I don't think I will vote

One week to the state elections that shall indubitably decide when the entire nation shall be polling next year. And all those sanctimonious civic messages have been jumping out at you when you least expect it – Do vote, it’s your chance to change your world.
On a December Monday that would mean either crawling out of your weekend hangover an hour earlier to shiver in a queue outside a decrepit old school building before being asked to make your choice by stamping hand, lotus, bicycle, pachyderm, lantern or any other object that takes your fancy.Or then rescheduling appointments and asking office to sponsor your day out as model citizen.
If an instant poll on the FM channel Radio Mirchi is any indication, many in the Capital will not bother. About 28 per cent called in to say they wouldn’t vote at all. That’s a week before elections, when the event is still far enough to have the best intentions. The figure may be representative, it could also be wide off the mark. But it tells a story.
What are the options? Take Chhattisgarh, where poll excitement should be high right now. It is after all the first time the young state will vote in its own set of leaders, not settle for a hand-me-down bunch from Madhya Pradesh.
The voter can essentially choose from a chief minister who specialises in turning to controversy what he touches and a man whom the world has just seen on video in a gross ritual of money worship. The ever-smiling Ajit Jogi’s grin has lost only some of its sparkle since the CBI filed charges against him for fraud.
And if his stock continues to remain high in the state despite all the furore over a fake IB letter, or a million school bags stamped with his likeness or the thoroughly boring debate on whether he is tribal enough or not, it’s because the other side is not exactly driven snow.
Dilip Singh Judeo, the man who no one knew really existed except as a name on the list of ministers and the chap who would be driving the BJP’s rath in Chhattisgarh, has suddenly gathered notoriety of the kind beyond the average Joe’s wildest dreams.
He (or a doppelganger, for the man insists it is not him on the video) has been seen doing what we are assured many of his ilk would do any way but never ever get caught at – blissfully being bribed. He compounds that by singing paeans to his pet deity – money. Was not the whole act of graft supposed to be this swift, silent thing?
But that is in fact so much in keeping with the image of Judeo, the hitherto unknown, that has emerged in the last week. After the CDs were released and played all over television, Judeo appeared on camera swaying in indignation. Royal swagger? Leashed rage? Or just something potent out of a bottle?
Whatever. This gent shall be asking for votes for the BJP. No less a man than Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani informed Chhattisgarh that Judeo would be the party’s star campaigner, though the BJP has stopped short of telling the state''s electorate that he could well be their next chief minister.
Would I vote in Chhattisgarh? Middle class morality as glorified by that great mirror of Indian society, the Bollywood masala, insists that if the law crosses your threshold it is suicide time. Here I would have a choice between two parties headed by men with the CBI on their tails. I could always vote for the kite or the pigeon or any other symbol that takes my fancy, but it won’t make a difference to my next five years any way.