Young, Urban, Educated…and Choosing Not to Vote

Aijaz Rahi/Associated Press Maria Wajid, 18, was one of the first time voters who voted in Bangalore, Karnataka on Sunday.

BANGALORE- On an unusually warm Sunday, a large number of young, first-time Bangalore voters stood in line at voting booths around the city. Later they laughed as they showed off their ink-marked fingers, proof that they did their civic duty, for cellphone camera pictures.

Such displays of civic pride, however, were not widely seen throughout the city. The southern state of Karnataka, which has 43.6 million registered voters, and its capital, Bangalore, voted to elect a new government, and results will be in later in the week. While the rest of the state recorded a 70 percent turnout, in the country’s startup and technology hub of Bangalore, which has 7 million registered voters, only one in two voters turned up at the polling booth.

It is an abysmal record for a city of 10 million that is also home to a considerable chunk of India’s young, urban and educated elite. The poor showing points to this group’s longstanding disenchantment with the political process.

In a Koramangala polling booth, a software engineer, Shekhar K., who did not want his full name revealed, held out his left hand to show off the indelible ink on his ring finger as he returned from voting. His two housemates refused to join him, however, as they were cynical about voting for politicians who had barely made it through school and yet had multiplied their assets five times since the last election in 2009, he said.

“My friends have lost faith and voted with their middle finger,” he said.

Ironically, this had all the makings of a landmark election for Bangalore. For the first time, several influential business leaders rallied to form B.PAC, the Bangalore Political Action Committee - vetting, endorsing and even financing city candidates attuned to their “better Bangalore” agenda. B.PAC’s campaign was preceded by a voter awareness campaign during which several of the city’s technology firms saw massive voter enlistment drives at their offices.

Yet at 52 percent turnout, Bangalore showed only a 5 percentage points improvement in voting since the last election.

“It was disappointing, no doubt,” said Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, chairperson of leading biotechnology firm Biocon and president of B.PAC.

But voter turnout had significantly improved in neighborhoods like Koramangala, where the city’s educated middle-class resides, she said. Over 3 million first-timers reportedly voted in the city.

“Awareness building is a long process, and we do not expect overnight success,” Ms. Mazumdar-Shaw said.

The heightened voter indifference also comes at a time when political parties stepped up their campaign in Bangalore, whose 28 constituencies, out of 224 in the state, can turn the election tide for the state assembly. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, for instance, promised Bangalore’s voters a better nightlife and extending opening hours for pubs and restaurants if voted back to power. Results will be announced later this week, so they will be shown their way our or voted back to power.

Those who did vote did their best to goad their friends and family to follow their lead. In east Bangalore, Sumedha Dasary, 21, a management student and first-time voter, stood in line at the polling station with her parents Sunday morning. Soon, the Dasary family put out a picture of their inked fingers on social networks while lamenting that educated voters were not taking their responsibility seriously enough.

“If you can’t do this much for our democracy, you have no right to grumble about Bangalore’s crowded roads or the city’s garbage crisis,” Ms. Dasary said.