It all started during my college days, before we finished our third year we decided to contest for the college elections in the final year. I had already got placed in a I.T. company, was looking forward to have a fun filled final year. I was nominated for the post of vice president and we did all our calculations, we had the numbers to win hands down. The way it worked was every class had to elect their representative who would in turn vote for the Student's Union members. The elections in my class was very tough and finally it was a tie between me and the other guy which meant we both got 0.5 votes. So around 4pm all the elected representatives had gathered to vote for the student's union. Our numbers were still pretty good, until the results came out, we lost by 1.5 votes, some of the people who had promised to support us had changed their minds at the last minute for reasons unknown. Never felt so betrayed in my life ever before, one of the biggest failures and i could not imagine picking myself up and continuing with my life.
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| The majestic CEG |
We were devastated and didn't come out of our room for 3-4 hours, then took our bikes and went for a movie, the only movie available at that time was "Fifty First Dates". We didn't go there to watch the movie but to clear our head. One key lessons i had learnt from this experience was that you may be pretty good but don't expect everyone else will see you that way, unless you market yourselves equally good you wont get noticed. Well the good thing about this is that we had more time during my final year and equally more desire to prove to the college that they had taken a wrong decision. First, we organised an event where we mobilised funds, sponsors to provide specially designed vehicles for the differently abled students. We planned for a couple of vehicles but ended up getting three customised scotty's. I had also proposed and obtained the approval to have our department's own society and own annual functional. Also, actively became a member of the placement cell to ensure most of my class mates got placed before they stepped out of college.
Our election group is still very close and enjoy a nice laugh over how things went by. Even though we always wish we had another chance to get things straight in our college. A few years ago we had a different opportunity, this time it was at the highest level, "Lok Sabha elections, 2009". We were supporting a youth icon who was contesting from South Chennai. A couple of my friends were part of his core team and i had gone to meet them during my vacations. So i ended up spending a couple of days campaigning for the youth icon, went house by house in Mylapore and Saidapet. It was a great experience to see people treating us with respect and encouraging the involvement of educated youth in politics. In the evening we even went to parks and distributed pamphlets only to be confronted by a few security guards. He didn't win but ended up getting 15k votes. This number is a very high number for a independent candidate, the next closest independent candidate was around 250 votes. However, it was not anywhere near the winning number of 300k votes. The challenges faced by these independent people are enormous and I think the educated youth can enter politics and win elections only in movies, in real life it is next to impossible. Having said that, i am a big fan of the youth icon, he then unsuccessfully contested for State assembly , Chennai mayor elections but he has still not given up on the people. Hats off to his persistence, hope he wins an election pretty soon.
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