The elections are fast approaching and here I am sitting at the corner of my house and penning down my recent experiences about the biggest democracy of the world! India has one of the most complicated structures when it comes to conducting elections majorly due to the wide variety of culture and people residing here. It is a very gigantic task to make sure that things happen in a proper way. Especially when it comes to the elections, it is the sole responsibility of the Election Commission (EC) to make sure of fair elections to happen.
In the last few days I had an opportunity to meet a few people who help out the EC with its job of smooth execution of the polls. I met people ranging from the ‘chaprasi’ to the PResiding Officer (PRO) (the one responsible for end-end transactions in a polling booth). I here realized the actual way things are executed at the ground level. Initially the people are selected on a random basis and are given the responsibility of handling different activities held at the polling booth. There are a lot of procedures to be completed before the actual voting day (clearing the voting machine, writing a few reports and some memos etc) to make sure of a smooth processing of elections. During the process of voting the PRO has the responsibility of handling people, avoid malpractices, handle challenge votes, convince people about voting etc. Once the voting is done, it is again the responsibility of the PRO to make sure of the proper and safe delivery of the voting machines and all the other documents into the right hands.
After giving you guys a brief about what exactly happens during the poll day, let me directly come to the point of me writing all this. The responsibilities defined above are absolutely fool proof if they are executed in the right way and by the right people. But as a matter of fact, I am afraid to say that this is not the case with most of the polling booths. Many of the polling booths have immatured inexperienced workers on job. They neither have the experience required to handle people nor do they have the expertise to do so. I do not know how exactly the work is allocated. But due to my technical background, I was able to guess to some extent that it’s a random series generation. To put it in layman language, a few people out of a lot are picked for this highly responsible job of a PRO. To substantiate by findings, please answer one question. Does it make sense to make a person who was a PRO/APRO at the previous elections to be asked to take up a task like putting the ink on the voter’s hand? To look at the other end of it, a person who has never taking responsibility in his/her life is made the PRO. A person who is a pune somewhere; a graduate who has just passed out with less than an year’s experience as a government employee and many more such people are made the PROs. I do not understand from what angle the EC gets an idea like this. (Though PROs are Gazetted officers in many cases, there also exist people who belong to the above mentioned category. Also please note that they are trained for 2 days...)
I perfectly understand the amount of pressure the EC will be during the time of elections. But with such high level of technological advancements, I don’t think it will hardly take more than a month’s time to develop a software which can do all this. All they need is a database of people who were previously involved and who can be added on this year, where are the resources available etc. If you counter attack on this asking for the money spent on development and maintenance of this software, then I am sure that all of you will agree to the fact that this will not even be a penny when compared to the amount spent on campaigning by the various political parties.
Let me now take your attention to another issue which caught my eyes – Involvement of women in the whole program. There is no consideration given to the gender of the people involved in this process. Even women are given equal amount of rights and authority. But the gray part of it is the fact that they are ruthlessly treated! This incident happened to a lady during the previous elections. She was asked to stay back till late night after which a transport was promised. As the famous saying goes, “Promises are meant to be broken”, she was asked to get down in a deserted area 5 KM away from her place at the mid night…
The arrangements this year are no good. No transport facility is provided. There is no guarantee of food and even water. The polling booths don’t have proper sanitation. There is no fixed plan of action and time frame for working. Due to the inexperienced PRO, they are not sure of the time at which polling process ends. Above all of these infrastructural problems, the ladies are being put into remote areas for taking the responsibility of polling. To add to it, there are incidents of pregnant ladies being put for polling duty. It’s a mere display of callousness and a taken for granted attitude by the EC. A proper involvement and brainstorming of the staff responsible for planning the activities could have solved all these problems and ensured a free and fair election in all senses.
Apart from these logistics problem, there is a bigger problem due to which the percentage of voting in India is at a very disappointing rate. This is driven by the IT culture which came into existence a few years back. Due to the IT boom in many major cities, a large part of the population started to migrate to the cities which promised a very good growth and career. Due to this, the concept of locals voting for choosing their leaders does not exist any more. When you are no more attached with the locality, there is no point of voting for the locality. Just look at the bigger picture. The whole country is there at your stake. You are ultimately voting for the nation. The locals are just representatives. This idea stuck me during a conversation with a friend. Can we have a centralized system which allows us to vote from anywhere in India (extensible to world as well) having proper security arrangements. Ofcourse through initiatives like www.jagoree.com, it’s no more a dream to achieve such a setup. But still I see a lot of people not making use of this facility. It’s high time that we and the government realize the importance of all the issues mentioned above. Hope to see the vital decision making day planned and handled in a better manner going forward. Guys we are speaking about INDIA and not any other minuscule culture or nation!
Through this small write-up I seek the help of fellow individuals to make people aware of the responsibilities they have which can make a difference to more than 1bn people!
