Voting: A Luxurious Right or A Civic Duty?

Happy 235th Independence Day, America!!

Just like most of my countrymen, I spent 4^th of July vacationing with friends and families. Didn’t do anything that remotely was related to the birthday celebration of this great nation (didn’t even saw the fireworks). What do I say about this great nation; it gives you ‘Freedom’- freedom to ‘think’, freedom to ‘act’, freedom to ‘live’. It doesn’t confine you to act in a certain manner, given it is within the law!

Some good news for Indians, recently concluded census study shows that India’s literacy rate has reached a whopping 75%. It’s indeed an achievement for a nation, who had an educated population of only 12% during the time of independence in 1947.

Over the weekend, a very close confidant of mine gave me an eye-opening statistic. He said that in a multi-party, vibrant democracy like India, a party only needs to focus on 15-20% of the population(on religious or socio-economic grounds) to win the leadership of the whole country. He said that since ‘only’ 50-55% of the voting population exercises their right and given the rise of the regional parties, any party getting 30-35% of the voting population will get the necessary seats in the parliament to run the country.

Shouldn’t a vibrant, transparent, functional democracy have full involvement of its citizens? Why does almost half of the population don’t think that it is necessary to exercise there right. It is one of the biggest threat to the democratic system of a nation. This epidemic is spreading world over and is not limited to India. Last three general elections in US have seen an average turnout of 60%. Europeans, historically have been very involved in there election process but lately there turnout has also been dwindling down.  

So then the question arises, why do people living in a democratic nation don’t exercise there most important right?

I guess may be that is where the difference lies, most of us treat voting as a ‘right’ and not a ‘duty’.