The voting for new seven wonders of the world is one of the most talked about subject in blogosphere currently. I had resisted urge to post about it till now, but with it becoming increasingly visible that Tajmahal is not going feature in this Elite list, I had no option but to voice my reservation.
Okay, Can you tell me Why Taj does not feature in Top 7, it is the same why Sanjaya stayed for so long on American Idol. The public voting process is flawed.
The outcome is in the hands of millions of people, most of them who do not have either knowledge or are too knowledgeable about the voting process to actually manipulate the whole thing to tilt the result in the way they want. The 7 Wonders voting actually goes a step further. The organization behind this voting process is actually urging people to buy votes, thereby filling in their pockets. So more rich you are the more votes you can buy for your favorite wonders. Isn’t that cheap for a place in History ?
Here is the excerpt from Wikipedia about New 7 Wonders of the world
The New Seven Wonders of the World is a proposed revision of the Seven Wonders of the World, organized by a Swiss-based, for-profit corporation called New Open World Corporation (NOWC). The selection is being made by free and paid votes, through telephone or online. The first vote is free to registered members and additional votes may be purchased through a payment to NOWC. In addition to the sale of votes, NOWC relies on private donations, the sale of merchandise such as shirts and cups, and revenue from selling broadcasting rights.
So, this Swiss based firm is a “FOR PROFIT CORPORATION”, and where profits are involved, how can one have a fair and impartial voting ?
Even with all this background, I had not doubt that Taj Mahal would be in Top 5 if not top 3, purely based on the population we have. But I guess, I was wrong. If you think deeper, you will realize that although we have a huge population, more than 60% of the voting has happened through Internet, and Internet penetration in India is next to zilch as of now. Not only that, more than 97% of Indian population do not even know that something like this exists.
The number of Internet users in western world are atleast 20 times more and most of them are totally unaware of what Taj Mahal is. There are few other factors too, but the reasons I mentioned above are enough for Taj Mahal to get voted out.
Okay, even after all this I have voted and urge all of my readers to vote too. You never know :)
Register and cast your vote here, Don’t forget to spread the word on your blog. You can just copy the whole text verbatim if you want from here…
There are only 31 days remaining as of writing this post. The results will be announced on 7-7-7. Go ahead and cast your votes.