With elections to the 15th Lok Sabha just weeks away, rediff.com's reporters speak to voters across the country to find out what's on their mind.
Nagappan (23), a social worker, is a final-year engineering student.
I added Kalam to my name two years ago as I admire him a lot as a scientist and a social worker. My admiration for Dr. Abdul Kalam started when I started doing my project on nuclear science.
After reading his book, Wings of Fire, my admiration for him grew even more. I am also interested in both science and service, and I feel if we combine science and service, we can bring about huge changes in society.
When I met Kalam last year, what attracted me the most about him was his simplicity. I feel we should have politicians like him, but unfortunately, there are not many like him.
In a country like India, if you want change, you can do it only through politics. Through NGOs, we can only make minor changes. For example, laymen came to know about Abdul Kalam after he became President only.
We have two kinds of politics; one is development politics and the other is 'political' politics. Unfortunately, in our country, development politics is less and political politics is more. We need a lot more people in development politics. One example is, we have a counsellor in our area working constructively at the lower level. We need more people like him.
I became eligible to vote only in the last elections, and I was quite enthusiastic to vote. This time also, I am waiting to vote. It is very essential for every individual to vote, and the government should make it mandatory. The question of whether we should vote ore not should not arise at all. But when I tell people that they should vote, they ask, to whom should we vote; all are bad. I know there are only 15 percent of politicians who work for the development of people. What I am saying is, we should look for the 15 percent and vote for them.
When I go to vote, what I look for is, whether the infrastructure projects and other schemes are implemented, whether the representative is accessible and how he responds to the complaints of ordinary people, etc. More than the political party, I am more interested in the individual.
I feel in Tamil Nadu, the Sri Lankan war will be used by all political parties as a major issue. It will not be an issue for the educated class but the ordinary people of Tamil Nadu will definitely feel sympathetic to Sri Lankan Tamils.
I feel, what happened to the law college students also, will be an issue. Terrorism also will be discussed. Though it is the Lok Sabha elections, local issues will be debated more than national issues. The national issues will only have an indirect effect on them like the Mumbai terror attack.
I am quite happy with the way the Manmohan Singh government functioned. I feel the Congress will come back to power because they have done a lot of development work. Except for the way the government tackled terrorism, I am happy with the performance.
I am more influenced by the Congress from childhood, so I won't even think about the BJP or the Third Front; they don't exist for me.
If Rahul Gandhi has the potential to be the Prime Minister of the country, he will be, and he can be. He may have the qualities of the leader having born into the Nehru-Gandhi family. You can't say he should not come to politics because he was born into the family. That is unfair.
For the last few days, we, a group of friends have been discussing about the kind of work the previous MP did in our area. We are all waiting to go early in the morning itself to exercise our franchise, and my vote is for the Congress.
Text: Shobha Warrier
Photo: Sreeram Selvaraj
