My mailbox is inundated with plans, petitions and requests that represent public anger. One message asks us to wear black armbands, another wants us to wear white on Monday, a third urges us to join the protest march at Colaba on Wednesday while a fourth wants us to sign an online petition.

The anger is palpable and correctly aimed at our feckless politicians who seem afflicted by the foot-in-mouth disease. Lets hope that the cathartic marches, signing of petitions and lighting of candles do not become an end in itself.

True, some Mumbaikars are promising to go a step further and register their protest by refuse to vote for any candidate in the forthcoming general elections. An email quoting the Election Commission Handbook is being furiously emailed around the country telling you how to lodge an official protest.

I would urge you to think again. Not voting is a cop out. It achieves zilch, zero, nothing. You simply allow the same venal politicians to get elected with our without your vote.

What is Sec 49-0? Essentially, page 20, Para 44 of The Election Commission Handbook for Polling Agents allows you to go to the polling booth, confirm your identity, get your finger marked and tell the presiding election officer that you don’t want to vote for any of the candidates!

The emails say, if the ‘I vote nobody’ option gets the highest number of votes, the polling will be cancelled and there will be a re-poll. Also, the candidature of the contestants will be scrapped and they cannot contest the election again.

Lets suppose that I decide to register my protest under Sec 49-0 and refuse to vote. What do I achieve? I will probably be a hopeless minority. In fact, I don’t think even the polling agents will be impressed; they will probably dismiss me as a crank!

Instead of refusing to vote, let us get together to identify an outstanding candidate in our constituency, persuade her/him to stand for elections. Raise the funds to run a smart campaign. The biggest challenge is to identify the right person – someone who is known to all classes of society, commands their respect and is of unimpeachable integrity. If we find someone worthy of being our representative in Parliament and get him/her to stand for elections then that would be a major victory. We would have signalled our seriousness to the political class. Even if we lose this time, we would have them worried, because we could come back stronger the next time around. Nothing else will force the large political parties to opt for clean candidates without a criminal record.

Otherwise, politicians as a class will quickly slip back into their corrupt complacency and a smug Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi will be able to gloat about the correctness of his claim that the anger of a few women wearing “lipstick and powder” and men wearing suits do not represent India.
Check out the discussion forum at www.suchetadalal.com for the names of possible candidates we can vote for.