It was the third election in Bangalore since I had come to live there and this time I was determined to vote, come what may. On the two previous occasions, the vote had passed me by.
The first time was soon after I arrived and before I could find out how to get round the local bureaucracy and put my name on the voters’ list in quick time, the vote came and went. That was an important election. S M Krishna’s tenure, which had done much to improve life in Bangalore and in tandem with buoyant IT helped put it on the global map, was up for renewal.
I did not care much for pub-going, swinging Bangalore but was drawn by its record of public private partnership to better the quality of life. Samuel Paul and his Public Affairs Centre presenting the report card on aspects of life in the city was a new experience for me. I had not seen educated middle-class citizens getting organised to make a difference in the governance of a city and I wanted to vote for the entire package, including the parks and the garbage-free neighbourhoods.
My innocence ended with the announcement of the results. Little India had fought back to defeat resurgent India, the new tone and quality of public life set by the redoubtable Deve Gowda and his sons. Soon there was garbage in the neighbourhoods again and slowly the quality of life in the city began to decline, aided and abetted by the growing traffic jams.
I dearly wanted to register my protest and soon the chance came as the government fell from its own contradictions. It was election time again. It required more than one visit to the local municipal office to get my name onto the voters’ list, one visit washed out by a power cut which incapacitated the computers which now housed the voters’ list.
I was assured that my name was on the list but couldn’t find out the part number and serial number which would help quickly locate it at the polling booth. When polling day came I took a chance and went to the booth nearest my home. It was impossible to locate my name and so I had the vote but could not vote.
As I dejectedly walked back from the polling booth, having been denied entry, I realised that in a way it was a blessing in disguise. The media noted that it was an issueless election; every indication was that what had swung votes was either money-power or caste-pull. Neither governance nor the declining stature of the once premier state, its IT lead threatened by emerging IT powers among states, seemed to matter.
Then promise of deliverance came one day while I was away at work. Someone had come as part of the exercise to revise the electoral rolls and left a slip of paper bearing a part number and a serial number. Not only was I there on the list but also knew how to find my name on it!
Proof positive that I was not persona non grata in the Republic of India came when my neighbour advised me that they were issuing voters’ identity cards at the local municipal school. So I went down a back alley to a shabby building and there, in a jiffy, aided by the part number and the serial number, I got a miserable likeness of myself encased in a bit of plastic which I knew was not just a passport to vote but a priceless proof of identity in the age of terrorism when being a non-person was like being half a Pakistani.
So the other day I proudly went to the polling booth, armed with my card and the part and serial number. But to my utter shock, the candidates’ volunteers’ outside the polling station could not find my name in the list. The names of my neighbours on both sides of my house mocked me from the list but I had been unpersoned in between. Then I had a brain wave and asked them to check the medley of names at the end of the list — those of the latecomers. And there my miserable likeness stared back at me asserting that I was still an Indian citizen.
Armed with a slip of paper which gave a new serial and part number, I entered the polling booth with a spring in my gait but was soon assailed by a new crisis. Who was I going to vote for? I had been so disgusted by the issueless campaigning that I had not even bothered to find out who the candidates were and what were their antecedents.
I knew I would not vote for the BJP even if God came down as a candidate but what if the Congress candidate was a rascal with a criminal record as he could well be? Voting without knowing your candidate was like wasting your vote, I could hear the lecture on my civic duties intoning.
But once inside, my spirits lifted again. There, on the electronic voting machine, beside the Congress symbol, was printed the name Sangliana. Now he was the quintessential good cop, who on retiring as police commissioner of Bangalore, had wanted to serve the country and strayed into the BJP.
The Christian from Mizoram who had made Karnataka his home did win and become an MP the last time around but found himself a misfit in the Sangh Parivar. He defected and voted for the UPA government in the confidence vote in Parliament and was there as a Congress candidate this time. So I pressed the button to assert my right to be an Indian and saw the light come on. I had regained my vote.
