Complete failure...... just 26 per cent!!!

In last week on May 22nd, Thanekars (people living in Thane, located next to Mumbai) have seen by-election. The voter turnout was horrible. Only 26 per cent people exercised their voting rights. Only 26 per cent, an all time low figure in history!!!

Even for school going kid requires 35 per cent for passing and here people gave just 26 per cent to politicians, it means this is a big failure. This is failure of democratic system, failure of political parties, and failure of people themselves.

Further, Thane is not a tribal or rural region, where we can say people are illiterate and incognizant of their voting rights. Probably one can say that, since it is a by-election people might be unaware of election is going on. This was also not the case, since all political parties did campaigning well. All state level political leaders of all parties attended the campaigning, right from executive president of Shivsena Uddhav Thackeray to Deputy Chief Minister Mr. R.R. Patil.

For figure of 26, there could be two reasons, one is pointed out by Anand Paranjape, a Shivsena-BJP candidate of this by-election in his interview is that most of the people living in Thane are belong to a middle class which is well educated. After economic reform, this great Indian middle class is earning well. Now money is with them and therefore they are least interested in all kind of political activities including elections. For all sorts of problems including water, sanitation, load shading, transport etc. they have their own solutions because of sharp rise in buying power of this class in last few years. In short, these people are insensitive towards their voting rights.

The other side of the coin could be Thanekars have no faith in current political parties, their candidates and overall democratic system. Thane Lok Sabha constituency is the largest constituency in Asia with 3.6 million voters. After Mumbai, Thane is facing lot of basic problems such as load shading, no clean water, no effective public transport system, sanitation, pollution and environmental problems because of lack of infrastructure. These were good points to be raised by opposition leader while campaigning but not a single candidate utters a word against these problems of Thanekars in their entire election campaign. All were busy in making Shiv Wada and Sambhaji Bhaji. This might be the reason that people could not relate their daily life, their existence as citizens of this country with the elections. I think for them these are two different worlds altogether, one is their own and other is a world of politics.

This situation can not be changed unless and until we introduce a good political environment but certainly election commission can involve such people in current political system by giving them right to cast negative vote. At least by casting negative vote the people can express their opinions about current political system instead of sitting idle at home and doing nothing.

I think right to cast a negative vote must be given to us. It's our right!!!