My Space: vote

In his Gettysburg Address,
Abraham Lincoln called democracy “government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

And now is the time for the "people" to play their important role in the world's largest democracy to decide their representatives and now is the time to decide on how we want to be governed for next five years.

So are we participating in this sacred act? most of us (read it as educated professionals) are not even bothered, we find all reasons to escape this. But we stand first in complaining about all possible things ranging from improper roads, facilities until participating in candle light vigils for Mumbai terror attack victims. Why don't we consider this as a duty to perform. First comment that we hear from a person who does not vote - "arrey yaar my vote does not count among this huge number of voters". One needs to understand by exercising their vote, neither the country, nor the contestant, nor even the constituency will be benefited, Its U and only U will get the prize. The prize of a good governance, the prize of a development, the prize of a better utilization of the taxes that you pay.

In a view to spread the awareness in this regards, like minded people from my office have organized a campaign "Walk to Work", wherein we walked all the way from KBR National park in Banjara hills to Qualcomm office in Mindpspace - a distance of about 7 Km.

Five of us assembled at sharp 7 AM on April 15th, 2009 at the entrance of KBR park. The park is already full with morning joggers. We saw some other group also campaigning for the same cause and a gentleman from that group inquired about us looking at the charts with the slogans that we were carrying. He was very much thrilled with the effort that we were carrying out.

We had a great support from all the passers by on the road, there was instance where a lady stopped her car and took one of our posters. She said she was going to put it on the back of her car. Few school kids waiting for their school bus asked us what the telugu slogan meant!

Slowly, we were being joined by many of our colleagues. By the time we reached Cyber Towers, a total of 25 of our colleagues stood there holding up our banners for about 10 minutes, and then continued our walk to the office. It was around 9.30 Am by time we reached our office.

We stopped at all important junctions, and the fact that traffic was moving slow at these junctions when we stopped was satisfying! In few instances, when we were holding up the charts, I saw few people just showing their expression - "Yes, We should Vote". Some places people expressed their support by holding their "thumbs-up". It is not just the participation that was extremely commendable, but also the fact that passers by constantly encouraged us all along the route was evidence enough of the desire of many people to participate in election.

Just voting might not be the end all of our social obligation, but it sure is a responsibility that we have to carry out.

Be Responsible! Cast Your Vote!

Few Pictures from our campaign