Enfranchising the citizen http://oheraldteam.com
Take a situation like this. You're told this is one of your last chances to make a voter identity card for yourself. But by 10.30 am, the team that is supposed to arrive hasn't yet come to your village. Next, about an hour later, the power supply has failed, so work can't be done. Surprisingly, the electricity department is located maybe fifty metres away. Just before lunch, and a third visit down the line. This time, the software of the computer is playing up. So, after a total of four visits in a single day, finally there's that valuable piece of laminated paper, called a voter I-card, available in your hands. And, this is not fiction. Goa, supposedly a literate and small -- thus manageable -- state, has long been struggling to give its citizens access to identity cards. In July this year, officials claimed a 61% coverage of the elector photo identity card, or EPIC. If elections are to be seen as fair and above board, carrying out this task effectively should be a top priority for the authorities. No doubt there are good intentions. But, things don't always work out as planned. What's worse, Goa's assembly constituencies are tiny in size. Many legislators have won with slender majorities. In the late nineties, there was a situation in which nearly 25% of the assembly had won on margins of five hundred votes or less, in each case. In the last assembly polls itself, which threw up a wafer-thin result, the rumour mill was agog with complaints that a number of names had been selectively deleted off the electoral rolls. One way or the other, this allegation remained only that: an allegation. If it is true, it is indeed a serious issue. If the charge is false, it's even more serious. It means that untrue insinuations are allowed to flourish, in a way that the citizen begins to wonder how things are really functioning. As could be expected, the politicians promptly forgot this issue after elections were done with, which they shouldn't if they were affected and really serious about it. Goa's elections, let's face it, tend to still unfortunately be fought on battlelines of religion and caste. This would imply that any dropping of names from the electoral rolls could have the potential of upsetting the applecart on one side or the other. It is perhaps no coincidence that politicians like the Congress former member of Parliament Shantaram Naik have raised the issue. But the follow-up has been clearly lacking. Other issues have also come up. Including the question of whether those working overseas in a heavily migration-oriented state have the right to be voters or not. Obviously, any decision on this would have political and possibly communal implications. At least one of our Herald staffers, from the Panjim constituency, believes that members of his family who have been abroad were systematically and selectively struck off the electoral rolls. In a Goa where a lot of intra-State migration has taken place, what happens to those voters who might be from North Goa and temporarily staying in the South, or vice versa? In such a context, the authorities need to maintain utmost transparency in undertaking this work. It would perhaps not be a bad idea to make the electoral rolls widely and publicly available, so that the citizens can see for themselves who's included and who's not. Access could be through public libraries; only politicians with a stake could be expected to otherwise buy copies of these bulky tomes. There are other issues too. We know of one case where an individual was unable to contest an election due to her name being wrongly entered. Politics needs to be open to the (wo)man on the road, not just to a narrow circle of professional politicians who know how to work the system. At the Central level, New Delhi has undertaken an interesting initiative. It has put out the electoral rolls of select cities on the Net. Goa, or any city or town here, is not among them. Why can't such an initiative be taken though? After all, as we are repeatedly told, this is a small and manageable state. Politicians and political parties in Goa have vitiated the functioning of democracy, and reduced it to merely marking a ballot paper once every five years. Or more frequently, if someone decides to dissolve assembly and go in for a mid-term poll, like Manohar Parrikar did in 2002. Most parties give their voters no say in deciding who runs their party machinery; inner-party democracy is dead. Apart from dividing the populace on the basis of religion, caste or ethnicity, many of our politicians are skilled at playing other games at election time. Splintering the other party's vote, pumping in money and resources, sponsoring 'friendly rivals', and match-fixing cricket-style are only some of these. In the Congress raj, the alleged dependence on bogus voting was also a concern; should we be going the other extreme now? Making sure that everyone has the right to vote is a duty that the authorities need to take up with utmost seriousness. It's a job which every concerned citizen or public-spirited group likewise has to take up with determination. ########################################################################## # Send submissions for Goanet to [EMAIL PROTECTED] # # PLEASE remember to stay on-topic (related to Goa), and avoid top-posts # # More details on Goanet at http://joingoanet.shorturl.com/ # # Please keep your discussion/tone polite, to reflect respect to others # ##########################################################################