Vote? First, give us our I-cards

By M H Ahssan

Indian patois has garnished English in heaping handfuls. I am not talking merely about words like ‘guru’ or ‘pundit’, or indeed of the powerful ‘juggernaut’. Since we are in the election season, it will be fitting to celebrate India’s contributions such as ‘booth capturing’ and ‘ballot stuffing’.

Booth capturing? Does it not sound like annexing a cosy alcove in a noisy restaurant before that arrogantly radiant couple does? Such zones are usually known as private dining areas in restaurants where English is goodly spoken, but are consecrated as ‘family rooms’ in less snooty establishments. But they would never let two male cousins into the family room. If the cousins puckishly establish their bona fide bloodline, they will learn that ‘family’ is a euphemism for ‘lovers’. Married folks don’t try
to steal intimacy in family rooms, amid faux Szechuan bric-a-brac.

Oh dear, I cannot vacillate any longer. I must regretfully get to the point that I tried to flee from when I got to the Indianisms relating to elections. I can let innocuous rambling dilute an important complain at a co-op housing society meeting. But this space is meant to truthfully record observations about our metro. So it cannot be allowed to regress into drivel. I feel particularly incensed and hurt to say this, but I must: it will be morally dishonest to claim that elections are totally free and fair in Mumbai. Sure, the system seems to work, but that is so only because many people accept its imperfections. Worse, they are plenty of people in the city who are disenfranchised by the inefficiency of the electoral process, but rationalise that the great country’s democracy will not be compromised if they do not vote.

I was one of them. I could not vote in 2004, because I had to register in a new voting zone, the electors registration office in Chandivilli could not process my papers in time. Then went to the folks in the Chandivilli office again in 2006, months before any poll was due. Once again, the officials slapped me around with Kafkaesque rigmarole. Another ritual of supplications, pleas and prayers took to me the Chandivilli branch of India’s grand electoral institution in 2007. My prayers were not answered.

This year, I decided to deploy a charm that sometimes works even better than invocation to god, the influence of babudom.

Negotiating the synapses of state power on which the journalist’s network is built, I was able to approach the chief election commissioner of Maharashtra. He called the demigods Chandivilli, who are now working out of a makeshift office in Vidyavihar, and who in turn have promised to re-enfranchise me this year. In this metro, there might be scores of people who can call the chief election commissioner to fix the niggling problem of suffrage. But my guess is there will be lakhs and lakhs who cannot even counter a rebuff from a haughty junior babu at the Chandivilli office. I know that the 3000-odd people whose voter applications were lost by the Andheri electoral registration office belong to the latter category.