Akalpitaji, First of all, I would like to personally thank you for having the guts and strength to contest in the elections this year. I belong to your constituency and even though I reside in the US, I made it a point to email your manifesto and professional record to friends and family in the mumbai north central constituency, requesting all of them to vote for you.
Almost all of my friends and family are from the upper middle class section of our society. To be honest, almost 95% of the upper middle class do not care as to who comes to power in the elections. I thought this time it would be different since the hanuted memories of the terrorist attacks are still fresh in the minds of the people. My best friend wrote to me after I emailed him about voting in these elections and these are his exact words. " I was a string beleiver in elections yaar...but have a look at last weeks TOIs. The % of slums in each area (LS consti) is over 62%-75% average. who care of my vote. none of the candidates even try to lure us. IN south Mumbai over 50% is non slum...still its ok....apne consti mein toh the candidate will never bother to find out who you and I are. and if God forbids they find out..they will try to fleech us off our money. jaane de...you know who i will vote for. I have some hope for the professionals party of India. have a look at their manifesto " I believe that the above words reflect exactly the same sentiments experienced by 95% of the lower and upper middle class population. I guess this is confirmed by your experience in Anushakti Nagar where the voting booths were empty. I believe that the following 2 categories of our society hold a huge potential for creating a professional, informed, unbiased vote bank 1. Middle Class - voting patterns have shown that the majority of the middle class does not vote, this is not only true in mumbai but in almost all the constituencies of our country. 2. Youth and young professionals (ages 18-32) - similar to the middle class, the youth of our country has a huge potential. The attitude of the youth of today is that politics is dirty and if you ask a college student who they are going to vote for, the answer would be "Tera dimaag to thikaane mein hai ?" There needs to be an awakening, a marketing campaign to target the above mentioned potential voters. Awakening was there in the form of the terrorist attacks happening. But unfortunately the sad part is that only people from south mumbai happened to be largely affected and awakened. It seems that even mumbai is divided into south, cnetral and north mumbai, something happening in south mumbai does not affect the people of north mumbai. I would invite people in this forum to come up with ideas, we need a lot of brainstorming. We need ideas on how to market the right candidates and create a marketing campaign for the next state legislative and/or municipal elections. It is not going to be easy. But let us all get together as professionals and concerned citizens of our country and come up with ideas. Nothing is impossible !!!! I will be writing about my ideas in the next post. But we need a chain of thoughts, lest get it started people !!!!!!!!!!!!!! Suneet Bhutta. --- In [email protected], "akalpitap" <akalpi...@...> wrote: > > Dear Friends > > I have firsthand experience about voting in this general election, since I > contested this Loksabha election from Mumabi North Central. Many people, well > meaning, came to help me. All said, "hamare volunteers ko khush kardo". One > person came and told me he controls 1000 votes and would like to talk about > give and take. This I am talking about Mumbai. Earlier, I have witnessed the > same thing in villages. > > The situation is hopeless. I went around the constituency, visiting various > booths. What I found is, in Anushakti Nagar, voting was very poor, booths > almost empty. Whereas in slum areas, even at 4 PM, there were long queues to > vote. What did I perceive? Where there was either incentive or pressure to > vote, there were long queues. Where this was missing, there were no people. > Moral of the story? > (1) Make voting compulsory. > (2) Person is not born corrupt. Hence, concentrate on people at the entry > point of voters list. > (3) Electoral reforms, simplification of the procedures are a must. > > This year, in spite of jagore, agni and other ngo's pleading ppl to vote, no > body who matters bothered. > > I feel, one action talks more than thousand words. > > Akalpita >
