The alarm is ringing, to snooze or not?

As the dust settles down on what has been termed by our Media (in clichéd terms, I must say) as 'India's 9/11', we can introspect a bit on the change being felt around us. The Great (only to be read sarcastically!) Indian Middle class (GIMC), which has never been interested in civic responsibilities, has woken up. There has been a general consensus that the very leaders that were elected into power by us not voting, are not going to stand up and accept blame for the carnage that took place. I have been a silent follower of the blogosphere that till date, was absent of civic charged entries (I chose to emphasize the fact that politically charged blogs are very much different from civic minded blogs). The change that is happening now is visible everywhere from this blog entry by Silverine to this rally in Mumbai.
It has dawned on the GIMC that as long as it refrains from exercising its suffrage, its voice will not be heeded by our politicos. It doesn’t matter if we cry ourselves hoarse in our blogs or in editorials, in India the crying baby certainly does not get any milk, the voting one does. As far as our political bosses are considered, we are an anomaly in the system that does not effectively translate into any vote bank for them. A lesson learnt in the US presidential election was that, galvanizing a youth segment to get up and have their vote counted, translated into victory for the President elect. Once we have caught the attention of our politicos in this manner, they cannot choose to avoid our voice. As depressing as it may be(to be herded together as a generic unit), the GIMC will become a votebank that they will have to answer to.
The scheming overlords may take this opportunity to make this a case of the affluent vs. the poor. The divisive politics of the British have been inherited by our Politicos, who have refined it to an art form: North against South, State against State, and Religion against Religion. We should be wary of these designs and cast our votes for those that do not sing this divisive song. It should not matter who these people we choose are: their Political background, their religion, their caste. Elections are on in many states as we speak, and the rest of the country will soon follow. If we finally decide to stand up and have our voice counted in the electoral booths, this could very well be the silver lining in a very dark cloud for us.

For those of you who are in my situation and are just as confused about voter registration and the like: this site really helps.