Compulsory voting in Gujarat: A State gone wild

The recent bill of “compulsory voting in local elections” passed by the government of Gujarat is absolutely unethical, immoral, unconstitutional, and undemocratic. Gujarat is a state which is passing bills and enacting legislations which are in direct contradiction with the Indian constitution and more importantly are against human ethics. For example, Article 25 of the Indian constitution gives a right to every citizen to follow religion of their choice. India describes herself as a secular country. But Gujarat government recently has passed an anti conversion bill where any person who wants to convert (change) their religion has to take State government’s permission! I fail to understand what kind of secularism is this? Notwithstanding the Indian constitution, this bill is a direct attack on person’s liberty and thus is absolutely unethical. The recent bill of compulsory voting in local elections is also similarly unethical, unconstitutional and undemocratic act of the government of Gujarat. The absolute human ethic principles say that, it is unethical to physically force or threaten to force someone to do things against his/her will. Moreover, the Indian constitution gives a fundamental right of freedom of expression to every citizen. The state cannot force an expression of vote on any of its citizen.

This step, more than anything else, shows the increasing desperation of the government for gaining the much wanted political mandate in elections which is required for its continuous existence. For survival state needs to at least demonstrate the support of its people and that support they are loosing slowly as reflected in declining voting percentages in various elections. It is very characteristics of all the governments that it never likes to loose people’s attention. They know that if people will realize that government is not important for their life and they can easily avoid it then government will become unnecessary evil (and not a necessary evil!). This very well can result in government’s demise. Realizing this threat to their existence, government tried to resolve it first by television advertisements (remember that “Jaago India!” campaign). Despite that, in recent elections people did not turn out to vote. Frustrated by this, government has now done what it is known to do best i.e. to force people to vote and thus the present ‘compulsory voting bill’.

The impact of this bill will be myriad. On one hand, it will result in increased tax burden on tax paying caste of the society for funding the bureaucracies, which will come into existence because of this bill. This step will bring India one step closure to totalitarianism. In an already socialist country people will come under little bit more pressure from the government and their already difficult life will become more difficult. And, on other hand, this step itself can very well be self defeating. Government is inherently highly inefficient in all its various activities. Similar case will be with this bill. Implementation will be impossible and it may very well result in vast protest from the populace who is aware about their natural rights. This bill will give chance to people to go and tell the politicians why they are not voting in the elections and results of that will be indigestible for the politicians themselves. Under the pressure from their own politicians government will be forced to repeal this bill. The former effects will surely take place while the later may or may not. In any case people’s life will be more difficult for sure.