Last week, I decided to get my act together and register to vote. A little procrastination later, I had filled in my form on Jaagore.com, figured out the material I needed to carry for identification purposes and was feeling well and truly satisfied with myself. The next day at work I printed out my forms, got my passport photographs taken and carefully assembled all the papers. Following some more dilly dallying I finally made the trip down to the local Municipal Corporation Wednesday morning on my way to work. I asked my cabbie to make the requisite stop and he turned and asked me if a water pipeline in my flat had gone bust. I said nothing of the sort, I just want to register to vote which led him to snigger more than he should have. He also told me I must be living in some dreamland if I expected the place to open before 10:30 AM. Sure enough, upon reaching I was told it won't open till 10:30 AM and I could wait around. Instead, I went back to the sniggering cabbie and asked him to take me to work.
Thursday, I had some time off in the afternoon. At 1:45 PM, I left for the Corporation and was there within 15 minutes. It is a decrepit old compound with some construction work on one of the newer buildings that houses staff. The building that held the registry office was of course the oldest, seemingly built in the revolutionary heyday of the late 1940s. I walked in to the compound like a lost duckling unsure of which way to waddle to next. A short man with a big mustache (as is so often the case) called me to sign into a register. I said I wanted to register to vote so he waved me up a flight of rickety wooden stairs. This staircase could have played a lead role in a movie about a haunted house with its extreme creaky sounds including some new ones I had never heard before. Once on top it was a large landing which served as a corridor, hall and balcony all in one. There were two windows with a long snaking queue from the window furthest away. I got into this queue behind a short young man who must not have been much older than I. Two kids of 18 or 19 stood in line behind me, one with a pimpled face and the other with a chipped tooth. I went up to the first window where two very bored looking men were sitting drinking tea, surrounded by so many sheafs of paper that one could visualize the forests they once were. I asked them if my papers were in order. One of them snatched them, flipped through the forms and then handed me a new empty form. I told him I had already filled it out but he said I had printed it out so the registration officers would think I hadn't written a thing. They needed to see ink on the form to be assured it had been filled out.
Reluctantly I took the same form and filled it out again. The neatness and ease of reading a printed form was obviously all in my head as the bureaucrats would prefer the scrawl of a million different hands. The two kids in line behind me were flipping through photocopies of their forms. I asked them if that was necessary. Pimply said if I didn't have a photocopy they'd send me back. Why? They stamp the photocopy to attest as a receipt. It also serves as a replacement form if they end up losing my original form. Of course, there was no mention of my having to follow up on the lost form and providing this attested copy. I decided to follow their advice, asked them to hold my spot in line and ran across the street to make copies.
I returned after a few minutes, copies in hand and was glad to note the line had moved forward quite a bit. I also found three new people immediately in front of me. Apparently, they had gone for lunch asking someone else to hold their place in line. I glanced once again at the kids behind me and this time they were looking at their identification proofs which also bore stamps and signatures. I asked again if that was necessary. Apparently if I didn't get them attested they weren't valid. Desperately asking for how I could get them attested, I drew blank stares from everyone around me. The kids said they're doctor stamped their papers. An old man a good deal ahead of me quietly told me to go to the building next door to room 24 and they would stamp it. I thanked him profusely and made a run for it. Finally finding the room, they gave me looks of disgust. Not only was I asking them for a tremendous favour I had not brought the original proofs of identity. The gentleman gave me a stern talking to for being such a fool but then quietly signed the papers and sent me to the stamping authority next door. The crisis was averted.
Relieved, I made my way back to discover the line hadn't moved forward at all. A man of about 60 was gesturing wildly telling everyone to stand in their lines and shouting at a young woman who had dared to cut ahead. Self-appointed authority figures can be found anywhere, I guess. He then focused his wrath on a couple that were taking a break from the heat of the queue to lean against the banister, disrupting the snaking queue. Turning into an orator, he rhetorically asked why does a young couple get to rest while an old man stands diligently in line. The old man in question smiled toothlessly and the rest of us smiled in response. A moment of levity in the heat.
At any given moment there were 5 people at the registration window thrusting their forms forward. Most people carried not just their forms but those of their family members too. The kids behind me had exhausted most topics of conversation and were now discussing Harry Potter. I was not just frustrated but needed to get back to work. The Muslim woman in front of me with her burqa covering all but her glasses told me it was taking so long because they had no computers in there. I refused to believe her but the man in front of her told me he was here to pick up his election card and it was his third visit. Each time he waited for hours got to the front and they physically searched for a card to match the 10 digits or so on his receipt. Each time he was turned away and told to return in a few days.
It struck me only then that pretty much everyone around me was Muslim and from the labour/lower middle class. It sounds like a classist judgement it goes a long way to explain their patience and my frustration. They smiled when telling me there weren't any computers and how they might dramatically reduce time. They understood better than me that some automation could also lead to greater order in all the chaos. The man trying to collect his election card pointed my attention through a side window. A well dressed man in his 40s was seating himself across 2 officials and accepting a cup of tea. He had apparently just paid a bribe and won himself an express ticket to registration. The man waiting with me just smiled and told me to try my luck if I had the money. After all why was I the odd one out in the queue? Flabbergasted, I considered the proposition. It took more resolve than I expected. And then just to make things better, out of the blue walked in 8 all in burqas of varying ages led by a religious Muslim man with a long beard. They got in line a few spaces ahead of me along with a family member who had been waiting. It was after 4 PM and clearly my turn wasn't going to come that day. The kids behind me joked that they could watch a movie and return and still be in the same place in line. I gave up and walked away desperate to get back to work and not to mention some air conditioning. The self-appointed authority figure just about to get his own turn called out to me telling me not to give up so easily. I told him I just needed a drink of water.
There were still four more days for me to try my luck. Friday was not possible due to work and I was traveling on the weekend. Monday morning I tried again reaching at 9 AM but the queue had begun 2 hours earlier. I did not have the time to stand in line for 3-4 hours and had to return. I am chastened by my experience but really it is my fault for trying only at the last minute. I am now an educated man without a vote, the kind I love to rail against - a hypocrite. In 5 years, I hope to value my right as much as those who lack so much in resources but make up for in belief.
UPDATE - Now that I look back, I realize a community of sorts was formed that day. We were all in it together, braving the heat, taking time off from work, all trying to exercise our franchise. It was spontaneously formed, and it goes a long way to explain why people held spots for others for hours, gave advice to prevent repeat trips whether it was something as simple as photocopying or attesting identity. It also explains why the self-appointed orator asked me to have patience. I was abandoning the community when I walked out and perhaps he saw that.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Most readable entry on your blog so far. Thank god one was written as a blog entry and not a poli-sci paper.
ReplyDeleteLol how dare you insult us? We aspire to be poli-sci paper writers for as long as we can. Also sports-sci writers and car-sci writers.
ReplyDeletei can see our insightful media sensing something communal about your post what with all people around you needing an election card being muslim. well, the bajrangis and their chaddi mates may not be far behind sensing how a hindu was turned away while hordes of ever multiplying muslims were serviced.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I realize my post does sound communal. It amazes me that I made that distinction myself but obviously it struck me that most people were Muslim. Of course, much of my constituency is Muslim too so it should not be that surprising. Moreover, I was not turned away as much as chose to walk away due to other time commitments.
ReplyDeleteI can see how it is fodder for bigots, indeed I seem a bigot myself. I may have looked at them as Muslim and lower class but I don't think they saw me as a non-Muslim. Clearly, there was some uniting bond regardless of religion and class which I feel was 'us vs. the bureaucracy'.
P.S. I'm not a Hindu either for those Bajrangis that may be reading.
In your opinion, why was the "lower class" willing to brave the heat, time and energy that our Indian bureaucracy unfortunately demands of us, when the upper class needs companies like Nescafe to provoke us simply to start thinking about the value of our votes? Surely, several people in line that afternoon had places to be. This is not at all to condemn you for leaving; it's great to see how you persisted despite the demands of your work schedule, but not enough of us persist long and hard enough do we? Is it possible that our faith and conviction in the power of democracy is weaker than the less educated? Or does the upper class simply need the government less than the lower and/or middle class? After all, who cares who is elected when you've got money to turn your wheels?
ReplyDeleteI disagree that the middle/upper middle class doesn't vote because they have "money to turn their wheels". in india only the uber rich and politically connected manage to get their wheels turned. everyone else needs to put their head down and work hard. however, there's a huge class of people that has been subjected to such ignorant circumstances they are easy fodder for the shrewd politician to exploit. social inequity is such that there are large swathes of populace that is vulnerable to being exploited for their perceptions of past or recent injustices - religous, caste etc etc. political parties use their ignorance and stoke their fears in many many ways to convert them into a vote bank with a herd mentality.
ReplyDeletea casual glance at the candidates and it is hard to miss how the most corrupt, dishonest and useless kind clamour for the "rural" constituencies. the number of chief ministers made on the back of distribution of sarees, rice and color tvs is also an indication of this.
moreover, there's the fact that the numbers of the educated class are so dispersed and restricted to such few centres, that the nature of our democracy could at best produce good candidates from select constituencies while still subjecting us to the ignominy of the witnessing the worst kind of humanity occupying space in our parliament. the patchy, unscrupulous alliance politics that has emerged now leaves us with literally no national policy, vision or direction - only vested interests.
in all this, the educated, upwardly mobile middle class noticing it's miniscule presence, feels there is no use in voting as they can effect very little influence, if any, on the polity. That's the reason why people like me have been apathetical to voting, and not because we can not stand in the voting queue or my life is too good to bother about it.
these elections are going to witness a huge number of new, young and freshly motivated voters. it will be interesting to see if this produces a positive impact on the elections. this time i intend to vote for the sole reason that i suspect that with the increased numbers, we may just be able to make a difference.
Thank you both for excellent comments.
ReplyDeleteAnand - I agree manipulation of voters is far easier if they are illiterate, come from a poor background and are rural. Resisting gifts when you can barely put food on the table is harder still.
The educated classes are concentrated in urban centers but still how many vote? Their life is too good to bother about standing in queues if they associate the benefit of voting as less than the cost of leaving home or work. I hope there is a major impact on the elections this year with young, educated voters going to the poll but I feel it will be minor. Nonetheless, it will be heartening and hopefully a trend that continues so that more and more of the growing urban, educated utilize their franchise.
Vijay Medicos - Interesting name, plugging a chemist I should thing. You should condemn me, not for leaving then, but not for waking up in time to register.
As for the upper class not voting because they can use their money, I don't think it helps most of them in such matters. The MP that they may vote for otherwise won't necessarily take only their views into account.
I do feel though that major issues can only be dealt with by voting. Had the urban classes turned out in 2004 and voted for the BJP with the economic benefits promised to them, we might not have seen the Congress and a greater emphasis on the rural economy. Whether that is better for the country as a whole is a different matter but the BJP may well have been better economically for them.