Karnataka - Bangalore   

A fast for ethics, values in politics

Ravi Krishna Reddy

Bangalore: Thirty-three-year-old Ravi Krishna Reddy, who will be filing his nomination on Wednesday as an independent candidate from Jayanagar, plans a three-day fast in front of the Mahatma Gandhi statue from April 26. He calls this “Maulyagraha”, his unique style of kick-starting the campaign as a symbolic counter to an election process that is being fought on the power of money.

Mr. Reddy left behind a successful career as a techie in the United States to take a plunge into the messy politics of Karnataka. This, he says, is an effort to bring back “values and ethics in the politics of Karnataka”. A native of Bommasandra, a village in Bangalore Urban district, he is an alumnus of the UVCE, where he did his ME in Computer Science. He worked as a software engineer in the U.S. for six years.

What brought him back to his home State and its politics, he says, is the belief that it is a “sin to be silent” when there is a need to protest against injustice. “Power-mongering, money, caste and communal frenzy have become the major attributes of electoral democracy. People with money are going to buy the election, and every party is going to make a mockery of the law and the people’s mandate,” he says.

Mr. Reddy is hoping that his fellow techies will pitch in with both monetary and moral support. Though many would say that professionals in the IT industry will hardly bother with the rough and tumble of politics, Mr. Reddy is very hopeful. “Being a software engineer myself, I disagree with this characterisation and feel obliged to prove such sentiments baseless,” he writes on his website, ravikrishnareddy.com.

He is certain that at least 100 techies will turn up on the first day of his fast to express their solidarity.

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