Vote or No Vote..!

By Siddu Kaloji
It seems that worlds largest Democracy is on cross roads. Pre Independent India has seen as many as 14 general elections so far. But, no election has brought cheer on the life of downtrodden.

Still 39 per cent people of our total population are illiterate. 42 per cent people living below the poverty line. They are struggling to live the normal life. But, these people are the major chunk of voters. It is very sad to say that they don’t vote under full consciousness. One or other party will buy these people by distributing money and liquor to vote in favor of them. Whereas, educated don’t think voting is their right and they are part of this democracy. Most of the educated enjoy the holiday which government grants for the citizens of this country to make themselves available to cast their franchise. For the success of any democracy people active participation and literacy is very important. But, in India most of the educated people drop out of the voting process.

If we take into consideration of people participation in the all 14 parliamentary elections held so far average percentage of voting is 63. It means that still 37 per cent people among the total voters stay away from the democratic process. Another shocking revelation is most of the urban educates don’t caste their vote. In this kind of situation how we can expect the success of democracy?

If we don’t find the right candidate to vote, there is an option for rejecting candidates by casting the no vote. We can register our anger and lodge our protest by casting vote to nobody by filing the form 17(A). If the no vote percentage is higher than the total voting percentage, election commission has the option to hold re election for such a constituency. The EC can also ban those candidates from contesting again.

The voter should be trained in all these aspects. We should also have the option to change our leader, whom we elected for five years to represent us in the Assembly and Parliament, if he failed to fulfill the promises made during the elections. There should be some kind of accountability for these representatives towards the people. Otherwise, these politicians work for the welfare of themselves their family.

If, the GRAAM SWARAAJ, dream Mahatma Gandhi has to translate into reality, we the people of India should awake and caste our vote. We have the power to change our destiny by our own.