Time To Vote - Lok Satta

"The punishment suffered by the wise who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of bad men." - Plato.

To: ....

Sub: Time To Vote

For all those who don't know me, a couple of lines about myself. I, Rahul Amaram, am a graduate from IIIT-Hyd (2K batch), worked with Infosys for about an year and a quarter and later joined my classmate in starting a new venture. Having established my identity, I proceed to say that I have taken the liberty to spam your mailboxes because I believe that what I am going to speak about in the next few paragraphs is of utmost relevance to all of us.

"Politics" today has become the most loathed word in our vocabulary. We associate politics with goons, rowdies, corruption, and every other negative thing we know. But hardly do few of us realize is that politics in its true sense is about serving people - a profession as noble as that of a doctor or engineer. Unfortunately, this tool fell into the wrong hands who have exploited it for their own selfish motives and this kept growing and growing until politics has become what it is today - a business, something in which you invest a few crores (during campaigning) and then later reap returns 10 to 100 times of what has been invested. And this has convinced all of us the so called "educated" that politics is something which is best left to the goons and we should only strive towards bettering our economic condition and if possible help people through charity. Believe me, I was exactly of the same opinion until I heard this lecture from Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan - http://rahul.amaram.name/blog/2008/05/23/jp-at-mumbai-univ. Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan is a physician by training, a public servant by choice, and a democrat by conviction. He joined the IAS in 1980. During his 16 years of public service in various capacities, he had many accomplishments to his credit. He is still remembered fondly by the people of the districts he once worked for.

Most of us have grown up in an environment where we are not really exposed to government harassment. We always get our work done by either bribing or using some influence. But this is not the case for majority of the Indians. Most of them are properly exploited and continuously harassed by politicians and government officials. There is so much discrimination by birth in India that all of this is leading to unequal opportunities. And this is leading to violence because now the under-privileged are beginning to seek violence as a means of justice. There are some things which I so totally agree with JP. For instance at one point he says "I am surprised about naxalism in India, not that it exists but so little of it exists. Given the extent of discrimination and exploitation in our society, much more of it should exist". And personally I don't think it will be late before this violence spreads to our cities, our lanes and finally to our houses.

In spite of an impressive personal achievement, Dr. JP’s experience in government convinced him that faulty governance process is the biggest hurdle in India’s path of progress. In order to translate his vision into practical reality, he resigned from the IAS in 1996, and with like-minded citizens formed Lok Satta Movement in 1997. Lok Satta has now emerged as India’s leading civil society initiative for political and governance reforms with wide popular base in Andhra Pradesh. This got converted into a political party on October 2006. And is contesting for the by-elections on May 29.

Personally if you ask me, Lok Satta is not just another political party. Lok Satta is a revolution. It is just like the struggle for freedom but not against Britishers. This is a struggle against our current faulty system and the people who are further exploiting this system. I personally have been involved in their campaigning programme for the past 3 days and I was really surprised to see the enthusiasm and dedication of the volunteers. There was one lady, a gynecologist, 57 years old from Prakasham district. She along with her husband (also a doctor) have closed their hospital for 20 days and come here to help with the campaigning. And you must only see to believe the amount of effort a lady of her age can put into for a cause she believes in.

And during my door-to-door campaigning, I came across many people. There were those who said that all that we did was useless because violence has become the norm of the day. There were those who said it was impossible to remove corruption from our society. There were those (in the slums) who asked how much money we'd give them if they'd vote for us. There were those who gave us the "Don't disturb us. I have nothing to do with all this" looks. And finally they were those who were such strong admirers of our party that they invited us and offered us something to drink. What we finally realized is that most (if not all) of them want a change. They want to be freed of corruption and the other evils in our society. But they doubt if this is feasible. They have lost their faith. They are convinced that our society is damaged beyond repair. And this is what we tell them. LokSatta currently is a party of believers. When all our efforts will pay off even we don't know. To be frank, we even don't know whether they'll pay off or not. Because none of us have seen the future. But someone somewhere has to take this first step. And that is what JP and his party has done. They have started a revolution for the betterment of our society. And we shall strive till we can make this a reality. And irrespective of whether you believe or not that things will change, you can at least cast your vote for a party like us.

Summing up, I do not intend to project this mail as some marketing material for Lok Satta. Rather I want to pass on the message that Indian politics is seeing a change. Lok Satta is not the only party which wants to run clean politics. Lok Paritran and Bharat Punarnirman Dal are examples of two such other parties. This mail is more of an awakening call for the entire youth to begin to play a more active role in politics and for everyone to definitely use their voting rights in the coming by-elections on May 29 and also in the next year 2009 elections. Please note that if your name is enrolled in the voter's list and you have not yet received your voter's id card, then you can still cast your vote using some ID card such as passport, driving license or ration card.

And I shamelessly request you to forward this to as many as possible [friends, family and relevant mailing lists]. This is the first and probably the last time I'll ask anymore to forward a mail this way. Just a couple of email forwarding etiquettes. Remove all the emails and just forward the content. And when sending to multiple people, use the BCC rather than To/CC to avoid exposing one's email to another. And also let me assure you that if you don't forward this mail to everyone you know, neither will God punish you nor will your spouse leave you nor will you get measles tomorrow. But I definitely can't give any guarantee that the naxals won't attack you ;) .

Hoping for a better state. A better country. And eventually a better society.

Regards,
Rahul.

About Lok Satta (video): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjHyX9KGweE
Jayaprakash Narayan's Blog: http://www.jayaprakashnarayan.blogspot.com/
Lok Satta Website: http://www.loksatta.org [A major redesign has been proposed to encourage better involvement of site visitors]
Email (for joining mailing list / any queries): info@loksattaparty.com

About Jayaprakash Narayan and Lok Satta

Vote for change appeal by Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan