Apropos to the news published in respected newspapers about Narendra Modi’s statement of making voting compulsory across the country, I would like to propose a better alternative than coming up with a humungous task of making a billion and rising population accountable (also who would keep a check on fulfillment criteria?).
It would be wise for Indian government to come up with a website (portal) which could carry the whole process of casting your vote during respective state & assembly elections. To increase the voting numbers, the portal would work in coherence with the manual way (ballot process) of casting votes. Only modification that needs to be introduced is generation of a unique number series on all voter Identity cards issued by the authorities. All poor households and rural people who are not exposed to operate a system or doesn’t have an access to one would continue voting the way they have been doing till today and all the savvy and literate people with an easy access to internet can go and cast a vote online. This step would ask for a high security website to be in place with few mandatory details that needs to be furnished by every individual for avoidance of double entries/ fake entries.
The benefits of such a system would be manifolds on the other hand, which will include:-
1)A greater transparency in entire process of voting.
2)A greater response from Indian population who otherwise avoid casting a vote owing to troubles involved.
3)The on set of an era which would entrust government with the responsibility of promoting education and expose people to computers in coming times.
4)Huge savings on expenditure incurred during the whole process of voting/ huge savings on exchequers’ money spent during the same period.
5)Using this online database created as a result of registration of citizens for conducting periodic surveys/census/assessments by government agencies.
6)Making possible the conception of the provision of Social Security Numbers (SSN) which is prevalent in countries like US and is the need of time for a country like ours.
