Voting is not only a right but also a Responsibility

The recently concluded BBMP (Bruhath Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike) elections witnessed a poor turnout of around 44 to 45%. Bengaluru being the most educated city – this is a shame on the city’s part. This has been the trend in the last Assembly and Loksabha elections also. The so-called IT capital is becoming in-different day-by day to the democratic systems and values. In the early decades of our Independence (up to 70s and 80s) – the poor and un-educated used to not vote because of various reasons such as 1. Not knowing the value of the vote. 2. Landlords – preventing the poor and peasants voting, with a fear that they may change the fate of their preferred candidates 3. Women not coming out of the houses. 4. Rigging by muscle power being the main force in terrifying the voters from going to booths (especially states like UP, Bihar…) 5. The process was simpler within a week, though there were questions on the powers of election commission. But in 90s and in the new century – educated developed a fashion not to vote very clearly. 1. Least bothered to register their vote themselves 2. They feel better to enjoy the holiday. 3. Feel shame to go and stand in the queue to vote for. 4. But these are the intellectuals who criticize for everything happening in the country, state and city – cursing the politicians. 5. They will not have any right to criticize the politicians any more. 6. The software professionals of Bengaluru will be ready to vote for US presidential elections but not for Indian elections. 7. The poor, villagers and uneducated are now turning out in a big number – may be to some extent the candidates are also focusing more on these segments rather on rich community. They are providing some freebies for these sections with a hope to grab their votes. 8. Over these 2 decades – the election commission became powerful, electronic voting came into existence, but the process became very lengthier – taking lot of cycle time. 9. While voting cannot be made a MUST – the government should make easy steps to ensure that all the citizens have registered easily for the voters list. 10. Also there could be a choice of “none of the above candidates” in the ballot to indicate how the voters are feeling about the contestants.

Note that Voting is not only a right but also a Responsibility