Say “NO” to NOTA

karthik seshadri
Nov 1 · 3 min read
Credits: The New Indian Express (File Photo | PTI)

I saw a popular VJ interviewing 4 students testing their political knowledge as the TN State assembly elections were approaching. Those youngsters didn’t answer most of his questions. I was a bit irritated to see the answers given by them. It clearly demonstrated their lack of knowledge and ignorance of what is happening around them.

In another radio interview, I heard a few so-called youths talking about the US Presidential candidates and discussing who was likely to win the elections in the US. They were updated about the manifestos of each political party. I was bewildered. How come they are updated about each and everything happening in the US whereas they literally had no clue about Indian politics.

Fed up of listening to these, I decided to ask a few of my friends about, whom they are going to cast their vote to and why? I was not politically biased and neither did I want to influence them to vote for a particular party. It’s just that I wanted to get their opinion on why they are choosing a particular party to vote. Are they making an informed decision is all I wanted to know?

To my surprise, most of them came up with NOTA. That is when I realized, before even bringing awareness about the political parties and their manifestos, awareness about NOTA was the need of the hour.

It is a known fact that even if NOTA gets the maximum number of votes, the party that comes next in the race (In terms of number of votes) will be announced victorious.

When asked why they are opting for NOTA, they presume to have a valid answer by saying, “No one is fit to rule. Every politician is here to loot money.” (Evan vanthalum thiruda than poraan).

Right from my childhood, I have been listening to a lot of people saying that “voting is waste”, “nobody is going to do anything for us” and thus they opt to stay at home or express their frustration by voting for NOTA which eventually is going to bring no change. I feel that these people should feel equally ashamed as the ignorant ones. These kinds of people know nothing about what they actually need from the government. In order to hide inside the knowledgeable people’s mask, they pretend to give away answers like this.

If all these so-called knowledgeable people instead of showing their unity in not voting or casting their vote for NOTA had shown it to a different party apart from the major players in the political arena, who knows Tamil Nadu could have been a different state by now. A lot of people saying that just their vote is not going to change the fate of this state is merely a crappy statement.

This would be my humble request to everyone, please go through the manifesto of each party and get to know about them. Decide intelligently and cast your vote to the deserving party. Don’t go by their freebies. Even if our vote, doesn’t bring a change immediately, we can feel content with the progress we have made. This change will definitely yield the required result in the future.

We have wasted almost 50 years by not trying to change and the first change that we bring in ourselves will not fetch us the fruit right away but eventually, we will reap the benefit.

Say “NO” to NOTA and choose the right candidate.

Regards,

From one among those thousands of people looking for a change. Let’s be the change.