Elections are the biggest event going on in India and these days the newspapers are filled with gossips, opinions and facts about the Indian Politics.

I happened to read today an interview of “Ajeet Bajaj” a Sportsmen. Honestly I had not head about him till I read the article and it could be because of my own ignorance. He was the first Indian to ski the North Pole and the South Pole in the same year.

The interview conducted by Tanya Ashreena was interesting on multiple levels and I will get to the finer details in a minute… but the first thing that caught my attention was the headline “Uncless you vote, you cannot cannot complain about the country or the system.” I have heard these quotes so many time that now it just irritates me at the ignorance of the people who say it. Millions of citizens in our country have been voting for decades in India and they still have so much to complain… if voting had actually made a significant difference in the lives of these people, there would be hardly anything to complain. With quite confidence I can say that 99% of people have something to complain about and I am sure out of those 99% people at least 50% would have voted at some point in their life.

Mr. Ajeet, now 42 (born in 1967, according to wikipedia) said in the interview “Since the time I turned 18, I have voted in every election. The first time I voted, it felt wonderful to have the opportunity to contribute to the world’s largest democracy I felt as if I had been given a great responsibility, which I continue to cherish till date.”

Just to get the facts right here, the first time Mr. Ajeet votes was 24 years ago and at that time India was NOT the largest democracy in the world. He continues to vote in every election which makes me ask him a question… “What has your vote done, how has it improved the country?”

Any country after being independent will progress on its own at a natural pace, governments will only affect the pace of the development… whether slow or fast. Even after 62 years of independence India does not have the basic infrastructure in place. Every political party in their many different political agendas have one thing in common… which is infrastructure. Infrastructure of a country is like a backbone. No country can progress without it. If in these 60 years all political parties had the similar propaganda (about infra) then why do we not have proper infrastructure till now?

Bad infrastructure, more crime, higher poverty, completely uneven distribution of wealth, criminals as politicians…etc. If this is what you get from Voting, I am so glad that I did not contribute a single vote!