Chapter 3. "the fourth morning "

Chapter 3. 
 
Page.79-95

the fourth morning

Summary:


Chapter 3. starts with a little introduction into Indians democracy.
Balrams tells about the elections in his village. He tells how the great socialist had ruled the Darkness by winning election after election but this rule was weakening. The animals had joined together and started a party of their own.

“ I am India’s most faithful voter, and I still have not seen the inside of a voting booth. “

That sentence basically describes Balrams view of democracy in India.

He also remembers a man who went mad at the election day. He went to the voting booth because he wanted to vote. They beat him up and killed him.

In the darkside of India people don’t vote for themselves.
Balram owns the democracy his birthday. When he went to the voting booth for the first time he was supposed to tell his age but he didn’t know his age. The man from the government decided that today was his birthday and he turned 18.

Balram remembers.
The great socialist came to the storks house one day and forced the stork to pay him a million and a half rupees. Otherwise they’d have to leave Dhanbad.
The storks family decided to go to Delhi for about 3 month. At first they wanted the first driver to join them. But Balram found out about his secret.
The first driver, Ram Persad, pretened to be a Hindu but actually he was a Muslim. Because the stork didn’t like Muslims, he lied.
Because Balram knew about his secret the first driver left.
From that day on Balram was the first driver

He joined the family when they left to go to Delhi.


Personal Part:

Something I found interesting while reading this chapter was the democracy in India.

Like other countries around the world India calls themselves a “democracy” but actually it’s like Balram say on page. 86 “ I am India’s most faithful voter, and I still have not seen the inside of a voting booth. “
The election in India is basically about power and money. If you got both you don’t need any voters you just buy the votes and pretend they won the election legally.
Especially the people in the darkness don’t get the chance to vote for themselves.

Page. 84 “ I’ve heard that people in the other India get to vote for themselves- isn’t that something?”

I think it’s a shame how a country calls himself a democracy but in some parts of India they are not even able to vote for themselves.
When I looked for some links on the Internet I could not find any links about “ Indias bad democracy” all I found were articles about “ Indias great democracy”.So I’m wondering what is the truth?
The people in India seem to be unscrupulous. They kill each other because of an “election”, they marry people against there will and because of those weddings they ruin someone elses life and take a little boy out of school.
Balram talks about the teacher how he took everything from the government what was supposed to be for the children in school, he tells about the hospital and how there was no doctor to save his fathers life etc.
It sounds like the people just think about themselves and they don’t care about anybody else.

Until now Balrams story left a bad impression on me.

Links:
 
Unfortunately I could not find a specific link on the democray in the”darkness” of India. All I found is a link about Indians democracy in general.


http://www.123indiatravel.com/travel-to-india/india-democracy.html

http://www.beyondbooks.com/wcu91/3p.asp

 Indians democracy

 Map of the Indian parties