Anna Hazare’s Fight - III

Empowering the great disenfranchised working

middle class.
The quality of our elected representatives can only be ensured by ensuring that the entire
electorate participates in the election process and no section gets denied the opportunity to
vote. But this is happening. I keep on checking with people like me - those who regularly get
transferred from one place to another - and find that a vast majority of them don’t vote. Not
because they are indifferent and don’t want to vote but because it is quite tedious to get your
name on the electoral rolls at a new place every time you move your residence. And people like
me are not a small minority. On the contrary they probably constitute a majority within the great
working middle class. With increasing industrialization and corporatization and jobs moving to
these non-government sectors as also frequent changes in job, the middle class is becoming
more mobile by the day.

Thus while every other class matters and has a voice in this democratic country, those who are
forced to roam the length and breadth of the country to earn their livelihood are isolated and
forgotten. The trader matters and the farmer matters because they are people rooted to a
location. Government employees matter because they can find their way through the labyrinth
of their department that updates the voter list. Big business matters for it provides donations.
But the educated, hard working, principled and scrupulous middle class doesn't matter for it is
missing from the voter list and nobody cares.

I am quoting hereunder from a letter that I had e-mailed to the Chief Election Commissioner in
the year 2008:

“I am one of the multitudes that never get to caste their vote. Not that they don’t want to. Nor are
they an indifferent lot disinclined to become an enlightened pressure group. On the contrary,
they are an aggrieved lot and the matter is compounded by the fact that their families too have
to suffer the same fate.

I am talking of the vast working middle class that has to move from place to place in a
transferable job or from one employer in one place to the other at another place.

The reason for this disenfranchisement is not far to seek. The designs of the electoral system
are rooted in the days when mobility was minimal and people stuck to their roots. This is what
gives rise to the concept of “ordinarily resides” in the voter guidelines placed by you on your
website.
Quote
All citizens of India who are 18 years of age as on 1st January of the year for which the electoral
roll is prepared are entitled to be registered as a voter in the constituency where he or she
ordinarily resides.
Unquote

This does not take into account the realities of today where a major part of population, mostly in
the middle class, is incessantly roaming the country as they either work in transferable jobs or
move from job to job for furthering their career. This negates the concept of “ordinarily resides”.

There are many who are non-resident Indians, but Indians all the same, and they too never get
to vote.

These unfortunate people are not only forced to forgo their inalienable right to vote but are also
butt of remarks about educated people being indifferent to democratic processes.

I have put in three and half decades in a transferable job and am sorry to state that at none of
the places where I have been transferred, have I ever been visited by a government servant or
an outsourcing agency for proactively including me and my family in a revised electoral list.

And asking this mammoth group to add a few visits to a government office to the long list of
tasks that follows their relocation, would be grossly unfair to them. Between this bureaucratic
callousness and mobile middle class’s inability to make repeated visits to some obscure
government office, there must be a way out.”

Some suggestions were mooted in the letter on the following lines:

1. Separate virtual constituencies for both parliament and legislative assemblies and
electoral rolls for these should be prepared for such mobile citizens provided they hold a
digital signature certificate and opt for joining a virtual constituency. A voter will join a
virtual assembly in a state of his choice. This could be the state of his domicile.

2. As regards NRIs, they may join a virtual constituency in a state of their choice. It could
be either the one where they were domiciled before migration or one where they
propose to settle down on return.

3. These voting process for these virtual constituencies should be web-enabled and
activated on days fixed for polling.

4. As regards elections to local self government bodies, such voters may be allowed to
vote at their current place of posting by producing an id-card and a letter from their
employer confirming their address at that point in time.
Achieving this should not be a problem for India which has lot of talent in the area of Information
Technology.

This process may break the current jinx in Indian polity caused by a long history of politics
based almost entirely on identity management. The exclusion of principled and scrupulous
middle class suits this kind of politics well and there is a definite risk that the politicians may
laugh these suggestions off.