All India Voting (AIV)

In his historical Gettysburg Address Abraham Lincoln famously said that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”.

We, in India, need to ponder whether we are doing adequate enough that govt.s which are getting formed in last few decades is truly representing the people of this great nation.

Long back in Oct’14 I wrote a blog Voting via Internet!!, in which I argued the quintessential reason why Voting should be of paramount ease. I also wrote an another blog few months back BJP vs Anti-BJP and The Toothpaste Strategy, in which I tried to reason how its better that we have Two Party System like followed in United States rather than what we currently follow i.e. multiple party system.

I observed most of the political parties in India are nothing but “B” team of long ruling party here. Anyways I’m not here either to support or oppose any political party. My simple argument is that if we have multiple parties in India then they should stick to their national party ideology irrespective of the seats they gather during the elections and later should refrain from making an opportunistic alliance in name of coalition government only to fool the public.

Historically also we have only 2 major national parties in India which have so far been able to form the Govt. at Center. So why do we need multiple national parties only to confuse the public.

If we have only 2 parties in India with 2 separate school of thoughts, probably it could have been a justified way forward for the citizens that whichever party is winning is true representation of the people wishes. Not that you form an alliance after gathering seats in National or State elections and forms the Govt. much against the wishes of the people who wanted to remove the previous corruption ridden Govt..

The most clear example in this context was: how AAP in their first election forms the govt. in Delhi in alliance with Congress which public basically wanted to see removed from the Power.

It is also to be noted here that voting trend in India is mostly in the range of 50-60% only and seldom it crosses 80% in any region.

Its simply not possible for someone to travel from a far off city to his home constituency for casting the vote. With the ease of Technology available now, I’m surprised we still want registered voter to cast their vote physically and that too in his or her home state. Imagine, someone belonging to North of India is doing job in Bangalore (> 5 million Indian IT professionals must been working here) and election happens in his home constituency, what he is supposed to do? Its insane if he is expected to travel till there.

So this 50-60% voting is not true representation of people wishes. It is bound to be marred with corrupt and vote bank politics. Logic is simple. On one hand educated young professionals who migrate to major metros or abroad and who could have cast their vote in favor of development oriented political party. While on the other hand people who are left behind are more carried away easily by the Caste inspired Voting.

Can’t Govt. link Aadhaar Card and introduce Mobile or Web based Voting.

Why expecting every one to travel here and there for casting vote. The other major benefit will be safety of voters. It is common view in India that there is heavy presence of Police and Security Forces near voting stations.

There is one another huge benefit. Removing psychological fear. There are numerous cases of dominating psyche of voters with fear by local powerful political leader. His followers won’t be refraining from intimidating the voters. And then that particular political leader is winning continuously. This should be curbed.