Ultimate Solution to Save Our Democracy

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