This morning I woke up uttering the word ‘idiots.’ There was a speaker blaring loud, inane songs*, the lyrics of which were interspersed with mention of the symbol used by one of the major** parties here.
There are certain things that I don’t understand. Canvassing methods used by the political parties here is one such recent mystery. While technology and advertising have taken giant steps forward with all their subliminal messages and whatnots, the canvassing methods seem to have got stuck in a time warp. There is nothing subliminal about them. Absolutely nothing.
Well, I must confess they have made some sort of progress. They used those larger versions of bullhorn sort of speakers before. Now the normal kind of speakers are used, although that still hasn’t affected the quality of sound.
And oh, I’ve also managed to catch glimpses of different dances and buggy rides that have been used in canvassing in certain other parts of the country. From what little I saw/read of those, it just looked comical.
From what little I have perceived in the last couple of months, this year’s canvassing seems to have turned away from all the real issues and have turned toward these varying kinds and degrees of stupidity. This, I believe, is a ‘distraction technique’ something akin to what we would do to keep a child from crying or something like that.
Coming back to the issue at hand, perhaps, what happened this morning was a stride forward in canvassing techniques. May be, just may be, the opposing party was the one that was blaring the noise so loud, at 6 am in the morning, so that people will be put off from voting for that particular party.
All this makes it increasingly difficult to ‘choose’ whom I should vote for. Or perhaps, should I say, this has only made it easier?
* They couldn’t exhibit creativity even in the songs! The tunes are all popular Tamil movie song tunes, which are sometimes copies themselves.
** I’m not sure if there are majority parties in India anymore, nor even majority ‘coalition’ of parties.
