The last few weeks we have all seen a concerted effort by all and sundry telling us to go out on Voting Day and exercise our rights. If you think the idea behind this has to do with your good, you are sadly mistaken. Politics has been overtaken by mathematics and statistics.

In a world where a 2% swing can mean the difference between loss and victory, you are just a number. But that’s not the real tragedy.

This time, and more and more with each election, we seem to be running short of candidates with any genuine claim to fame. Most politicians are just ‘below ordinary’ people who have access to more funds or more muscles. They have no vision but their own. No plan other than systematic looting. In fact things are so bad that you wonder whether it is worth it to respond to the Cast your Vote campaigns.

Because let us face it, whether your vote counts or not, the chap or the lady who is getting your vote is just a different shade of scum.

Without doubt it has been proven that the parties are all the same. Trying to cash in on some perceived weakness or the other, cashing in on everything from religion to regionality.

The few exceptions are those so called neo-politicians who left lucrative and responsible jobs to get into the game. They are the worst, because we trust them and expect a lot from them but finally realise that they have to give in simply because they are an insignificant minority.

A JP in a minority is an impotent irritant or as AK proved…if you do not have the numerical strength you can be bullied without a problem.

And as he is but human, willy-nilly, today or tomorrow, the JPs and crusaders like him cave in and bite the bone that is thrown to them. And then the tail wag really begins.

So tell me, what should I vote for? To bring to power a party that has no history or one that has no future…

a party that has as its latest member a litigant police official who has the gall to say he was honest and efficient, or a party that’s headed by a gentleman out on bail with a few thousand crores unaccounted for…or one that thinks building temples or even rebuilding them are the cornerstones of a progressive plan.

The choice is not for us to make. In today’s battlefield, the lines are already drawn and the outcome agreed upon. But the next time, let us do something that will give us a relevant choice.