Pinkie's day out!

Essay- Missing hand shrinking flower

Pinkie’s day out!

Democracy is all about universal suffrage, not as the wags have it, universal suffering. It is that one-adult citizen-one-vote principle with no discrimination based on gender, caste or creed. Ironically, not all of mankind has it and most of those who do tend to take it for granted. It involves, at a fundamental level, a pointing finger, that dexterous, even overworked digit, in the service of critics everywhere, aka Pinkie.

But really, the pinkie may be the second smallest finger on one’s hand but is not to be scoffed at any more than if it were actually called a forefinger. It can, for example, applied to the right button at the right time, elicit quite a convincing beep. A pinkie induced beep which stands in, electronically speaking, for speaking very softly while carrying a big stick. Especially if your community dada can organise a long queue wanting to beep the beep snaking off in the distance behind you.

India is known to be miles ahead in this pinkie-beeping game. Ahead, of “chads” pregnant or otherwise for instance, that former US vice president Albert Gore is unlikely to ever forget. And downright incomparable with places that depend on abrupt proclamations to learn about who is ruling them!

Still, we were not always pinkie-using-beepers and must spare a moment for nostalgia every now and then. Who can forget those bed sheet sized ballot papers? You needed both hands to fold them. Pretty things really, decorated as they were with charming motifs ranging from kerosene burning lanterns and pickaxes to personal marks that stood in for gentlemen who were formerly known as princes.

I am not trying to appeal to the memory synapses of our friendly neighbourhood sab jaanta hai armchair administrators of course. Because, don’t I know that the sab jaanta hai never vote? Therefore they have no recollection of bed sheet sized ballot papers, how can they? But voters, smeared by that indelible ink mark on their pinkie so that they don’t come around for seconds, will remember aforementioned ballot papers and those quaint polling booths too. They’ll recall those bamboo and coir rope created in-and-out lanes- very country décor in town and townie style laning in country. In fact, the voter lanes are still like this today. The ballot boxes are gone and the only thing that can still remind you of them are those canteen feeder biscuit tins. No biscuit tins in polling booths though- just electronic voting machines.

Some old timers, from our more politically aware states, will remember invitations to outsource the entire activity to very cooperative young men. There they were, sitting on divans made of similar ballot papers, the top few ready stamped in anticipation, located none too far from the policemen manning the booth entrances. Such eager public service oriented young men they were- smiling faces, large puffs, healthy biceps; so willing to save you the bother and give you a nice bottle of something pleasant to drink as well. Those were the old days. Now you have your pinkie and the beep that means you’ve voted successfully and that it has been simultaneously counted in favour of your chosen candidate and Party. No romance, no suspense, sigh!

The Americans keep coming here to see and ask about how we do it so well. We show and tell - it’s so nice to be asked. We tell them the whole election process works so well because it elicits participation from only one type of Indian. Most of our educated people don’t like to vote at all even though we have at least 400 million of them. The educated live mainly in our cities and like the voting holidays just fine but to relax in. However, they tend to cooperate and don’t interfere with their domestic help going off to vote. They do complain about how long their help take and call election days an excuse to go gallivanting and who can say that they are wrong? But the domestic help does vote before going off to gallivant because they actually like to exercise their pinkies and because it makes them feel powerful for a moment in their powerless worlds.

So you see, Mr. American, almost all Indian voters are poor and uneducated. Fortunately, for our prosperous politicians, India has more than 700 million poor people, more than enough to keep them in business without receiving even one vote from the rich, the middle class or the educated. That is why the politicians don’t worry too much about what the people in the cities have to say. There is no pleasing them anyway and besides they just won’t come out on Election Day will they?

The poor, god bless their souls, are humble too. Of course, they have much to be humble about and can’t, because of their lack of education, aspire to sab jaanta hai status. They are orderly and amenable to being neatly organised into trucks and tempos and buses by “dadas,” (an Indian word for benevolent elder brothers), and herded in to vote for the candidate and Party that employs the big brothers.

Dadas are never employed to herd in the educated. Because the educated can, obviously, think for themselves. Besides, they know so much that they automatically become better citizens than the uneducated could ever be. It is just that, as a matter of fact, even principle sometimes, they rarely vote. You may well ask why they don’t vote when they know so much about everything including how to change and improve things Mr. American, but this is one question I don’t know the answer to.

(942 words)

Thursday 5th April 2007
By Ghatotkach


This and all original essays on GHATOTKACHSERIES are copyright 2005-2007 by Gautam Mukherjee. All Rights Reserved.