Sorry, No Poll Graffiti!

If a smartphone and TV ban can be worked out as effectively as the other restrictions have in this village, one actually has an election campaign free zone in the country. Maruthanatham village in the Viru­dhu­nagar district of Tamil Nadu is unique as it allows no graffiti on its walls, no pictures or flex boards of leaders and no use of microphone ubiquitous elsewhere during election season. This has been a longstanding tradition here, since the days of the first general election. “Initially, we allowed normal campaigning activities, but the politicians destroyed the ­integrity and peace of the ­villagers,” village head T. Thanenthran was quoted as saying. It was an earlier generation of Thanenthran’s family that brought in the rules, a tradition that has continued. That’s 72 two years of keeping the proverbial election prachar at bay. And it’s not as if the villagers are not aligned to political parties. Just that they have to take their political business outside the village as there is no party office in Maruth­anatham. But then again, what about the parallel campaign world—the campaign speeches streaming 24x7 across social media and TV? Surely, that interrupts the idyll too, and more personally. The panchayat's views on that are not yet known