Brinaging cultural diversity into polling stations

Around four booths in each district will illustrate different cultures

Booth-level officers will be requesting local tribal communities to come for voting in their traditional attires.

Imagine a presiding officer of a polling booth greeting voters wearing a traditional outfit and sporting Mysuru ‘peta’ in a Mysuru constituency. Similarly, a polling officer in robes suiting the traditions of Malnad region manning a booth in Shivamogga district.

Such local cultural diversities can be seen in polling booths for the first time in an election in the State.

In what is seen as an effort to bring booths closer to the communities and relate them to the local cultures, the authorities overseeing elections in eight districts were making efforts to integrate the enriching cultural multiplicity of the area in the forthcoming elections.

In tune with the traditions and way of life of the respective districts, around four booths in each district will illustrate the cultural diversities, especially the cultures practised by the Adivasis.

As many as 28 polling stations in Mysuru, Shivamogga, Uttara Kannada, Dakshina Kannada, Chamarajanagar, Kodagu, Chikkamagaluru and Udupi, the districts reckoned to have tribal populations, will transform into archetypal booths and the officers supervising elections in these booths will be dressed suiting the local cultures – tribal as well as popular traditional.

Mysuru will have four such booths – all located closer to the forests of Nagarahole Tiger Reserve – that will portray the tribal cultures, mainly of Jenukurubas. They include two polling stations in H.D. Kote constituency — Ashram School for Tribals in Basavanagiri and the government higher primary school at Anemala in D.B. Kuppe; Tribal Ashram School at Nagapura in Hunsur constituency, and Tribal Ashram School in Muttur tribal colony in Periyapatna constituency.

Here, the polling staff can either be dressed in tribal attire or in the gear popular in the land like Mysuru peta, silk panche, shalya and white shirt.

A model for Mysuru tribal booths is getting ready with the Directorate of Scheduled Tribes Development, Government of Karnataka, sending an artiste for the purpose.

Going a step further, the authorities have asked the booth-level officers to request local tribal communities to come for voting in their traditional attires.

For example, the tribes of Uttara Kannada — Halakki and Siddis — in coastal Kannada which are known for their rich culture, may be asked to come to vote in their traditional gear.