Poor Indian Voter

Well...Dont look for the traditional bashing of politicians and empathy for the Indian voter in this post.

The Indian voter under the scanner in this post is THAT Indian voter who brings delight to the affluent mobile and telecom co's by spending hundreds or even thousands for voting for any television poll..

Now, For long this has been an issue I've vehimently fulminated to a lot of my friends. But, the stats about Indian Idol has just pushed me into penning down my reservations against sms/online voting in the form of a post here.

An estimated 7 crore votes had been registered merely to decide the one winner among the two finalists. Now, taking into consideration the votes that would have got registered during the preliminary stages of the poll, I can safely place the number of votes to be somewhere close to be 30k crores. With each of those messages costing atleast 2 Rs, the poor Indian voter is much to his ignorance contributing 60 crores to the wealth of the telecos. What this shows is an apparent lack of prudence among the Indian public. Now, My agony is not in the fact that telecos and in turn the people who run those comps are minting money, but that the 60 crores could have easily been spent on a variety of welfare activities. Over here, I've only taken into account the amount People would have spent to make the Indian Idol a success.. Now, if we do take into consideration all those tv shows that require the poor Indian television viewer to vote, We can reach an astronomical figure that would probably be equal to the turnover of any of those major telecos..We are in effect generating as much wealth as it would be required to turn the fortunes of all the districts of Jharkhand on it's head.

For long, we kept blaming the politicians for any lack of growth,opportunity and failure in the machinery. But, isn't it a cardinal sin to be pointing our finger at someone without bothering to introspect?

While on one side of it is the huge financial drain that goes unnoticed in the form of voting, on the other hand is the credibility of the results of these very polls. Now, 99.9% of the people who vote are likely to be voters who do not specialize in any form of music. Well, to get judgemental over any particular issue, one needs to be expert at the same. It's quite similar to a layman on the streets talking to Cnn Ibn about how Dravid should captain a side or play a cover drive. I just cant avoid laughing when I see any of those comments from those blokes who reckon that they know a lot but in reality know nothing. The same thing is applicable to Indian Idol or a Super singer (telecast in Tamil channel "Star Vijay"). Why dont we allow the Udit Narayans and Unni krishnans do the job that they are so good at doing ? Why have judges in the first place if a brainless common man's vote is what is going to make all the difference ? It's hightime the junta thought it out and respond to this issue by refraining from messaging. This will slowly put an end to this problem by way of telecos slowly withdrawing their sponsorships from such events.

One of those most glaring incidents of such ridiculous polls in recent memory has actually been on the International stage when a website was created to help people cast votes for the selection of the next seven wonders. And with no surprises 'Great wall" AND "Taj Mahal" registered the maximum number of votes. Isn't it a foregone conclusion that these wonders from the two most populous countries of the world will win it hands down. Should a thing as significant and monumental as the "wonders of the world" be left for selection on the basis of gross prejudices show by the people from these very countries ? Would a common man know more than an Archaeologist, Geologist or a historian to decide upon the seven wonders. It's a shame that the world is still blind to this transparent problem of money being swindled by the rich and the powerful..

Wake up India...rather Wake up Indians