To Vote or Not To Vote?

That seems to be the flavour of the season. Where the entire media fraternity, organizations are pushing big time to exercise the Adult Franchise. A very focused effort to ensure the youth too gives their mandate. Though not many countries in the South Asia have this flexibility where the people of the country can decide the fate of the government, But is it enough to come out on the D-Day vote for the nation. Is it Ok to be irresponsible don't care about small things like jumping signals, driving on footpaths, no respect to pedestrians, litter left right center, don't care about the amount of plastic consumption, vandalize public properties, participation in riots, be influenced by communal speeches and the list goes on and on. As one of the taxi driver said "we don't want to change ourselves but would want to change the world" and i second his thought as majority of us are self centered, since the offices have declared a holiday we will go and cast the vote on the election day and wash of the ink and don't be bothered about some things for which we need to change and yet criticise the system doesn't take care of it. However am happy to be part of the conscious movement to encourage peoples participation to build a democratic nation, but how well are we palced to make an informed judgement on whom to cast the vote for? May be we should depend on the journalism to make this decision? But are they really helping us to make a choice? Most of the debates over the last couple of months on this whole election thing seems to devoted more towards who is going to win the election rather than what is "Agenda" going to be to win an election? Most of this Agenda is restricted to the manifestos the details of which hardly reaches out to everybody and do we have a debate on this manifesto? Not really. Are we sure the parties craving for power have devoted enough thought on how they are going to improve the economy? What is going to be the focus on Agriculture? Measures to Improve the health sector? What about the Action plan on Infrastructure and education ? How are they going to curb corruption? Did we ever hear about the parties debating on how they are actually going do deliver this? The media fraternity and other stake holders who facilitate us in making a good decision to choose a particular candidate or particular party are more concerned about a person making a communal speech and how he is going to polarise the vote bank and make him a hero, show him over and over again, not ready to move over the sikh riots and the godhra issue and parties blaming each other than having better discussions/debates on the real issues. In a nation where the media predominant focuses are on a sporting carnival taking centre stage against election, displaying the crorepati neta's assets than his calibre as a candidate, debating whether Baba Ramdev is mixing spiritualiy with politics, dicussing what is the post-poll alliances going to be, running innumerbale campaigns to VOTE is never going to help the commonS to take an informed decision. Sometimes i wonder what is rational behind this whole Vote Campaigns of the media, Is it just to tinker their minds to come out and vote and always leaving this question mark on whom to vote for? Or its just another business in this captilistic world always interested in how to increase the TRP's than influencing the people at large to take a healthy decision. What ever might be the case i have chosen not to abstain from voting and with the basic research i have done on the candidates contesting in my constieuncy i have boiled down on whom to vote for, it matters the end game or not and can be only hopeful that we have more impartial and sensible channels to help millions like me to take decision which allows the nation to progress forward only.