The Deccan Chronicle 30.04.2013
This time, it’s a ‘Social’ election
Candidates have taken the poll battle to Facebook and Twitter; the
BBMP and the Election Commission are organising flash mobs, street
plays, even film stars into the act of getting people to vote; NGOs and
corporates are doing their bit, too..
Bengaluru: Elections
come and elections go. Life in Bengaluru goes on like nothing happened.
That used to be true, but not any more. The run-up to Assembly
elections 2013 has been markedly different. There, in fact, has never
been so much buzz about elections on the street, outside television
channels and the newspapers. And it’s not because the political parties
are cluttering the city with posters and billboards – the Election
Commission is seeing to it that they don’t.
Which
is why the shift in the way elections are being seen this time is
welcome change and has added excitement to what had become an affair to
be mostly cynical about and to be best forgotten quickly.
Of
course, there are the usual fiery election speeches and campaigns, the
promises that the regular run-of-the-mill politician has been making
every election for as long as one can remember, and the door-to-door
visits of MLA-hopefuls, but what has increasingly drawn attention is
election chatter online – innovative campaigns on social media
platforms, billboards and advertisements – which has made this election
2013 a lot more interactive affair between the voter and the aspirants
than ever before.
Some
of the buzz can be attributed to the new, activist candidates, such as
the Lok Satta party’s candidates Ashwin Mahesh (Bommanahalli) and
Meenakshi Bharath (Malleswaram), who have gathered their forces and
joined battle as much on Facebook as on the ground. Some of it is due to
the many initiatives launched by civil society groups and prominent
people of the city to get the educated urban middle class to vote.
The
city’s movers and shakers have come out on the streets and online
urging people to vote, working overtime discussing elections and
highlighting the need for each eligible voter to vote.
This is
a path much different from what cool Bengaluru has taken so far --
criticising the system, calling politics ‘dirty’ and staying indifferent
when the time comes to choose one’s representative.
Why, even
the BBMP is organising flash mobs -- full of song and dance -- to
appeal to the youth. Street plays, innovative and appealing posters,
walkathons to vote, all of them designed to send out one message: Get
out and vote.
The Election Commission itself is
counting on a saree-clad, homely-looking Aindrita Ray – quite unlike the
sizzler on the Sandalwood screen -- to pull voters out to the polling
booths. Popular actors Puneet Rajkumar and Ramesh Aravind are helping
her create voter awareness. Even Olympic medalists, boxer Mary Kom and
badminton champion Saina Nehwal, are at it -- trying to get Bengalureans
to vote, which after all is an Olympian task.
Thanks
to citizen groups and NGOs, many private companies in the city have
decided to become ‘100 per cent voter-registered’ companies. These
companies had gotten thousands of employees to register by mid-April.
Smart
Vote, an online registration campaign, started approaching schools,
colleges, private companies and residents’ associations in September
last year, vowing to get one million Bengalureans to register as voters.
