Voting is the 'new cool' for the Delhi youth

Delhi's new fashion statement is an upright index finger, the fingernail smeared with ink. To be truly hip, all young people above 18 must proudly wear this ink on the last Saturday of this month.

To bring the apathetic youth into polling booths during the Delhi Assembly polls on November 29, the Election Commission is speaking to the young through the chartbuster Pappu can't dance saala. In jingles aired on FM, the song's lyrics have been tweaked to tell listeners how Pappu - sometimes a cool dude, sometimes a hot chick - scores on all counts barring one: "Pappu doesn't vote ha ha".

Parties are drawing up their own strategies. Sheila Dikshit will, according to officer on special duty Pawan Khera, prefer to have actual conversations with the youth as opposed to a one-sided speech.

The CM has met students and faculty at JNU and plans to visit DU. Congress will start a blog to catch the Net-addicted generation. Videos, including one of Sonia Gandhi at a kisan rally, are on YouTube.

The party has bumped up the number of tickets for Youth Congress members, too - from the usual two or so, this time it's nine. Vijay Kumar Malhotra of the BJP has planned an Internet-oriented campaign.

Sources close to him add that Malhotra has created an IT cell to tap networking sites like Orkut, Facebook and Blogger. Also, you may find BJP activists in slogan tees jogging along with you.

The youth have started paying attention. Orkut now has over 1,000 communities on youth on politics, a sign that the new-age campaign is working.