Yesterday was the day to vote for the general election and Dad is not quite interested to go anywhere, as he is always reluctant to walk. However when I reminded him that Voting is Citizen's duty and he should go for it, he was super charged. For me it was a great opportunity to capture them on frames, and I did not want to miss that, so I was behind him since morning. At the age of 84, walking to the booth physically and cast vote is a great memory. Hoping to see him again caste vote in 2029, if all goes well.
The booth is very near to our house, just 100 meters away and in the morning there was less crowd, but by the time he got up, the place was crowded. Since its summer and temperature is reaching near 45°C, most people prefer the morning. I did not put any stress on him and asked him to get ready in his own pace and our family barber came in to make him ready and finally we went in the noon, before lunch.
Mom walked to the booth, but I took him on our scooty, keeping the scorching heat in view. Being super senior citizens, they were allowed to go straight to the booth instead of standing in queues.
Even though someone from the campaigning group had given us the slips, a valid document is needed , either voter id card or Aadhar card. My best friend called in the morning and reminded to carry any of these documents, so I was having them handy.
The police staff doing duty inside, asked me to come later in queue, and I did not try to convince him to vote at that time, ideally I should have been allowed. My prime goal was to take them and bring back to home comfortably, and capture these memories. A nice fish meal was ready for him, and it made his day. After he went to sleep, I went again to cast my vote.
A visual instruction in the front of booth on how to cast your vote - every time, the presiding officer will enable the ballot unit. As far as I could see, there were 4-6 members on each booth doing election duty, they are service holders from various departments and are trained for a day and then assigned this election duty, getting paid for 2-3 days. The Election Commission does a nice job in cooperation with the Central/State Government, but the amount of money spent on Election is huge, it is expected to be ₹1,00,000 crore (nearly $15 billion) and certainly this comes from our pocket, the tax payer's money.
Our vote may barely be contributing for the deciding factor, because, majority of the population still likes free stuff, and political parties are smart to feed them in name of free schemes and keep them like that. On top of that, we still run reservation even after 76 years of freedom, and not let people compete and select best brains. Population, the root cause of all issues, is a hot plate to touch, so no political party dares to even discuss on that. In my personal opinion, all property / assets should be tagged to PAN card to eliminate black money and corruption, but it will hurt many from the system, so no one wants that.
Everything is possible in this world's highest populated country in the name of Democracy - except Transparency - a true need of a country to make it corruption free and excel.
Should only honest tax payers vote ? What do you think ?
Shot with SONY α6400 with 18-135 mm Zoom Lens.
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