every citizen the right to vote and it was every citizens duty to exercise it. You were taught the importance of voting in a democracy and as a student deprived of voting rights due to age constraints you looked forward to the day when you would be able to vote.
Fast forward to , your name is on the electoral rolls , the election is on saturday. Hmm who are the candidates. Uh well one's this lady who is asking votes in the name of her departed father, ably assisted by her brother who is under suspicion for possessing arms during the times of the blast. Atleast Ms Priya Dutt seems clean , though people say she does as she is told by the other MLA Baba Siddique. It would have been so much better if she could have said whats shes done and what her qualifications are rather than allowing her to continue to do the work her father started. On the other side we have Madhukar Sarpotdar, whose party disqualifies him from being considered by me, not because of their communal stance( all parties in India are either communal or casteist) but because of a certain Mr Murli Manohar Joshi who insisted on screwing with the educational system. Its one thing to incite grown men to riot, who are adults and must take responsibility for what they do, its quite another to force your version of history down an unsuspecting childs throat.
And should you vote for a person or for the party?
Who else are the candidates no one knows. Our esteemed newspapers would rather carry page after page of various society parties than publish these details. Who would read this after all?
I think id vote for Priya Dutt. If nothing else atleast the proportion of women in legislature would increase. Our parties who actively champion reservation seem to shudder when it comes to reservation of seats for women. Not that i support this form of reservation.
I remember this Busybee article of him going to vote. He made this list up of who/what qualities he would not vote. And concluded that if anyone remained after these eliminations he'd vote for him/her. I suspect that he probably didnt exercise his right.
I think it should be mandatory to have a I dont think anyone is worthy of my vote option in any democrarcy. I think politics should be made a profession where some minimum education / training is required. As long as this education/training is made freely available to all, it doesnt violate anyones right/. Its too much seeing uneducated thugs with no experience whatsoever being ministers. You wouldnt hire these guys as employees in any company, why do we feel they are fit to run our country.