I belong to a slum locality in Chennai, the capital city of Tamilnadu. My area is one of the largest slums in Chennai.  Since my childhood, I have always been puzzled, why we were been given cycles, TV sets or colorful dresses before the elections. I was able to slowly understand, only when I grew up with time. Party workers of either ruling party or the opposition party would stop by our slums, asking for votes, in return for alluring favours. I was baffled when they said they would provide us laptops to every child in our locality, when more than half of the people hardly knew what it is!

To start with, when I was five, our parents moved to Chennai, from the near by city of Nellore in AP, in search of job. I have three siblings, two elder sisters and one younger brother. I remember an incident, the first time we were approached by political party workers to award colorful dresses to our parents and us, in return for votes. My parents, voted for the same party that had awarded dresses to us. Ever since, we never saw them till five years from then.

Suddenly the other day, the time when I was in the 11th grade, some other political party workers came and promised to donate us a free colour TV sets to our whole locality. We were joyous and ultimately, all the members in our locality, voted for them. Again, a hiatus of five years. When I was in degree second year, the same workers came; this time it was laptop. I wonder, where these party workers get such huge amount of money to provide free elements before elections. I started questioning them, for which they would say, all is our leader’s own  money.

I had been following the scams in our country, for the last one year, upon scrutinizing, I understood the source of their income. In our society, one section of people (Middle Class) might be thinking, how the slum people would go easily for cash for vote scheme. If it were crores of money offered to Middle Class people, then they would also be the same as slum dwellers. Only thing is that people are lured by the thing, which they cannot afford for in their lifetime.

This  would continue to be the same, until people are lured and the parties get votes. A fact that should be known by all.