It saddens and amuses me at some of the responses to my rant:

Dear Wanderer (and many of the others) – it is quite clear that you have not even read what i have written – my ended my long ramble with an attempt to restart a debate on our system itself – but you seem have gone past that, and can’t get over my little sidebar on Modi, and wish to push the BJP forward.

You mention all that the BJP is good for, and of course gloss over the fact that women are assaulted for going pubs in the name of Indian Culture, Christian Missionaries (may or may not) have been murdered), pregnant muslim women (may or may not) have been raped or murdered, and that the BJP pretty much sold out the country when it came to the Nuclear Deal. But of course, as you say I am ‘apathetic’ – I am not quite sure you know what the word means. Apathetic people usually couldn’t be bothered to write out million-word rants. As for the idiots running for parliament from my constituency I’m pretty sure I know good deal about them, having actually met them and read what it is they stand for – and just so you know, my consituency is South Delhi, not South Bombay.

TTG wants a spotless white candidate presented to him on a platter – only then will he go out to vote. Things do not work that way – anywhere.

It is precisely this kind of nonsense that saddens me the most. We have reached a stage where we have reduced our expectations to such an extent, that asking for a candidate to not have a criminal case against him, and to actually represent me is considered having unreasonable expectations. Again, you keep telling me to take what is given? Why should I?

Jai_C – we are all intelligent human beings – please draw me a path from how voting in a semi-corrupt politician now leads to enabling my children to vote for a sane politician that respects individual rights, free markets, and my view of what India should be like – surely there must be a logical path to this, that clearly i am missing?

Eshwar, it is interesting that you choose to completely miss the point of what I saying. Nobody said anything about basing my decision on the US’ decision – it is the final nail in the coffin as far as I am concerned, and nobody said anything about ‘Certificates of Approval’. If a certain country is annoyed enough with you to not let you enter it, one has to wonder why – because they did let Mahmoud Ahmadinajad in – curious no? Maybe he’s not responsible for a pogrom – although he’s not quite right in the head either… – it is even more interesting that you completely bypass what it is I want to see in a candidate, and assume that my decision was purely and solely based on a visa decision – who is the one being lazy?

It is interesting that all of those people who have criticised me, missed the crux of the argument – can no other form of democracy be used to elect India’s leaders? How are you all so sure this is the best form? Apparently, we are all supposed to be sheep, who are just supposed to vote vote vote. And clearly, i am not allowed to question that system…

I said it before, and I’ll say it again – the choices presented in this election seemed to be between dumb & dumber. In such a situation, it is perfectly rational not to exercise your choice. If you confuse this with ‘apathy’ , you may need to consider your own intellectual laziness, and blind faith in an outmoded system.

P.S. LokSatta will never be able to atain national status. This is because of the system, the way it currently stands. You heard it here first.

(thanks for letting have this space Nitin. Good bye)

But seriously they should have none of the above option. I am going to hazard a guess, even if given the “none” option, the percentage of voters who will “exercise” this right will probably not exceed 5%. What are the chances that an apathetic voter will actually do something proactive to register his apathy? And if it does exceed 5%, I promise to walk from Kanyakumari to Kashmir — backwards, while welcoming the people en route to hurl the footwear of their choice.

Although I don’t want to seem like I am giving aid and comfort to the apathetic. There is research indicating that when people are presented with an increase in the number of choices, they end up not making any choice. Sheena Iyengar’s work shows that participation in 401(k) actually drops off when employees are given more fund options.

http://www.columbia.edu/~ss957/publications.shtml (The Dark Side of Choice: When Choice Impairs Social Welfare)

“Information overload: An increase in the number of options raises the cognitive costs involved in comparing and evaluating the options and thus leads to suboptimal decision strategies. Preference uncertainty: Consumers do not necessarily hold well-defined, stable, rank-ordered preferences before the decision is made. Negative emotions: Choosing among undesirable options and trading off emotion-laden attributes generates psychological pain.”

I love the bits about “cognitive costs” the inability to rank preferences and psychological pain involved in making choices. I say all of these people are prime candidates for the aforementioned AVEST (Apathetic Voter Electro Shock Therapy)

I think there is also a paper by Iyengar showing that second generation americans of asian descent (Indian and Chinese) seem to prefer fewer options.

The problem with your argument is: History shows that no nation was born as an “advanced” democracy; institutions and people take time to evolve. Also, given its diversity I don’t see how a united India can be ruled without democracy.

You also claim “Transplanting computers to a place where these systems don’t exist is silly because the computers are then like the props used by the South Pacific islanders.”

It is not clear what “systems” that AICs have. If you’re referring to introducing computers to third world countries: Do you have any idea what computerization has done to the ticketing system in the Railways? Or what impact EVMs had on the problem of “booth-capturing”? And how many lives did satellite-based weather monitoring coupled with heavy-duty computing save? What about tele-medicine? And the big one: would the outsourcing boom have occured without introducing computers in this third world country?

“the Indian economy is spinning around in the bowl and will soon be down the tubes as soon as the flush cycle finishes”

Prescient.

Marvellose effort.

Your polemic reads so much like an article/ column or blogpost from somewhere. In fact, chances are it is one. Did you write it or didya righteously copy-paste it – with lengthy rationalizations for why copy-pasting is so much better than having to type the whole darn thing out…..

Just like righteously not voting with lengthy rationalizations and customary references to Gujrat is the only way out of having to stand in Q in the desi summer sun.

Best of luck, matey. Let the perfect be the enemy of the good, for ever come.

It would be great if one of the INI bloggers could discuss the merits of Loksatta’s agenda. (http://www.loksatta.org/cms/)

You are right that by exercising their franchise, people can make a difference as to who wins from the constituency. But more people voting will only make a difference if an important condition is satisfied: increased voter turnout is a sign of specific voter expectations that are apparent to politicians and in turn, politicians/parties are distinguishable from one another in some way that makes this difference in voter turnout significant for some politicians/parties but not others. In an election such as the present one without significant issues, there is no telling how those who stayed home would have voted had they ventured to the booth. So loss of the additional 30% or so of voters may very well mean a general loss for all contestants and no particular loss for any single candidate or party. That leaves higher public participation no more effective than lower participation.

The US system solves this conundrum nicely. Vote for a president and then vote for your senators and congressmen. You know who would lead the country and who would represent you well in the senate/congress.

Could the fact that voters are so far removed from choice of the national leader in the parliamentary system, generate additional lethargy? E.g. many Indians I met are horrified by the idea of Mayawati as PM (for whatever reasons, that is not the point), but can they through their vote prevent this outcome? I am not that sure and were she to become PM, the cynicism of these voters would increase.

This is an interesting issue. India being at a crossroads; one would guess that people’s interest in the democratic process would be at an all time high. But this doesn’t seem to be the case!

For one, as some politicians pointed out, there is a problem of voter burn out as well. When you have 2-3 elections within a span of 4-5 months, people wont come out to vote each time. Granted that prob doesn’t apply to all urban areas but still needs to be considered. Second, i am not sure it makes sense to calculate a gross voter turn out rate. Like most gross percentages, it hides too much detail. Like gross and net unemployment figures, it prob makes sense to also estimate what percent of ‘willing voters’ did not vote and what % are simply unwilling. Add to that, that many willing voters dont vote for any number of mundane reasons, traveling, unwell, emergency, cant get to polling stations, whatever. You can prob take 5-8% just for that.

The real figure of concern if we are measuring apathy should be the % unwilling voters – (100-voter turnout) doesnt equal that. And if you take a cross section of voters across elections (not just one election), you might well find that 70-80% of people vote in at least in 1 election in a given electoral cycle. Thats the analysis we need.