Mr EC, who fudged my gender?

Names of many voters were misspelt, while some were missing altogether

They responded to the ‘Let’s Vote’ and ‘Shut up and vote’ campaigns and eagerly appeared at the polling booths to cast their votes for the 15th Lok Sabha.
But they were faced with a whole range of problems that prevented them from voting. They returned without exercising their franchise — a basic constitutional right.
A significant number of voters in the city returned to their homes without voting, since their names did not figure in the voters’ list.
The election commission received a complaint from Yarab Nagar, saying that about 400 names of people wanting to vote from that area were missing from the list.
While some never found their names on the electoral rolls, others found their names changed. Some even found their genders changed, making it almost impossible for polling officers to allow them to vote. Some also found their names and genders changed, giving their desperation a comical twist.
A senior journalist with a leading newspaper found to her shock that her name in the rolls was completely changed. When she went to St Joseph’s Indian High School, where her polling booth was to be, she was told that her name was not in the rolls. On inquiring thoroughly, she was told that her name could have appeared in the rolls in Frazer Town, where she lived earlier.
On reaching the polling station in Frazer Town, she found her name changed and her age a good decade-and-a-half more than what it actually is. The rolls also showed her as wife of one KS Appaiah, a person she has never come across in her life. She could not vote despite the voter’s slip given to her, as her authentic identification documents did not match with the error-ridden details appearing in the rolls.
RS Grover, a deputy general manager of a private media company, is livid. He has the voter ID card, which he used for voting in the 2004 general elections. But this time round, though the card was valid, he went without voting as his name was not there in the list. “I have not changed my residence since the time I voted in 2004. So the name should have remained in the rolls, but it has vanished,” he lamented.
When he went to his polling station (no. 154) in Bangalore Rural and checked the electoral rolls there, he was shocked to learn that a stranger, Ashwathanarayana, has been “living” in his residential address.
Grover was not the only who faced this problem at polling station 154. There were at least five others who also found out that they were “not staying” where they have been living for long.
All of them returned without voting despite arguing with poll officials about the erroneous manner in which the rolls were made, omitting their names to make way for non-existent names.
This was a strange case, considering that chief electoral officer MN Vidyashankar saying in the evening that: “Those who have EPIC cards and their names in voters list have not faced problems.”
Grover has the EPIC. His name was there in the 2004 voters list, but not now.
Vidyashankar explained the missing names stating, “We published the revised list (post delimitation, this is the first general election which needed revision of the list). We conducted the elections based on this list that we published. But political parties haven’t incorporated the revisions.”
But in Bangalore North constituency, polling station number 90 saw a woman’s name, M Anuja, changed to M Aniya. Worse, her gender appeared as ‘male’, prompting poll counter volunteers giving out the voting slips to ask her husband who reached much earlier: “When is your younger brother coming?”

Manifesto for youth

Young people must not retreat into cynicism or despair. India’s soul longs for change and its own ‘yes, we can’ generation, says Deepak Chopra

Every society is like a ragged army, with some parts running ahead and others lagging behind. In the case of India, a handful of farsighted leaders broke the socialist, isolationist mould to allow India to join the free market. But much lags behind.

The opening for a young people’s movement cannot be denied. The question is how to take advantage of this opening.

What I see is idealism tempered by caution. Young people are restless, but they also realize that the old kind of activism (angry protests, labour stoppages, class warfare, etc) does not work in the long run. Moral outrage is still rage. In Cambodia and Burma, Asia has witnessed the horrendous results of morally certain leaders losing their humanity.

On a positive note, the young people I meet are eager to accept that a shift in consciousness is possible. What better country than India to foster such a belief ? Alone in the world, India has been a society where shifts in collective consciousness created enormous change without mass violence. It would be a betrayal of our heritage to add more anger to what already exists in the world.

How, then, can the future be shaped on the basis of consciousness? Several realizations must occur before it can happen:

A shift in consciousness is the most powerful way to create change: This realization will guide a new leadership to first seek personal transformation. The current leadership’s stagnation is rooted in routine, habit, inertia, and class pride. These are all the result of a stagnant consciousness. No one can hope to bring about change with reform or revolution applied from the outside. If we want new wine in new bottles, the consciousness of aspiring leaders must shift.

The role of a leader is to guide a shift that is already occurring: No one is being asked to invent a new Indian identity — it is already being born. We don’t need a new ideology. That route was tragically tested in the 20th century by communism, fascism, Maoism and other toxic isms. Instead, the young people who will lead are the ones with sensitive antennae, the ones who can sense where the collective consciousness wants to go. That has been Barack Obama’s secret and the need he sensed — for more freedom, democratic participation, idealism, and hope for the future – applies everywhere.

A new type of activism is needed: Sacred activism is love in action. Love without action is irrelevant. Action without love is meaningless.

Our youth must galvanize into leaders who turn love into its most practical products: relationship-building, creative problem-solving and service.

India gained independence under the guidance and inspiration of statesmen, visionaries and philosophers — Nehru, Vallabhai Patel, Gandhi, Radhakrishnan, Tagore, Aurobindo and many others. They were luminaries who considered themselves servants and stewards of civil society. British colonialism was the impetus.

Today, the impetus is harder to label and nowhere as visible as a foreign occupation. We must be motivated by looking at ourselves. Jiddu Krishnamurti used to say that the violence in every person was the cause of war. He underlined the words ‘every person’ because he meant each one of us, not just those who openly foment violence. As we are, so is the world.

This spiritual dictum cannot be ignored. Therefore, youth must not retreat to the arrogance of youth, just as it must not retreat into the despair or the cynicism of youth. Instead, the most basic questions must be asked in the privacy of one’s awareness:

• What in me is the cause of the problems I see in the world?
• What change in me can bring about the change I want to see?

We need a revival of true leadership based on self-awareness. People are tired of powermongering, influence-peddling, cronyism, corruption and bureaucracy. India is regrettably mired in all of these things.
The soul of India is longing for change and the rise of our own “Yes we can” generation.

Votes for a written promise

Hubli: People of Havasiand Shakara villages in Haveri district, who are living in near primitive conditions, with no bus facilities and only basket-like boats to cross the river with, are saying no to politicians with empty promises these elections.

The villagers have made up their minds that unless the candidates give them in writing that they will work for the development of Havasi and Shakara, they will not vote for them in the Lok Sabha elections.

“The written promise to fulfil our basic needs will help us confront the politicians in future. We have been victims of grave neglect in the past which has forced us to take this step now,” says Havasi gram panchayat vice president Channaveerappa Naduvinahalli.

Politicians hardly visit these villages with their 1,800 voters, on the fringes of the Haveri Lok Sabha constituency even to seek their support during elections. Those who bother to come make promises they soon choose to forget, much to the anger of the villagers who live under the shadow of floods and have long wanted a barrage to be built across the river to Havanur.

With no KSRTC bus service at their disposal even six decades after Independence, students walk 10 km every day to their schools in the adjacent Holalu village in Bellary district. Veterinarians of Holalu refuse to treat their livestock as the villages are in Haveri district.

“We are not able to buy foodgrains from the fair price shop in Hanshi during the monsoons as our village is usually flooded during the season,” says a farmer Goudappa Patil, who, like the others, feels the time for change has come.

How does voter decide whom to vote for?

The question is a critical one. We therefore decided to do a study of the voter decision-making matrix.

The sample size had to be small. Anything that you do as primary market research in India is bound to be small sample-size anyway. Remember, we are a nation of 1.3 billion people! The sample size: 11,450 voters across 18 cities. Big cities such as Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru, and smaller tier 2 towns such as an Agra, Tiruchy and Trivandrum, and smaller towns such as a Peddapuram and Hoshiarpur.

The question: What goes into that one decision of whom to vote for? The answers have just come in. Here go the logic patterns that seem to dominate the decision-making.

The negative weeding out: This is where the voter is sitting in judgment. Here, she looks at anything negative that has come to the fore in the last five years with respect to a candidate or a party in question. Most of the time (82 per cent) this is party-based. Here, groups such as the Ram Sene have done damage to the image of the BJP in Karnataka. Moral policing is a positive and a negative. In the bigger cities, it is seen as a negative. In the smaller towns and villages, it is seen as a positive. The BJP therefore gains from it in the smaller towns, and loses precious votes because of it in the big cities. Raj Thackeray has similarly done damage to the voter sentiment in favour of the Shiv Sena in the bigger cities of Maharashtra, and a positive impact on voter sentiment in the smaller towns.

Positive work by candidate: This figures high (43 per cent) on the radar of decision-making. Voters want to first quickly assess their voting constituency and then want to know the names of candidates.

Once that is done, a quick and irrational decision even, is made. What counts at the forefront of decision-making is the immediate good or bad work done by the candidate in question. History does not matter. The last 14-18 months are important. The voter’s memory is reasonably short on this count.

The Issues-based pattern: These are macro issues that fashion quick voter judgments. These are about the big phrases such as “Secularism”, “Nationalism”, “Patriotic” and “People-centric” semantics.

Religion-based pattern: This is a big one in itself.

A lot of association is built up by the person standing out there asking for your vote. If there are two candidates of the same religious tag, other details will be gone into. Otherwise, and sadly so, this counts a lot. Even today.

Caste-based pattern: Caste plays a major role.

Is the candidate a Kamma? A Reddy? A Vokkaliga? A Lingayat? A Brahmin? 31 percentile points here.

Touch-based factors: Have I seen the candidate at all in print, television or in person? Has he come to my door for canvassing? Have I seen him in the field addressing a gathering? This counts. Never mind whether the candidate caused goose-flesh in me or not, this is important. It could swing a vote.

Positive work by party: Sadly, the positive work done by a particular party comes relatively low down in the decision-making matrix. Parties and their overall work seem to boil down to a very lowest-common denominator status.

All parties are meant to do good work. This is not a differentiator, it seems. Parties gain precious little out here, just as long as they have not been debarred from political activity or just as long as they have not harboured terrorists with anti-India intent.

The anti-incumbency factor: I gave him or her a chance for five years.

Time to pick the other party candidate and give him or her a chance. As many as 6 per cent of voters want to do this.

This is a tough game.

Many things go into that one decision on the vote.

This is a science. An art.

A philosophy on its own.

As told to Neena Gopal (Harish Bijoor is a Brand and Political strategy specialist)

Heli-hopping bill: Rs 1,000 cr

Nataraju V | TNN

A jaw-dropping Rs 1,000 crore will be spent by political parties on heli-canvassing for Elections 2009. Hundreds of choppers and small aircraft are dotting the sky, ferrying candidates to cut time and also to reach areas inaccessible by road.

According to Deccan Charters COO John Kuruvilla, both national and regional parties are booking copters though the rental — Rs 45,000 to Rs 1 lakh per hour — is seemingly deterrent. Hiring a copter for 2-3 hours costs up to Rs 3 lakh. Smaller craft are used for long haul, and helicopters for areas where there is no standard landing infrastructure. Demand for helicopters this time has doubled over the previous election — each political party will spend an average of Rs 10 lakh a day for heli-hopping.
Source said the Congress and BJP are said to have hired about 20 copters each. Chief minister B S Yeddyurappa is touring the state only by helicopter to save on time and also to make maximum impact.

India has no less than 55 aviation service companies, and some corporates have their own helicopters that are sometimes given on hire. Individuals, too, rent out their craft. For instance, Bellary alone has five helicopters owned by individuals.
A positive spin off is poll time copter hiring has shored up the aviation companies’ dwindling bottomline by up to 10%, an analyst said.

ON A HIGH: Hiring a copter for 2-3 hours costs up to Rs 3 lakh

EPIC cards a daunting task for citizens

The initial euphoria about how easy it has become to get one’s name on the voter’s list is turning into disappointment. At the Election Commission’s latest innovation — the Voter Facilitation Centres (VFC) — there is now an EPIC battle being fought between citizens keen to vote and government officials.

The VFCs were meant to be one-stop enablers for voter registration, but the idea has been defeated by apathetic officials, complain citizens, who are increasingly joining hands under Residents’ Welfare Association (RWA) banners and are up in arms against the “cold attitude” of the officials at VFCs across the city.

N.S. Mukunda, president of Citizen Action Forum (CAF) complained that officials at VFC centres have deleted names in the voter lists arbitrarily. “Though the Election Commission says it has set up VFCs to help people get EPIC cards so that they can exercise their franchise freely and fairly, officials at VFCs aren’t people-friendly,” he says. Members of the CAF have been offering support to the officials by bringing in people in organised batches, but the VFCs are short-staffed and lack skilled workers who can process requests quickly.

“When my wife and daughter approached the special tahsildar who is in charge of issuing EPIC cards at Padmanabhanagar, they were rudely told they could go out of the centre and complain to anyone they thought fit,” Mukunda said. Banashankari 2nd stage RWA president said that considering the scale of the operation that they were entrusted with, the VFC officials were ill-equipped.

“Serpentine queues and inadequate facilities reign supreme. People in the queues fight among themselves and with officials all the time”, he added.

India politicians seen as corrupt, inefficient: survey

NEW DELHI (AFP) — A majority of Indians believe their politicians are inefficient, corrupt and in politics only to make money, according to a survey published Tuesday, a day after elections were announced.

The poll by the Times of India found 83 percent of respondents felt politicians were corrupt while 59 percent believed the main motive of most politicians in the world’s biggest democracy was financial gain.

Another 72 percent believed most Indian politicians are inefficient, said the survey which interviewed an unspecified number of people in 10 major cities nationwide.

“The bad news for the politicians is their own ratings are uniformly poor,” said the Times report, which appeared a day after authorities announced general elections would be held in stages over a month from April 16.

The survey “shows how all-pervasive the revulsion with the political class is and how much the leaders are regarded as a venal lot,” the newspaper said.

Some 44 percent of respondents predicted politicians would remain corrupt.

But the survey found just over half of voters optimistic they would have no choice but to improve if faced with electoral defeat or being disciplined by regulatory bodies like the Election Commission because of corruption.

Some “voters are convinced that they can force the politicians to mend their ways by voting out non-performing candidates in the coming elections,” the Times report said.

Sixty percent of those surveyed blamed politicians for the problems confronting the country of more than 1.1 billion people.

More than 710 million people are eligible to vote in the upcoming polls.

Many politicians elected to parliament routinely face criminal charges ranging from rape and kidnap to murder.

About a quarter of the 543 members elected to India’s lower house in 2004 faced criminal charges, including murder, kidnap, rape and murder.

India bans only convicted criminals from seeking public office.

Vote for right candidate and not the party

Dr S Srikantaswamy, educationist, tells DNA readers why it is imperative to exercise their right to vote

The progress of any nation depends on its political, social and economical system.
Each of this influences the other to a great extent. Political system induces the social system which, in turn, brings changes in education, industrial and technological fields.
A functional political system, in the context of the coming polls, depends on committed election commissioners.
Candidates should have good family background, education, experience in politics, and the commitment to serve the people selflessly.
No government can call itself democratic unless the elections, which give them the legitimacy to rule, are held in a free and fair manner with all eligible voters in the country participating in the process. But before going to the pooling booth, voters should take pains to know about the true worth of the candidates contesting in their respective constituencies. Then only will they be able to select the right candidate to represent them in parliament.
If they find candidates most suitable to become parliamentarians, they should vote for them irrespective of which party they belong to.
More and more educated people should come forward to participate in the elections. Some of them have a wrong impression that election is for the rural masses and slum-dwellers as most candidates go to these areas to woo voters.
I think our youth are capable of selecting better leaders. They are more educated and aware of the kind of leaders our country needs. They cannot be swayed by campaign gimmicks as they know the problems our country is facing today.
Hence, they will be able choose leaders who are capable of resolving those problems to make India one of the most developed countries in the world.
I call upon the youth to actively participate in the elections and vote for change.

As told to Rohith BR

Touts stalk EPIC aspirants

A TECHIE was approached by A MIDDLEMAN who asked FOR rs1,000 TO GET voter’s ID card

Like any other citizen, Prasanjit Banerjee, a software engineer with a private company and a resident of Bellandur, wants to exercise his voting rights in the coming Lok Sabha elections.
However, Banerjee claims that authorities are denying his right to vote by not registering his name in the voters list, even though he has all the valid documents.
“I had filled in the Form 6 and submitted my application on February 15, 2009 to enlist my name in the electoral list. I had expected that the voter ID card to be issued in time. However, even after 10 visits to the voter facilitation centre (VFC) in Whitefield during the last 45 days, my name is yet to be registered. All I have got is false reassurance during each visit,” said Banerjee.
The real shocker for Banerjee came few days ago, when a few touts in the VFC premises asked him and some other citizens assembled at the Centre to pay Rs1,000 for ‘immediate’ issuance of voter ID card.
As citizens claim, the VFC at Whitefield seems to have become a gaming field for touts who approach citizens standing in queues and try to squeeze money out of them.
“Without the nexus between VFC officials and touts, such kind of harassment to citizens cannot happen. There is absolute lack of transparency,” Banerjee added.
Fed up with the entire process, Banerjee has now lodged a complaint with the Chief Election Officer of Karnataka.
A copy of the complaint (dated April 1, 2009) available with DNA states that the repeated visits to the Assistant Electoral Registration Officer (AERO) at the VFC in 174-Mahadevapura in Whitefield have been of no use so far.
“The AERO accepted my application on February 15 and asked me and some others to come on February 28 to check if our names have been included in the voter’s list. However, even after paying several visits in March, neither my name nor my wife’s name have been registered in the list,” Banerjee said. rohith_r@dnaindia.net