Vote

"The country does need politicians." - 'Advice to Constructive Workers' (G.), Biharni Komi Agman, pp. 346-7 (from The Essential Writings of Mahatma Gandhi edited by Raghavan Iyer)

I vote.  I think it is a citizen's duty to vote.

Many in my country who voted for Barack Obama have been disappointed.  I am not one of those.  I voted for Obama and he is exactly what I expected, a politician.  I hoped he would be something different, but I did not expect it, and so I am not disappointed.

Rarely in history has voting changed anything.  And when voting has changed things, more often than not, it has been a change for the worse.

Sounds cynical, I know, and perhaps it is, but reliance on someone else to change things, rather than being the change I want to see, doesn't seem sensible.

I was familiar with civil disobedience and non-cooperation from the civil rights protests in my country in the sixties, but it was Gandhi's ideas about the Constructive Programme that struck me as truly revolutionary.  It is the part of Gandhi's vision that my country does not really know or understand, and for me it is what can make real change a reality, right here and right now.