What Are the Problems Preventing Educated Indians To Cast Their Votes?

If They Can Vote, Why Can't You? 
(जब ये तैयार हैं तो आप क्यों नहीं?)  

An Election Commission of India News Paper Advertisement!

Did you notice this advertisement of the Election Commission of India (ECI) in the newspapers recently? (See the scan above) It has the picture of a person in wheel chair and it poses a question in Hindi which translates as ' If they can vote, why can't you?'  

Obviously, the advertisement is aimed to instigate the educated people of India who are eligible to exercise their franchise to vote! Such an advertisement indirectly means that many people are not voting in India. The ECI must have thought to do something about it to improve the situation!

The state where I currently live would go for general elections 2014 shortly. It is scheduled to be held in 5 phases by the Election Commission during Nov-Dec 2014.

The election commission of India has made elaborate plans for this election management which they call it as the 'systematic voters' education and electoral participation' or 'sveep' by which Jharkhand is planned to be swept thoroughly as far as the coverage is concerned. The poll authority is planning to have the voting percentage enhanced this time from the poor shows of the past.

The newspaper advertisement above is part of the plan. Through the advertisement, the poll authority is challenging all the eligible able-bodied voters of the state who apparently shy away from exercising their franchises. 

I had written some aspects of this in the light of the recent initiatives by the election commission of India in one of my earlier blogs. I had written about the ECI's initiative to get voters registered online to get them enrolled in the voters' list. I had written about my personal experience (of failure!) by trying out that method!

Why do we have a very low voter turnout in India?

The first and foremost thing in my opinion lies with the methodology adopted by the Election Commission to create and update what is called the voters' list and the voter identity card.

Election commission of India makes no differentiation to the citizens with regard to their financial or social standing. The ECI treats all citizens equally. A vote exercised by the richest man and the poorest man has the same value! It is indeed a very good thing. There is no partiality at least in this matter in India!

But the political leaders and the ECI also do not want any aliens to vote and destabilize the country. So, in the recent years, they have introduced the concept of the photo identity card. Coupled with it is the voter list as prepared by the ECI which keeps updated every now and then by a process adopted by them.

The voter identity card concept is good. But it is some thing which is practically impossible for a country like India to implement. The voter ID card is conceived to have a photo of the voter together with his or her age and the address recorded on it as applicable at the time creating the card. There are three variables in this card which could change with time. They are the facial features, the age and the address of residence.

Thus a voter ID card which is suitable for one election may not be suitable for the next election which comes after a couple of years later.

The ECI does not have any localized offices or agencies which are easily approachable by the public where one can file an application for making changes in the voter ID card and get an updated card. They also do not have any permanent staff for doing this work.

Same is the case with the making of the voters list. Now, the voters having the ID card and also who are in the voters' list can only cast their votes in what is called a polling booth which is a improvised set up set up for the day of voting in some available building, usually in some dilapidated local government school or some thing of that sort. 

For the rural folks, who are permanently staying in the villages for quite some years, the voters' list and the polling booths are well known and well identified without much difficulty.

But that is not the case with those in the cities. The polling booths and the voters' list in the cities are mutually invisible for all practical purposes.

The Election commission draws its enumerators from lower level government staff. In the cities, their numbers are abysmally low. Besides, they are pretty indifferent to the important work they are assigned with. They know well that the voter information data generated by them, for all practical purposes, cannot be properly verified and they cannot be held accountable for errors that they create knowingly or unknowingly. With such a system, there is nothing surprising if the voters' list of the cities are created with error galore!

In India, urbanization is taking place at a very fast pace. The cities and the towns are where the job opportunities exist. People are constantly on the move to the cities.  Besides, a good majority of the urban dwellers in India live in rented accommodations and hence keep changing their places of residence quite often.

It is practically impossible for the ECI to make any reliable voters' list for the urban population of India under such a scenario with the present system of voter id or voters' list making and updating!

The authorities now say that the photo ID cards of the ECI is no more a mandatory document for voting. Citizens are allowed to use other photo id cards instead. But no one can vote unless he or she knows where to vote  and where his or her name appears in the voters' list.

The method of making the voters' list, especially for the urban areas is highly unscientific. The cities keep changing their faces due to rapid urbanization. But the ECI with their temporary workforce from the state government employee pool, has no facilities for updating the information in accordance with the fast changes. As a result, their data base and the actual ground reality do not match.

The net result is either elimination of a good number of urban people from the voters' lists or duplication of names in many lists without the actual voter ever getting aware of it.

Naturally, the actual numbers of people who go for voting gets greatly reduced. Moreover, no citizen with some respectable standing in society would like to get identified as a fake voter and face legal actions by trying their luck at the polling booths. When the the voters as per the voter list do not turn out for voting in large numbers due to the reasons I have mentioned, an opportunity gets created for some at least to manipulate the votes with the connivance of some pliable polling officials!

Unless the ECI think and evolve better solutions, the situation would remain as such. While people who never move out of their places would cast their votes, the literate and educated lots who have to shift their residences quite often would not cast their votes any time!(Exceptions would be the high ranking political functionaries and high ranking bureaucrats who are required to exhibit their responsibility in public under full media glare!) 

If you are a person who lives in the Indian cities and shift your residence every couple of years you are perhaps one who is not likely to cast your vote in India.

But if you have managed to get your name in the voters' list and managed to vote even with these constraints, you should share your method of doing that. It would be a great help to others like you.

Will you be voting this time?

If you do not vote, what would be your excuse?

Would you like to share your experiences in this context?

Do you have some suggestions to the ECI?

If your state or the nation enact a law that makes non voting a punishable offence, just as the Gujarat State has recently done, what would be your reaction? Is it justifiable for any government to punish its citizens for failure to play their part when the government fails to play its its part well?

I have a suggestion to the ECI and the government(s) of India. If they do not have the departmental infrastructural ability to manage things well, why don't they think of outsourcing these services to private players who meet certain well defined eligibility criteria? After all, India has moved away from its old policies of state owned enterprises to embrace and accept private participation and enterprise. When it can happen in all other areas, why not in the area of election management?

Applying and Getting the Indian Voter ID Card Online: The Latest ECI Initiative !

Unlike the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the Election Commission of India is a statutory constitutional authority. The UIDAI though functioning only with some disputed executive authority has anyway moved ahead with the preparation of issuing biometric identity cards to all citizens of India and the Indian public seems to be obsessed with the idea of getting this ID called Aadhaar. [The large number of visits to my blog titled " Finally Aadhaar ID is Downloadable-Here is How You Get It !" is just an indication of this] Perhaps citizens of India have a feeling that Aadhaar would become the foundation of their existence in India as a citizen in the future !

As of now, all governmental authorities in India are working independently compelling one to feel the existence of innumerable governments and authorities determining their fate, rather than just one authority, who is in control. Then they cannot complain, because it is all due to their own reluctance in exercising their responsibility of choosing their governmental authorities, wisely.

Perhaps, the only way they can do it is by participating in the process of electing their representatives to the legislative bodies, the central parliament and the state legislatures.

When it comes to the conduct of elections in India, the authority that determines the process is the Election Commission of India (ECI) which is constitutionally an independent authority outside the supervisory control of the executive authorities. However, the ECI has not much independent machinery and infrastructure to do this of their own. It has to take the help of the existing governmental systems and infrastructure. Even the financial allocations for its functioning have to be from the executive branch of the government.

A good majority of people in the country are constantly on the move on account of their vocations. Besides thousands become eligible for voting every year when they attain the prescribed age for casting their votes and almost an equivalent number cease to be voters on account of death and other such incidences. In such a scenario, it is a Herculean task to maintain a fair and dependable voters' list, the most essential thing to conduct a fair election.

Considering the fact the the ECI has no permanent infrastructure of their own makes the preparation and updating of the voter's quite frequently a task prone to unprecedented errors. In reality, a good majority of people in India are not represented in the voters' list. There are ample chances that the same person may be included many times. There are also enough chances that a person whose name is included in a list may not be aware of the same. 

The work of the ECI in preparation and updating of the electoral rolls for a constituency depends much on the effectiveness and dedication of the enumerators and the staff drawn temporarily for the purpose from other governmental departments. As these staff do not have any permanent office for this purpose of which the common people are aware of, there is enough scope for the voters' list getting prepared in a manner which is totally unprofessional. 

For example, consider this. Some years ago, the ECI determined that a photo Identity card issued by them would be mandatory for any one to vote. Millions of rupees got wasted in making erroneous cards because there was no clear instructions on how the data should be collected. The names of the voters were noted down in vernacular languages and then transliterated in English alphabet making the person with a name that he or his family would have ever imagined. Such goof ups forced the ECI to back track from their mandatory orders making the voters Id a thing of ridicule.

But this also helped many in other ways. The prevailing election processes over a few years in the recent times eliminated almost all educated citizens from the voters' list of India making most middle class and higher class citizens getting separated from the election processes completely. For quite some time the voting percentages in India have been abysmally low hovering around 40-60 percent in most cases. In other words, the elected representatives no more represented the true majority ! The literate class has become a frustrated lot in India having no say in determining their political functionaries. This eventuality slowly happened without many of them even realizing the same. 

The literate middle class has become more and more reluctant in exercising their franchises. Either their names did not appear in the voters' lists or they did not bother to get it included or they simply did not know how to get it done. In earlier days, it was the work of the political parties and their agents to do all the needful to give all the relevant information to the voters so that the latter find no difficulty in locating their names in the voters' lists and knowing the polling booths where they could cast their votes.

But of late, the political parties and their agents have started showing a determined laxity in this. Knowingly or unknowingly they preferred avoiding certain sections of the populace from knowing their details so that they could exercise their franchises smoothly. On the other hand, their existed no facility wherein a voter can find out his name and his polling station by his own efforts. It is not surprising then that the voting percentages dropped down drastically !

When this is the situation for the literate and affluent classes, it is every body's guess about the reality that existed in the rural areas.

With this kind of a scenario that has been existing, it is a welcome move that the ECI has now begun in starting an online facility for the people to apply for inclusion in the voters' list in their respective constituencies in India.

I am not sure how effective it is in its outcome. However, one can now make an effort by visiting the  citizens' service website of the Election Commission of India.

The first thing one has to do is to register in the site by clicking the New User Registration link of this page. For registration one needs his or her mobile number and a valid e-mail id.

One you give this, a one time pass word is send to your mobile for confirmation which is then used to proceed to the next page for entering your primary information and your own passwords.

Once this much is done and submitted, a page will open giving all your profile information for final confirmation. You need to take a note of this information for all your future reference.

Your future id for this site would be your mobile number and your pass word would be the one you have entered while registering for the first time.

Later use this information to enter the site as a registered user.

Then you can make online applications for inclusion in the voters' list. You can also upload your digital photograph from your computer.

Once the online application is completed and uploaded, some officer of the ECI would visit you for verification and issue of the voter id card later.

I have not tried this to this end to verify its workability.

You may try yourself. If it works, it is indeed a praiseworthy effort of the ECI.

Unfortunately, it is not the way I thought it should be.

The ECI site indeed provides for the citizens to upload all necessary information about him including the required document scans, photo scans, etc to prove his idenity, address, etc. Besides, e-mail and mobile phone informations for contacts are also taken.

However, the next part of the process is a thing they could have made citizen friendly. After taking all the information, what the ECI proposes to do is to intimate a date of appearance in person with some of their low key officer sitting in some remote area of the region. Of course they provide the mobile number and the address of this officer and the date of appearance, just as the court or the police call you for an appearance !

They had done that with me too. Unfortunately I do not have the time to find out the the place where this person sits and go in search of that person to present me before him or her for the voter's id card!

Remember, it was the enumerator's job to come to my residence and find me there to make sure that I am indeed a person living there at that residence. How can they do it if I was to go his or her place of temporary existence ?

So for the time being, this exercise of the ECI appears to be another futile thing.

We may have to wait a bit more till the ECI people realize their flaws and rectify the same !

Note Added on 2nd Dec 2013

You should also consider reading the following blogs in this context:

The Unique Identity Crisis of India !

Unique Identity to All: the Simple Thing to Do

A Postal Vote for Aadhar - a blog by Prof A.Kuruvila

ELECTORAL REFORMS FOR INDIA- SOME WISHFUL THOUGHTS!

In any case, let me admit this. I have many id cards. Yet I have miserably failed to know whether I could vote in this country. I had been voting before these complicated address proof formalities and the photo id voters' lists got introduced. Me and my family have been photographed many times. We had filled the forms many times.

It is also possible that our photos might be appearing in a few voters' lists! The election enumerators are simply ill equipped and incompetent in many parts of this country. You cannot expect them doing a fine job! On the contrary, those very people who work for the ECI on temporary basis out of fear and compulsion could make the whole system fail by making deliberate wrong entries and errors.

There is no way to know how many of our people are really able to exercise their voter's rights. While there are millions in the voters' lists with apparently incomplete names and addresses, there are also millions of educated people with some standing in the society whose names do not appear in the same voters' lists.

These confusions apparently appear as deliberate. There is a general fear in the political parties who had been in power for some time to have only the pliable public as the voters. They seem not comfortable to make a system wherein all citizens are in a position to vote as guaranteed by the constitution.

The ECI is an independent constitutional authority. But the question is : Is it really independent? It is not. The ECI is fully dependent on the government, both at the center and the states for infrastructure and facilities. It can force and coerce government servants to do the duties of election. But it cannot motivate those people to do a perfect job. And that is a big handicap!

It is time that every one in this country give a serious thought of all these, to keep this great democracy to go forward without failing!

Added on 26th April 2014

Even with my best efforts and even after living in a permanent and well known address for the past three years in Ranchi-the state capital city of Jharkhand- I could not find a place in the electoral rolls and I could not exercise my franchise in the May 2014 general elections. This was the case with a number of my colleagues. Though similar conditions have been known in many other places, it is now that a national news paper has made a report about it. The Election Commission of India has admitted the mistakes especially with regard to Mumbai where some 200,000 voters have been reportedly omitted out. See the news scan below:

The Economic Times in its editorial today has highlighted it and opined that we should not discredit the Election Commission for such mistakes. See the scan of the editorial below:

Perhaps they said it rightly. Considering the fact that the EC depends mainly on staff and officers on temporary deputation for all kinds of election work, it may not be possible to do a better work as the control and supervision of the field staff would not be effective at all.

But it is any way a serious issue. Something seriously has to be done to improve the system devoid of such serious mistakes. If citizens are prevented from voting either selectively or erroneously it is a serious matter. It raises doubts on the democratic processes in India!