Letter

To,
The Editor,
The Hindu.

Dear Sir,
The recent polling during the Tripura elections has reaffirmed the citizen’s faith in our system of democracy. First, the high turnout of women voters, surpassing that of the men goes to show the political consciousness in the state. Furthermore, despite the Congress pulling out their “star campaigners”, Mr. Manmohan Singh and Ms. Gandhi, the voters seem to look beyond such political gimmicks and evidence of this is seen in their refusal to rally behind such a campaign. Our “educated”, urban voters can definitely learn a thing or two from the elections in Tripura, where heavy turnout was reported from the tribal areas. It is fallacious to suppose that the indigenous people often end up falling prey to false promises and cheap gimmicks of the powerful parties and consequently put the wrong people in power. Rather, the people of Tripura have set an example by successfully executing the first ever election using the Elector’s Photo Identity card.
Thank you,

Paul Dharamraj

(N.B: This was an issue that almost everyone in the media gave little importance to. They deemed it necessary to devote pages and entire programmes to IPL auctions. As expected, my letter didn't get published!)