Bengaluru: As over 30 lakh first-time voters are set to exercise their franchise during Karnataka’s first leg of parliamentary polls on April 18, candidates are using novel and trendy methods to woo them.
Krishna Byregowda, the joint Congress and JD(S) candidate for Bengaluru North parliamentary constituency, is organizing folk rap performance to appeal to the millennial crowd.
Visitors to Elements Mall in the city the other day were surprised to witness a folk rap performance by young musicians. They were appealing to the youngsters to vote carefully, vote with a conscience and vote for a future free of hate and violence.
The performers also took up KBG's campaign promise “With You for You” and through rap music, extolled why he was a candidate of their choice.
The lines from the song —"Ishtu varshavadaru innu unemployment, sullu matugaligella agabedi silent/Agadidre kelsa bejaragi koorabeka navu prati divasa?" (Unemployment exists even after these many years/Don't be silent listening to falsities/Should we sit jobless every day?) seems to resonate with the youth.
Regarding the gig Mr Byregowda said, “Rap and hip-hop have their roots in oppressed communities and is the music of liberation, of freedom. Music of youth, rap talks social struggles and asks for change. It is therefore appropriate that the young citizens of Bengaluru and Karnataka, who have faced many struggles under the BJP led authoritarian regime, have taken to folk rap to express their political needs.”
“I will carry this voice with me to the Parliament. I will make the change felt at the centre,” he added For Byregowda, the idea is to reach out to youth through a medium they readily connect with. He felt the youth today are more politically aware and was confident that his campaign would touch them.
“I believe the job of an MP is to take the voice of the people, especially the youth and make it reverberate in the halls of the Parliament. I am sure that people of Bengaluru North will give me their mandate to serve them for the next five years in the Lok Sabha,” he said.
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