Why Voters Did Not Vote?

By now, it is official that Pune's informed and politically aware citizens turned out in the lowest number in the history of the city's election. People are still ranting about the dismal show. But for any one who has eyes and ear, it is crystal clear why the Jago Re failed to achieve its impact on the polling process. I can give a drop down list of the reasons for people not turning up:

• Absence of Cheer Leaders : Gone are the days when the voting was a field where only leaders could graze. This is an era of IPL where viewers are not satisfied with a ball hit or bails bowled. They want drama, they want colors. Hence, the normal beep of an electronic voting machine could not satiate the thirst for an entertainment. The poll managers of political parties should take this into consideration. They should engage cheer leaders (in short and suggestive dresses only) at the polling booths. They should be preferably kept with party symbols in their hand.

• Lack of Geographical Knowledge : Pune is always considered as the center of the universe

  by those who throng here from all corners of the world. It is not for nothing that a simple looking tea stall in a corner of the city can boast of being an internationally famous shop. But the people seem to have lost a simple fact from their memory cell that the earth revolves around itself as well as sun. This large movement can cause the places to move from one place to another. It is small wonder then that the addresses and constituencies of the voters just slided down to other areas. The voters could have helped themselves simply referring to their old school books.

• Sun Did Not Have a Holiday : It is true that the election commission of India had ordered every establishment to remain closed on polling day. Unfortunately, the order was not applied to Sun god which came as usual and kept heating itself all day. That is why the temperature soared up and up. Poor people, they just thought that the heat stroke will take their life and they can not risk it just for the love of democracy. They lived their lives more. So if the result of the election turns up again to be unsatisfactory, you know whom to blame.

• Candidate Did Not Came Calling : Touted to be the biggest fare of the world, election is the only time when a candidate comes to visit the voter. It is his pious duty to apprise the voter of his features, postures and faces which might change within few days once he is elected. Unless he does not obliges, how can a voter show up at the polling booth just because he is unhappy with the current situation. It is no mandatory for the elector to know on his own who is soliciting his vote. In case someone is arguing it should be so, then he is clearly anti-democracy.

• Better Location : Why the hell EC did not care to put up the polling booths at posh and upmarket locations? How could it expect the adults to return the schools for the sake of giving away their votes to an unknown person? Least they could was to put the polling booths at emerging construction sites so that the common citizens could check the prospective properties?