Suddenly one day I and my other 16 women colleges some lecturers like me, some office assistants and also assistant professors had a call from “The govt. of India” that we are supposed to perform duty as reserved polling officers for the elections. I was fractured and thought I would not be able to perform the duty properly (not knowing the duty was not going to affect my injury much). No one in the institute were ready to help me, at least they could have explained my role so that I would stop worrying. Above all, my doctor was too scared to write a line that I am not supposed to stand or sit for a long time. The worst case was of a friend; she got this duty when she was having her P.G. exams.
We were told to reach for a meeting at 11 next day. Where? No venue was mentioned and no one was worried to tell us. We finally got the venue we all reached there on time and we saw several people who had same kind of duty as we had. Everyone else signed and went on their way. But most of the staff of Nirma University, didn’t leave the place (the best thing we have learnt at nirma is performing the duty well). Thus the duty had been assigned to us as they needed and not to the people who just signed and went away. After sitting aimlessly in a room of some strange school in a strange area of a strange city (it had no water facility even) when we were mentally exhausted I and my friend got posted to perform the duty at some other school given the reason that the polling officer, which we were supposed to join is too slow! Who was unlike us, a trained officer!
Let me explain the term reserved polling officer word by word. “Reserved” which generally means kept aside, extras kind of. But for elections, reserved people are those who have to fill the places of those people who were given some duty and had some connection with some government employee and thus got a chance to flee from their duties.
“Polling officers” are those who help the voters to reach till the ballet box, the electronic polling system. They verify their proofs, take their signatures, mark on their finger and keep a count of number of voters etc. There were a variety of voters. There were people who were enthusiastic, who were illiterate, who were asking us which button to press (which actually means secret voting), some were irritated after a long process before reaching the polling booth, some just went away without voting, some sympathized on us for having such duty, some annoyed but we did the duty whole heartedly, ignoring the other people on duty talking about us as if we were aliens from nirma.
Finally, the voting stopped and the struggle started. We were not paid on the spot. I had to go alone to the central office as my friend felt ill after a tiresome day of summer. There I found around 40 staff members of Nirma on collection duty. I waited for one and half hour for my payment. Finally, when I was getting the payment, someone spoke something ill about nirma employee (the people who had charge had no manner of talking) my tolerance broke and I fought verbally with them giving out all my annoyance of two days. At the end of the day I had big heads around me saying “sorry madam” which didn’t touched me at all and a question in my mind “Can’t anything be done with this rotten system? What is the meaning of election where all people are same, sick!”
The biggest irony – most of the people performing election duty don’t get chance to vote. A few do their duty honestly and the major remaining lot are the most dishonest and corrupted people in the world.
We were told to reach for a meeting at 11 next day. Where? No venue was mentioned and no one was worried to tell us. We finally got the venue we all reached there on time and we saw several people who had same kind of duty as we had. Everyone else signed and went on their way. But most of the staff of Nirma University, didn’t leave the place (the best thing we have learnt at nirma is performing the duty well). Thus the duty had been assigned to us as they needed and not to the people who just signed and went away. After sitting aimlessly in a room of some strange school in a strange area of a strange city (it had no water facility even) when we were mentally exhausted I and my friend got posted to perform the duty at some other school given the reason that the polling officer, which we were supposed to join is too slow! Who was unlike us, a trained officer!
Let me explain the term reserved polling officer word by word. “Reserved” which generally means kept aside, extras kind of. But for elections, reserved people are those who have to fill the places of those people who were given some duty and had some connection with some government employee and thus got a chance to flee from their duties.
“Polling officers” are those who help the voters to reach till the ballet box, the electronic polling system. They verify their proofs, take their signatures, mark on their finger and keep a count of number of voters etc. There were a variety of voters. There were people who were enthusiastic, who were illiterate, who were asking us which button to press (which actually means secret voting), some were irritated after a long process before reaching the polling booth, some just went away without voting, some sympathized on us for having such duty, some annoyed but we did the duty whole heartedly, ignoring the other people on duty talking about us as if we were aliens from nirma.
Finally, the voting stopped and the struggle started. We were not paid on the spot. I had to go alone to the central office as my friend felt ill after a tiresome day of summer. There I found around 40 staff members of Nirma on collection duty. I waited for one and half hour for my payment. Finally, when I was getting the payment, someone spoke something ill about nirma employee (the people who had charge had no manner of talking) my tolerance broke and I fought verbally with them giving out all my annoyance of two days. At the end of the day I had big heads around me saying “sorry madam” which didn’t touched me at all and a question in my mind “Can’t anything be done with this rotten system? What is the meaning of election where all people are same, sick!”
The biggest irony – most of the people performing election duty don’t get chance to vote. A few do their duty honestly and the major remaining lot are the most dishonest and corrupted people in the world.
