TheNational
Drives focus on apathetic youth
Hannah Gardner, Foreign Correspondent
May 07. 2009 12:12AM UAE / May 6. 2009 8:12PM GMT
NEW DELHI // With its edgy soundtrack and hand-held camera angles, it could be a commercial for the latest soft drink or mobile phone.
But when John Abraham, a Bollywood heart-throb, spins a baseball on his index finger, it's not a new consumer product he's lending his glamour and cachet to.
Raise your finger and vote! says the slogan, as Abraham is backslapped by a group of well-dressed young college students.
The advertisement is one of several aired over the past few weeks as part of an unprecedented campaign to persuade India’s politically apathetic middle-class youth to vote in this years month-long elections, which conclude next Wednesday.
It was produced in conjunction with Janaagraha, a non-profit organisation based in the southern city of Bangalore, that has teamed up with several major companies to launch a campaign called One Billion Voters.
Other organisations have also been running campaigns online, on television and in the streets to encourage India's more fortunate to hold their government to account at the ballot box.
Their efforts will face perhaps the ultimate test today when Delhi India's richest city and, many would say, its most cynical goes to the polls in the fourth phase of the staggered election.
The kind of apathy campaigners are up against is typified by Mahesh Singh, 31, a human resources consultant who moved to Delhi in 1996 to pursue his education and admits he has never voted in a single election.
By the time I was eligible to vote I realised it was useless. Whether it was the Left, the Right, the Centre, they were all one and the same, he said. just power being transferred from one generation to another.
Why should I vote for them to make them richer and healthier?
In 2004, the last general election, national turnout was 58 per cent, but in urban areas voter levels were five per cent lower than in rural parts of the country.
In Delhi, turnout was 47 per cent and in the wealthiest parts of the capital it was as low as 26 per cent.
Many poorer Indian voters are illiterate and ill-informed, and therefore easily corralled into vote banks based on caste, religion and regional loyalties by manipulative politicians.
This, in turn, fosters the corruption and lack of accountability in government that keeps those same voters trapped in poverty and prevents India from fulfilling its economic potential.
The vote banks always turn out, said Uttam Prakash, a civil servant who is trying to mobilise middle- class votes through the NGO he started in 2007, Exercising Franchise for Good Governance (EFG).
CeIt is the educated people who need to vote, those who can really assess our leaders and hold them accountable. It's unhealthy for our democracy if the middle classes don't vote, Mr Prakash said.
EFG has been sending teams of volunteers to shopping malls and universities in seven major cities, including Delhi, to get young members of the middle class to sign a pledge to vote.
Political analysts say that India's wealthier classes became disillusioned by the criminalisation and fragmentation of politics that began in the 1980s and have focused on earning money since India's economy was liberalised in 1991.
Another reason for middle-class disinterest is that they are generally not as reliant on government services as the poor because they can pay for private schooling and health care.
India's youth 70 per cent of the country's population is now under 35 also do not see themselves represented among India's leaders.
The country's two main political parties are fielding a 76-year-old and an 81-year-old as their prime ministerial candidates and the average age of an Indian legislator is 53.
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