The real pity of our democracy is we don’t choose at all !!! I mean not only we don’t choose right people but many a times we simply don’t choose people. If you look at any elections happening for last many years post independence the percentage of voting on average has never been above 50 % on national level of the entire vote eligible population. I really can’t comment firmly as I don’t have access to authentic data but its my understanding that the lower percentage of voting is not in the illiterate section of the population in fact it’s the educated and elite class which don’t vote. They have lot of logical and legitimate sounding reasons for not voting.
This particular issue is very deep and can’t be explained or even debated in a single blog post however I have a solution to at least enhance the rate of voting from the so called educated and literate section of our population.
I have seen that the carrot and stick approach works for most of the sane people like us,
the so called educated and professional class of the society. We work like dogs when we are incentivised, we avoid things when we are penalized.
Let me come straight to the point now. Voting in India is yet not made mandatory and hence it is left upon to the free will of the people. Many of the so called eligible and educated voters don’t vote as per our free will.
I’m proposing a carrot and stick approach by making voting compulsory. It should be made a fundamental duty rather than a right just like paying taxes.
Those who would vote will get a voting certificate ( when we make voting compulsory we will also have to keep an option of no vote if there is no eligible candidate worthy of receiving your vote however even in such case you need to go to the polling Center and exercise your duty by registering your verdict)
Those who get such voting certificate will get exemption in all taxes and levies. He will pay lesser toll tax while travelling on road, Such person will get discount on stamp duties, in fact in some cases this voting certificate can made mandatory like the PAN card ( Buying Home, Car, Land, Applying for Govt Job etc.) This I call as the stick and carrot approach. The more you incentivise voting the more people will do that and the more you penalise it ( here penalizing is monetary those who will not vote will have to pay 20 % more taxes such as Income Tax, Sales Tax or Service Tax)
Once people start voting they will start thinking about to whom they should vote and we start thinking then it’s a possibility (again there are risks involved here) that we may choose right people to govern the government at all levels.
We need to experiment with this at least !!!!
Originally published at www.mandarjoshi.com
Aditya Kulkarni
You are correct in assuming that a lot of people from the educated class do not vote.
Being in a democracy, I would not want my freedom to remain neutral curtailed. I believe forcing me to step out and vote when I don’t want to would repel me further. So the idea of a positive feedback (incentivized voting) without the negative one (penalty for not voting) would lead to an opt-in system and appeal to me.
As you put it quite nicely, the incentive can just be a small reduction in the toll tax. Any other discount on loans etc would further increase the liabilities on the government and would not be practical in my opinion.
A regional consultation on Electoral Reforms was organized by the Ministry of Law and Justice at the Fort Campus on Jan 16, 2011. Individual citizens and citizen groups were encouraged to address problems and suggest reforms. Some were genuine suggestions, others were the chaotic and shouting types last time…:P
I do suggest that you keep an eye out and attend the next one (if and when the election commission should organize it).
Mandar Joshi
Thanks Aditya for reading my post and taking time out to voice your opinions. I agree with you in all that you said with only one exception that voting should be left out as voluntary think and not something that should be forced upon. I think when we deny voting voluntarily we also loose out on the opportunity to elect right people to govern us and at the same time help vested interests of the politicians who win over the elections by buying vote. If we live in a country we love and proud citizen of this beautiful country then why should’t we vote and participate in the democratic process ? however I agree with you its related to the spreading awareness and ultimately leaving it out for the people to act on it 🙂
Thanks again for the valuable inputs about the past regional consultation arranged in Mumbai I shall look forward to such gatherings in future.
Vijay Khubchandani
One middle solution here could be to make voting mandatory, while allowing to vote online (with the utmost level of security off-course)..
Abey John
Great idea. Will improve our system like crazy. Now only to find someone to go and bell the cats at parliament and get them to make it law. 🙂
Aditya Kulkarni
Different people have different priorities. What seems important to you might not be important to them at that given point in their lives. I believe that if you thrust anything down someone’s throat, the basic behaviour of any person would be to resist/rebel.
Do check eci.gov.in for their event updates. We knew about the event last time due to Ajit Ranade’s column in Mumbai Mirror ( https://www.mumbaimirror.com/index.aspx?page=article§id=44&contentid=20110115201101150302048441996a177).
Good brainwaves, keep it up…:-)
Mandar Joshi
Thanks Vijay for this suggestion yes for educated and tech savvy voters this can be made available as an option and today technology can create a perfectly safe voting gateway 🙂 one someone votes online through real time system his voting rights would get blocked for any other voting system at least for that election and so you can avoid double voting.
Thanks for this suggestion and taking time to comment 🙂
Mandar Joshi
Thanks Abey 🙂 Yes the real issue is who is going to bell the ‘Richard Parker’ of our politics.
Abey John
Aditya, I think the plank of your reasoning stems from the conflict between personal freedom vs collective responsibility. In a democracy our contract with society is: you give me the freedom (which is in itself a huge self conflicted mess!) in exchange for which I will express my choice of who should run the system. Within this context when a person refuses (through apathy, ignorance, or whatever) to express himself then legislative action is justified. My personal freedom tells me I can drive a car without a license because I know how to drive and I am conscientious enough to care for others on the road. The driving license is to assure society that I really know what I am doing behind the wheel. Same difference.
I also like the idea of incentivizing people to vote. Especially the poor. Give Rs. 1000 to each poor person who votes along with the right to reject and our netas “gaand phat jayegi”!! 🙂 All their grand posturing and peacock struts will die on the vine.
Tax payers shouldn’t be incentivized. Just jail time. 🙂
Aditya Kulkarni
Citizen’s perspective:
A right is a freedom granted to a citizen to exercise free will. A duty is an obligation required from a citizen, failing which action is warranted against him/her.
Voting is a right, not a duty.
Compulsory voting would be against my fundamental right of expression under the right to freedom. If you take that away, you are chipping at one of the six fundamental rights recognized by the constitution. It also might set a precedent to introduce completely unrelated laws taking this ‘right’ away in another aspect of your life in the future. Bad idea to hack away at the foundations don’t you think?
If voting is made compulsory, sure it will increase the numbers. But would that lead people to selectively filter and vote for an ideal candidate? Or would it lead them to whimsically push any button on the evm to fulfill the duty of voting?
Implementation perspective:
1) Even after digitization, electoral records still have a lot of problems which need to be addressed.
2) If you talk about penalty, how much is morally ideal in proportion to not voting intentionally? What happens if a family member is in the ICU and you cannot spare the time to vote?
Note: Google for Gujarat’s legislation on compulsory voting.
Abey John
Rights and duties are arbitrary designations which can often be interchanged based on the perspective you chose. We can argue the shit out of it whether voting is a duty or a right. I would say its both a right as well as a duty (Note that I have failed in my duty in this regard and have not voted for anyone yet in my life! Gettin a voter id is soo painful especially when you are part of the nomadic semi-urbanite).
However, that’s a blind alley which masks the actual goal. The compulsory voting suggestion comes from the governance problems we face. The objective in this case is not to trammel on free will but to ensure that those in government are truly representative of the “will of the people”.
If they vote apathetically they will get any old candidate. But in practice when faced with having to make a decision like this almost everyone will form an opinion and cast their vote. If voting is made compulsory then more people will pay attention to the discourse in the media leading up to the election and even if they are dissatisfied with the candidates they can express their dissatisfaction with the right to reject.
Its like eating veggies – you may not like it but you’ll eat it anyways ‘coz you know its good for you.
Electoral records problems are implementation issues nothing to do with the policy.
Not just ICU, there are a host of other “emergency” possibilities that can prevent someone from voting. Protocols will need to be defined. Like paying your taxes. If you don’t pay you get into trouble. Doesn’t matter what your personal problem is – the tax man will still come after you.
Aditya Kulkarni
There’s no question of arbitrary perspective. Article 326 of the Indian constitution ‘entitles’ i.e. gives a non-obligatory legal right, to a citizen to vote.
The veggies? I don’t eat them all. The healthy ones tend to taste awful.
Abey John
Am not disputing what the constitution says. I am pointing out the philosophical fallacy of allocating independent buckets of rigid meaning to the terms ‘rights’ and ‘duty’ independent of context. When you place these within a real world context you often see the distinction blurring. Both contextually as well as on the emotionally reactive plane.
For that matter the constitution is essentially a pile of words that approximates the spirit of the nation and should primarily serve as an interpretive reference rather than become a rigid list of dos and donts. If the current version defines voting as a non obligatory right then the process would be to develop a consensus and modify the wording to reflect the current “will of the people”. Not going to happen anytime soon that! 🙂