Sitting jobless at home in the afternoon gives me a lot of time with nothing to do. My morning ritual has been to get up late and then have a late brunch and then keep flipping the 24x7 news channels. With the general elections around the corner, the news channels provide me with variety entertainment.
Before I start, I want to say that I belong to this group of "educated voters" who can think, analyze and decide and vote based upon that decision. Sadly, the majority from my group think, analyze and decide, but never vote. People from my group take the extremely rational view of the whole issue and hence like Dostoevsky's Underground Man, do nothing about it. ("How-can-my-one- single-vote-make-any-difference?-It-doesn't-matter" kind of attitude)
Having said that, what does a rare "educated voter"- who actually wants to vote - do, when he/she does not want any of the candidates to win the election? Hypothetically speaking, if we had a considerable percentage of the electors who do not want any of the candidates contesting in that constituency to win, what then is the solution?
A section of the Constitution of India, The Conduct of Election Rules (1961), governs the elections in our country. This set of rules has a particular rule which addresses the case of an elector not wanting to vote, which I quote :
"49-O. Elector deciding not to vote.-If an elector, after his electoral roll number has been duly entered in the register of voters in Form-17A and has put his signature or thumb impression thereon as required under sub-rule (1) of rule 49L, decided not to record his vote, a remark to this effect shall be made against the said entry in Form 17A by the presiding officer and the signature or thumb impression of the elector shall be obtained against such remark."
I see two problems as such with this rule. First, the elector has to inform the presiding officer that he doesn't want to cast a vote which goes against the secrecy of ballot. Second and the most important point, the non-vote is not taken into account and just an entry is made some register. The non-votes do not count towards the election results. So the elector who doesn't want any of the candidates to get elected and someone who is sincere enough to go to the polling booth to say so does not matter! So if an elector thinks all the candidates are unworthy, then he might as well sit at home and not go to the polling booth at all! (Of course, there is the problem of someone else casting your vote, which is very difficult to talk about. So I confine my arguments to a hypothetical, ideal scenario!)
Supposing, in that hypothetical constituency, if more than 50% of the electors decide to cast a "no vote", then the voice of the majority of the electors is entirely useless! So one might think that a possible solution is to bring in a clause which says something like, if more than 50% of the electors in a constituency decide to cast a "no vote" then all the candidates must be disqualified and a new set of candidates should contest in a re-election.
At first, this seems to be a fair enough solution. But on giving it a bit of thought, it is just a way of postponing the inevitable, with only a more expensive ordeal! Considet me, I do not even know who the candidates in my consituency are, and all that matters to me is which party is going to form the cabinet. Even if that means I am not an "educated voter", what I am trying to say is, majority of the people vote for the party than for the individual. (I am not denying that there exist people who vote for the individual in their constituency as against the party as such, but my opinion is that most people vote for the party of the prime ministerial candidate whom they want to win). So if I do not want any of the present prime ministerial candidates to win, I still can't do anything about it, as in the re-election only candidates from the same party are going to contest!
What, then, is a solution to this issue? I am afraid, there can be no perfect solution to this problem. On a personal level, I have to resort to deciding between who is the lesser of the evils and vote for that person. (I have quite a bit of problem in deciding that!)
On a more personal, biased and controversial note, I feel democracy is a farce! Simply because, I feel it is not only improbable, but impossible for a billion people to agree on one single person to lead a country. Just imagine, if democracy were to be the idea behind choosing an Indian cricket team, I am sure we would have no single majority and we would never be able to agree on one particular team! So how then are we going to agree on a cabinet of ministers??!
(We could possibly go back to monarchy! Our rajas and sultans weren't that bad after all. Anyways that is what is happening in our country today!)
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