22 October,2010 08:19 AM IST | | Arindam Chaudhuri
Last December, the state assembly of Gujarat passed a bill to make voting mandatory. That bill is still to see a nod from the Governor. Revisiting the issue, L K Advani and Narendra Modi both echoed the viewpoint again, and asked the legislation to make voting compulsory in the state, especially after a low turnout rate in the recent civic elections. These developments with respect to compulsory voting remind me of an editorial that I wrote in 2007 on allowing voting through SMS! What is essential is a larger engagement of the electorate, which has been diminishing by the day.
Given the current voter turnout rates that hardly touch a mark of 50 per cent these days, the election results fail to reflect the actual mandate. The most unfortunate part is that a majority of the youth and the educated class don't vote and feel completely disengaged from the election process.
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This trend of not voting, not only leads to the selection of an incapable person, (who is a criminal 25 per cent of the time) but also questions the duties attached to our fundamental rights. This reminds me of those horror years when India saw the repercussions of low voters' turnout rate - where the government lasted for few days to few weeks (twice in 1996 and then in 1998) costing the nation massively!
As per the official reports, India invested a staggering sum of Rs 100 billion or Rs 10,000 crore ufffd in the last general elections. A trend analysis on the expenditure over the last 30 years indicates that every year the expenditures on Lok Sabha elections increase by 40-45 per cent. In 2004, in the much-hyped 'India Shining' campaign, the BJP had frittered over Rs 75-100 crore, while the last election saw Congress and BJP spending more than Rs 250 crore each.
Further, during voting, there should be a choice that many in India have been fighting for. The choice to vote for 'None of the above'! Democracy might take a new form then. We might have a result that looks like ufffd 'Congress' 24 per cent, 'BJP' 24 per cent, 'Others' 1 per cent and 'None of the Above' 51 per cent! The seats in every Parliament should also be distributed in the ratio of votes polled, as it should be in a true democracy.
While democracy then will replace the existing DEMON-OCRACY in India, politicians will know that the only way to stay in power is by hard work for the people; and they will start doing that, instead of indulging in criminal activities.
We might finally end up getting governments truly for the people, by the people and of the people!
