Unless I am out of country, I have never missed voting for representative elections (corporation / assembly / parliament) from the year I became eligible to vote which was nearly two decades ago. Today it was turn for Lok Sabha (Indian Parliament) elections to be held in Chennai and rest of Tamil Nadu, I dutifully voted. The arrangements by Election commission was simple but efficient, the whole process took less than 10 minutes including the queue time. The booth for my street was about 200 metres from my house.
As per evening news it was reported over 70% polling in Tamil Nadu and about 58% in the South Madras constituency where I live. There were 43 choices (42 candidates and 1 for NOTA – None of the above) kept across 4 EVM machines.
A Software Powerhouse ?
Yesterday , when I went to polling booth , there was a chaos , with a number of people complaining that their names were missing from the Electoral Rolls ( Voter Lists )
As per news-reports , in Mumbai alone , some 50,000 people returned home without casting their votes – including Deepak Parekh !
Then there are some 300 million people who will simply won’t walk down to the nearest polling booths , and wait for 1 hour to cast their votes ( – assuming that some 40 % of the 814 million eligible voters do not exercise their right to vote )
WHY ?
Going out to vote is becoming a big hassle
COULD IT BE OTHERWISE ?
Sure , if Central Government and the Election Commission care to implement my suggestion for developing a mobile App ( – I called it , VotesApp / see )
Or , just type in Google , ” VotesApp ”
HOW WILL IT HELP ?
If a tiny country like Estonia ( population 1.6 million ) can elect its Members of Parliament thru a VotesApp type mobile App , why can’t we ?
Already 900+ million Indians have mobiles – all of which , will soon become Smart Phones
And we call our country , a ” Software Powerhouse ” !
* hemen parekh ( 25 April 2014 / Mumbai )