Kamal Nijhawan has just fought his way
through a sweaty crowd of noisy Gurgaon landlords and burly Bhiwani farmers to
arrive at the head of the press gallery at Narendra Modi's September 15 rally
in Rewari, Haryana. The 18-year-old's proudest possession is on his person: A
black T-shirt with a brilliantly coloured poster of Modi printed on it, bearing
the legend, India First: My Defination of Secularism. The misspelling does not
bother the student of Rohtak's Vaish College. He's just come here to listen to his
hero, who is a "leader, not a reader". "Dekhiye kaisa boltein
hain. Koi kagaz nahin (See how he speaks. There's no paper)," he says.Twitter reaction on@jiteshtrapasiya
Nijhawan was born in 1995, one of the
estimated 149.36 million youngsters between the ages of 18 and 22 who will be
eligible to vote for the first time in the 2014 General Elections, but given
the voter turnout of the 2009 General Elections, the number of actual
first-time voters could be 90 million. A child of Manmohan Singh's
liberalisation, Nijhawan is among the 90.2 per cent who say they will
definitely vote in 2014, according to the India Today Group-CVoter poll of
5,014 respondents across 28 states. Over 30 per cent say they will vote for the
BJP, 47.3 per cent would choose Modi as prime minister. Not everyone is a
fanboy, of course. Ask Shadab Ansari, an 18-year-old student of Akber Peerbhoy
College of Commerce & Economics, in Mumbai's Muslim-dominated Byculla, and
he scoffs: "I will vote for the Congress because they provide work for us
and if we have a problem they are there to help us immediately."
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