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The Message from the Masses:
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The recent election in Tamilnadu clearly indicated that in a growing, poverty-ridden democracy there would always be discontentment. When all the sections of the society can not be satisfied, this despondency would also grow. In such a scenario, the anti-incumbency factor would go in favour of the opposition party. One might say that there are a few states where people give a mandate to rule again and again to the same party (for instance to the Left Front in WestBengal). Also, recently TDP in AP got the people’s mandate for the consecutive second term. But these are exceptions rather than the norm. These exceptions are basically due to the excellent performance that addressed the issues concerning all sections of the people (rural, urban, poor, entrepreneurial, rich, educated, illiterate) or due to strong ideological Commitment of people like in West Bengal.

Will concessions facilitate voting?

The biggest learning of the recent election is that the elite Intellectuals must go to the pooling booths. The netizens through many fora/opinion polls expressed their anxiety to prevent AIADMK from coming back to power. But they hardly bothered to go to polling booths (recall that the voting percentage is a meager 58% and this could be partly due to the one hour reduction in polling time from 10 to 9 hours). Since electronic voting method is less laborious, we must increase the number of voting time from morning 7 am to evening 8 pm.

Some sections recommend that voting must be made compulsory. As any form of compulsion is anti-democratic, I suggest that the government give few concessions to those who vote. This can not be viewed as differentiation. If it is so, giving Bharat Ratna and other civilian awards is also a differentiation in a democracy. It is not suggested that you punish a few for not voting. But you facilitate voting by giving away few concessions. For instance, a Tax concession of 1% can be announced. For the poor who won’t even come under the tax bracket, concessions may be given in the form of facilitating admission for their kids in schools or treatment in government hospital or more amount of food material under PDS. ......more



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