Verdict 2009

Congress has sweeped a historic victory in two decades. With UPA winning 262 seats, it is just about majority in the Lok Sabha. The results show a trend of increasing confidence in the Indian National Congress beating the odds of the incumbency. But is it really an increase in confidence?

 

The 2009 mandate reflects that India has no place for the “politics of extremism”, i.e. either the Hindutva group or the Left. Performing governments are now being rewarded. End of identity as a factor of importance as BSP had less than expected gains. Return to national Politics. But, is all that really true?

 

Congress has increased its tally in the Lok Sabha from 145 to 206 but with a mere 2 percentage points increase in the vote share. This indicates a mere redistribution of votes which fetched them a winning combination rather than increase in their popularity. The vote share may have increased to keep the Left and BJP out of power. And the right number of votes in each constituency made up to a whopping number of 206.

 

This is not a sign of return to national politics. The national parties, Congress and BJP, contested more number of seats than 2004 but still saw a 1.3 percentage points fall in their combined vote share. Biju Janta Dal would be a good example of regional parties’ victory.

 

BSP, which is based on identity, has an increased vote share of 6.2% from 5.3% last time. Though, its vote share in UP is less than expected.

           

But, whatever be the reasons, UPA has a decisive mandate and is in a position to bring many long awaited reforms. It does not have any excuse for underestimated development in this term. It has a daunting task ahead and the road seems to be smooth.

 

Many schemes (NREGA, Bharat Nirman, NRHM) started by UPA seem to be capable of good development. It should try and take those schemes as far as possible. It is in a good position to bring the National Food Security Act, which ensures 25 kg of rice/wheat to people below poverty line at Rs 3 per Kg.

 

UPA also has the responsibility to conduct Commonwealth games 2010 successfully. This would exhibit India’s capability to improve infrastructure to the world and may attract foreign investments.

 

The large number of young leaders in the Lok Sabha represents increased expectations for a change. Young leaders like Rahul Gandhi, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sachin Pilot need to take steps to bring about a change in the way India has been governed.

 

The mandate expects the new government to set examples and take India to never imagined level. I hope the government realizes the dreams and proves its mettle in style.

 

Election Card

I am in Bangalore. But I have an election card from Delhi. This means I cannot vote in the current general elections. Why do we have this limitation? Till the time we are in our own country, we should be able to exercise our right.

 

The ballot system in the Indian elections has changed over the period of time. We have moved forward from the paper ballot system to electronic voting machines which have many advantages over the previous system. Now it is time to modernize other infrastructure related to the ballot system.

 

We have to device such a system where we can cast our vote from anywhere in the country. This would require modernizing the election cards and availability of an infrastructure which would allow crosschecking of voter details from a central database rather than manual paper lists.

 

Biometric cards are already becoming famous. These cards have 16 to 32 GB memory to store various details of the card holder. It can store the thumb impression and retina scan of a person. The card will be validated only when the card holder’s thumb impression matches the one in the card. This would be just like an ATM card with the pin as your thumb impression.

 

A biometric card would check bogus voting to a large extent. We should have such technology implemented where no two cards can have the same thumb impression. This would mean no bogus election cards. Also, we can centralize all our identification systems into this card. It can act as our driving licence, our PAN card, etc. If we implement a system where one can have his bank accounts linked to this card, it will also act as our plastic money. In future we may also make it mandatory to make all high value transactions through this card. It would help us check tax evasion to a large extent.

 

Coming back to the topic, we should make use of this kind of cards to modernize our ballot system. With the use of a biometric card we would not need to have our names in the paper lists. We should be allowed to go in to any polling station and cast vote for the constituency we belong to. This would happen if we have centralized vote recording systems. I can cast vote from Bangalore for West Delhi constituency. Further, there are instances when the voters know well in advance that they would not be in the country on the day of election. In such cases, we should have an option to cast our vote before the actual polling date from specified centres.

 

I believe India has the capability to implement all of the above at such a large scale. It would be expensive, but it would check some of the biggest problems of the country (Bogus voting, tax evasion, etc). It took 30 years to implement electronic voting after its first use in 1980. I hope this takes less time with better administration and less corrupt leaders in the future.