India just finished a mammoth
election. With over a billion people it's the world's largest
democracy by far, and with several hundred languages, at least two
alphabets, and only a ⅔
literacy rate communication is a challenge.
So I'm fascinated by this
photo of a ballot. Every candidate is represented by their name in Sanskrit,
Roman, and with an abstract symbol. Vote for the train, the whistle, or the
telelvision set? Such a simple way to help people who can't read pick
their candidate.
The collection above is from an incomplete list of symbols I found online. The icons look abstract to my American eye, but they're symbolicly rich for snarky deconstruction. |