Bhaagore.com - Bhaago Re!

The jaagore campaign to awaken the teeming millions out of their deep slumber and urge them to participate in the ensuing elections, has stirred many, who would have turned 18 on 1.1.2009 has been successful indeed.
Even those who have relocated to some other place in India and have not formally registered in the new place have woken up! Now this is one cup of chaai every Indian must sip!
After all, that is your only democratic right, which you enjoy as a citizen of India, the largest democracy on earth.

It was my bounden duty to get my daughter enrolled in the electoral rolls upon entering the last of her teens. The www.jaagore.com website enlightened me about the various forms that need to be filled and where they can be submitted.
But then fortunately for me, the regional office of our electoral authorities is a 10minute walk from my residence. So a month ago, I trudged the path and asked them for a form and they immediately handed me a couple of forms and explained me how to fill it up!
The only catch however was that they would announce the dates for accepting new registrants forms shortly, I was told.

In the meanwhile, a civic official who was going door-to-door distributing forms to the already registered voters, called up at our place.
“I already have a Voter-ID card and do get to vote so what exactly are these forms?” I asked.
“These are for updating our records and your photo is not there on the list” he showed me a printout of the electoral rolls.
“Cant I vote if I don’t fill in this form? I have a valid voters’ ID?” I asked him.

“You can vote with your old Voter-ID, but you can never say when rules can change, so it is better to fill this form and attach an attested copy of a Photo-identity like Passport copy, Pan Card, etc and complete our formality while the program is on”, he said.
I couldnt figure out exactly what it was all about but apparently they wanted us to comply with some formalities.

Today, I had the good fortune of finding the said officers, in fact 3 of them, who appeared in the school which usually is our voting centre, all willing to accept both new registrations and these newly distributed forms!
There was a huge crowd in front of the 3 officers and some people who were apparently waiting in a queue.

In the queue as I waited, a rather elderly Parsi gentleman asked me whether this was the queue for submitting the form. I just told him I hoped so too, but wasn’t sure.
Then he asked me “Why we are required to fill this form again, since we already had voter ID cards with our photo on it?” I shrugged my shoulders.
“They must have misplaced our records! They only know how to make us run and dance!”, he continued to grumble, “This is the Bhaagore program of the Government!.........”.

"Yes sir! They are trying to prove Charles Darwins theory propogating that it would eventually be the 'Survival of the Fittest' right all over again" I agreed, as I helped the aged man to sit on a nearby vacant chair.

One couldn’t make out whether there were three separate queues or one? Whether my form could be submitted by the officer or was I in the wrong queue? Any effort to get to the officer to find out if I was in the right queue met with loud boos. But these same people could not tell me if I was in the right queue! Now I know why a straight line is called a ‘Q’ – it resembles this alphabet more than any other!

Finally my turn came and I was so happy when he accepted our forms!
“What next?” I asked. “You will have to get your photograph taken when we organize it”, he informed!
“But haven’t we submitted our photograph?” I asked. “No not this photo, we will need to photograph you with our special camera for the new card we are planning to issue”, he informed.

Back home, I checked my emails and found a mail from my old friend, Freddie, from college, a physics scholar who is with a premier research institute in the UK in my inbox. Now just to give you a background about this old friend of mine, having migrated to the UK, used to write me postcards (when the email had not yet evolved) from “Great Britain” (UK was apparently not so effective). Not the one to take things lying down, of course, I used to reply him back from “Greater Bombay”.

“So what research are you doing these days”, I had asked him in my last email, to which he informed “We are working on a camera which can give you the image of your predecessors thousands of years ago! In just a few weeks, we should be able to even tell the exact species of monkey from which you have evolved with this camera.
It will be a fitting tribute to the evolution theory of Charles Darwin”

“Why is your UK government wasting so much money to do that, Freddie? Our Indian government has several of those cameras in operation for the last decade or so and they use them - to make Voter IDs for all our citizens!” I asked him.

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