The Loss of Voice

By Sachin Gopalan


“If you don’t sit where you are supposed to sit, a stray dog will come and sit there.” This is a famous saying from my hometown, an idyllic resort like state called Kerala, famous today for being a symbol of wasted opportunity in a time of plentiful opportunities. Almost every significant contribution made by people from this state has been for the benefit of other parts of the world.

Yes, I would like to bring your attention to the loss of voice. Your voice, our voice, the voice of reason. We, the educated middle to upper class of society, for various reasons, seems to have lost our voice in the larger picture of what is transpiring in our world today.

Let us take the example of the recent Mumbai terrorist attacks in India. Most Indians today are still recovering from the initial shock and disbelief, which is slowly turning into outrage at the political system and local politicians who seems to be rightfully getting blamed for not doing enough to protect the basic way of life that we seem to have taken for granted. “How can the politicians have done nothing in its aftermath? We must not vote for such people. Let’s abstain from voting to show them our disapproval”. This is a good summation of the thought train hurtling through the mindtracks of decent people all over India. Yet, we forget that we chose to let them be in power, by doing nothing, or not doing enough.

Lets take another issue closer to home, in Indonesia & India where the general and top spot elections are just a few days away. The people are divided into those who want to vote and those who choose to abstain for a myriad set of reasons. “There are too many political parties, I am confused”. Or, “There is nobody that I trust or believe, its better that I don’t vote” or even “my vote is not going to make a difference anyway, so why bother”. This apathy syndrome has caused a worrying trend called GOLPUT or abstinence from voting, a process being popularized by many intellectual persons to show their frustration and dissatisfaction for the existing political system.

And then, there is another contrasting example. The people of United States, dogged by term after term of one particular failed leader, finally got to a point of such despair and loss of self-respect that the educated working class rose in unison to make use of the existing political system to make their voice heard. In a heroic act of defiance, the common man gathered together to teach a humbling lesson to the powers that be, by voting into Presidency a black man who is half white, a Christian with a Moslem middle name, a politically inexperienced man who’s best foreign experience came only from living overseas.

So the question remains. Does it solve anything by not voting? In fact, we will only go deeper into the situation of not having a voice in our own world that we are living in. Its bad enough that nobody cares about what you think, isn’t it worse if we ourselves don’t care about what we think?

The problem today is that everybody middle class who does not vote today or spreads the message of not voting is only proving that they consider the political process as SOMEBODY else's job. We encourage alienation from the very democratic and legal process that can effectively create change.

If in the short term we have no time to be an effective participant, at least in the long term, we can make sure there will be somebody to vote for, because even if u vote for nobody, somebody else will end up getting the job they don’t deserve.

Ask yourself why there is nobody worth voting for... its because you have done nothing to put up a person there to represent your voice. We need to first of all ensure there is a candidate worth voting for and then vote for that person. This is better than not voting.

Be a part of the process, or try and change the process, but don’t shy away from our responsibility, we will only get yet another reason to die of insignificance in our own lifetime.

It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable. -- Moliere