Election Justification

If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal. --Emma Goldman

Nothing can be more ironical in Manipur than having a general election in January, when we are supposed to be hopeful of the coming days. At the beginning of a year, it is also a cruel joke that we have been ordered to listen to, but somehow we have managed to tolerate it with the fact that it occurs only once in five years.

On the other hand, a participation in a popular online campaign (which is set to go offline that is in body and spirit and across the ground in a day or two) has tossed in some disturbing questions: about where we see and locate ourselves within the Indian political space, for simply taking part in this animal feast means we accept the status quo.

One who thinks practically, not necessarily a realist—those who are aiming for a piece of the loot, who are hoping for a favour from the election candidates, who see no other way but to jump in the bandwagon and fit themselves in and those who see nothing but listen to the campaigns and go to cast their vote—view that the election is indeed crucial. Obviously. Here and there, we would show our displeasure but are helpless as usual in this bloody state, and we are not foolish to go our own way. So, we join the queue.

But that is only half the story. It is undeniable that we have very little voice in democracy, and here we are not talking about America but a primitive state located deep inside jungles, where there are even more little values of life though well nourished by greed and crudity. Add this fact to the indifference of the overlords, sitting far away in New Delhi and the aggregate is a big zero—the nothingness that defines our life. We can at least stop calling Delhi all kinds of names, or the government for that matter, if we care to go to the election booths.

Don’t we need to put our records straight before aiming for a political world record in supporting both the government and insurgents, while simultaneously hating them? Do we need to have this election at all?

Postscript:

Don't read, but please see this kind of headline we have in our local daily
Series of bomb attacks launched ahead of January 28 election all over the place