India being the largest democratic nation in the world registered a voter poll percentage of less than 60% in the last parliamentary elections and it was worse during the earlier elections. The prime factors behind such a dismal voting percentage over years vary from irresponsible governments to arcane registration procedures. Though in recent years voter registration has been made simpler, voter percentage has not been improved.This has been mainly because of the lazy Indian citizen who never votes but still complains about so may things.
In the awake of such a pathetic voting percentage some social analysts have put forwarded the implementation of compulsory voting which at present is implemented by only a few countries like Australia, Argentina, Singapore, Brazil etc. Though compulsory voting has a set of pros and cons in its implementation it has a different set of pros and cons in case of India. Compulsory Voting has the advantage of boosting the voter turnout and the elected representative not just represents a section of population but a majority of population. It makes voting a civic duty for the citizens of the country.
Recent Australian elections reported a voting percentage of 95% which has never ever happened to India. If a citizen fails to cast his vote he should provide a valid reason for abstaining from voting and if he fails he will be fined. Implementing such a strict law in India is difficult and with a better refinement of compulsory voting it can be implemented in a better way.
From the side of the Government, it should speed up the voter registration process and the citizens on their part should consider voting as a civic right. In a country where more than half the population resides in rural spaces, polling booths should be set up in the nearby zone. All government and private organizations should permit their employes to cast their vote on the polling day. Students should be self motivated to vote and fight for their rights.
People should leave their misconception that a single vote doesn’t count and take the recent Australian federal elections where people have perfectly used their power to vote by overthrowing the incumbent government whose policies were criticised all over the country and the Labor Party (incumbent) has suffered its worst ever defeat in 100 years. People should inspire from such incidents and understand that we are the real policy makers in this nation. We can no more afford to blame the government until we exercise our power by voting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_voting
http://www.indian-elections.com/india-statistics.html
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