Category: Democracy

WHAT IF…


THE VOTER LIST FORGOT YOU?

This morning I opened the newspaper to find that democracy had acquired a new battlefield.

Not Parliament. Not the streets. It was about the voter list.

There were allegations, counter-allegations, objections, explanations and demands for resignation. The Election Commission said decisions were unanimous. Others said two Commissioners had repeatedly raised objections. I wondered what happens when the referee becomes part of the argument.

Newspaper report on the ongoing controversy.

Then I imagined something more frightening. What if, one morning, I walked into a polling booth and discovered that my name was no longer there?

Not because I had died. Not because I had moved. Not because I had stopped being a citizen. But because somewhere inside a database, a decision had been made.

And suddenly I realised: Democracy does not merely depend on the right to vote. It depends on the quiet certainty that when you arrive to exercise that right, your name will still be there.

Perhaps that is the real test of an election. Not who wins or loses. But whether the citizen still trusts the hand that counts his vote.

— Rudra Bose, the Last Writer of Kolkata

What if…


……when a generation no longer asks for privilege, but for credibility.

July 2026

A few mornings back I learnt that an entire movement has chosen to call itself the ‘Cockroach Janta Party’. I smiled. Not because the name is amusing. But because history has always had an odd habit of allowing the insulted to reclaim the insult. (I recall many years back, the Chai-wallah epithet had provided a positive momentum to Prime Minister Modi’s persona)

There was a time when young people marched carrying flags. Today they march carrying memes. Yesterday’s slogans have become today’s hashtags.

Yet beneath the humour, I hear something painfully familiar. It is not anger; it is disappointment.

Every generation believes the next examination will open the next door. When that examination itself becomes the subject of doubt, it is not merely a paper that leaks. Trust does.

The young are often accused of being impatient. Perhaps they are. But there are few things more dangerous than asking an entire generation to wait while uncertainty becomes a way of life.

Governments may negotiate. Oppositions may protest. Television studios will certainly debate. But none of them can afford to overlook the quiet question echoing through millions of homes, ‘If merit itself begins to look negotiable, what exactly are young people expected to believe in?’

As I folded the newspaper, I realised that the greatest examination before our nation is no longer the one written by students. It is the one our institutions are writing every day. And unlike the students, they will not be judged by the answers they give. They will be judged by the trust they restore.

— Rudra Bose,
The Last Writer of Kolkata

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