Krishnan and I woke up early so we could reach the polling station early to cast our vote. We reached at 7.10 am and were able to vote by 7.45 am !! We had carried our voters ID card and the driving license as identity proof. Had already checked our names in the electoral rolls yesterday. We didn’t have the slip with our serial number, so the person at the entrance asked us to look for our names and serial number in the rolls. Found that and he handed over our slips. We thought we would be the first ones to be in queue but many people beat us to that. We were 15th in the queue and the process was quite painless.
The voters ID and serial number was checked off against the voters list, the returning officer put the indelible ink on our left forefinger and we went to the EVM and pressed the button against the party we wanted to vote for. Done. We were out in 20 minutes. Every polling station has video recording and lots of police presence.
While this was an educated set of voters, I wonder if it’s as painless in the interiors where political parties will have a bunch of thugs to force people to vote for their parties …. We have ofcourse come a long way in the whole process of voting. The names matched, the government website was easy to navigate and our ID returned the correct details. Also the corrections had been made. There were many first time voters as well as many last time voters … And a whole in between :).
We have come back very hopeful that things have become better and will continue to become even better … Just hope we get the right government in place to accelerate the growth. Our democratic duty of voting has been fulfilled, now we need to ensure the elected leaders do their job.
Jai Hind !
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 ! Altogether , names of some 15 lakh voters ( out of a total of 98 lakh ) were missing !
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 for voting . I called it , VotesApp
see .. hemenparekh.in/2013/08/votesapp.html
Or , just type in Google , ” VotesApp ”
HOW WILL IT HELP ?
> No need for 930,000 polling booths / EVMs / Ink / Papers etc
Every voter’s own mobile becomes a miniature EVM !
> Nor any need to deploy 1,100,000 people to conduct the polls
> No need for millions of Police / Military personnel
> No need for months of advance preparations, across entire country
> Voting can be completed in just ONE day – instead of over 6 weeks –
and results can be declared next day !
> Voting could be 95 % or more !
> No worry for booth-capture
> No bogus voting ( Bio-metric ID from built-in camera )
> No duplicate voting ( Self-destruct after single usage )
> No worry for any terrorist attacks
> Enormous saving of time for Voters
> No need to declare a public holiday – costing thousands of crores
worth of production
> Central Government will save, at least , Rs 2,000 Crores .
If business-friendly BJP government comes to power , it would not
hesitate to earn Rs 20,000 crores , by enabling 15 million Indian
businesses to advertise to 814 million voters , thru this mobile VotesApp –
sharply targeting by Gender / Age / Marital Status / City / Street /
Education / Income Tax paid / Employed or Jobless ..etc
> No need for Central Government to stop taking even routine decisions
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 )