Compulsory Voting: The New Fatwa?

By Author: Johnson Philip
Total Articles: 90
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Voter apathy is something to be lamented about. However, the quick-fix solutions that politicians and people offer for national (and also for the not the larger) problems is to be lamented even more. It seems that idiocy is at a premium when it comes to solving problems that affect the masses.

Some years ago I read about the inmates of a home for mentally handicapped. The directors, or someone of that ilk, decided to sterilize all the women inmates because they were repeatedly getting pregnant. The unscrupulous men who were forcing themselves upon these helpless women were not blamed because the directors, presumably, discovered that the act of getting pregnant was more serious than the act of rape. It also did not occur to them that sterilizing the men could have the same result. Even if that had occurred to them, they would not have dared to do that because imposing a punishment on normal people is not as easy as imposing a solution on hapless women.

The other day when private buses in our city went on strike for a small increase in the fare they can charge (which is strictly controlled by the government ...
... in the Kerala state), there was a big cry from commuters that all private buses should be nationalized. It never occurred to them that there are plenty of nationalized buses already in Kerala, and that their only contribution is to mock passengers standing at the bus stands because instead of stopping for them, the drivers vie with airplanes.

It is the private bus operators in Kerala who stop buses at every place and who are always sympathetic to the passengers, but the solution suggests that the helpless traffic system be eliminated so as to INCREASE passenger comfort. Idiotic solutions for real problems!

Coming to Compulsory Voting, pray tell me, what is the difference between the compulsory sterilization drive of the Sanjay Gandhi era, the coerced voting in communist countries, or forced emperor-worship in dictatorships?

What is more important, bringing reluctant people to the voting machine, or permitting them their freedom of choice. Why should a person vote if he does not feel like doing it. Why should the government make rules that all the people should take a bath twice a day so as to foster better health in the country? Or for that matter why should a government restrict the number of times a couple can cohabit per month so as to control population growth? What if one is forced to seek "government-permit" for such things that fall into the area of personal freedom!

Imagine the predicament of a surgeon on the day of election, who has to attend to five emergency life-saving surgeries that cannot be postponed, or the medical staff that attends to the procedures with him. What about the single mother or father who is attending to a very sick child. The pilot who is in the air, or all the people lying in a hospital, some on medical support systems. What about the tens of thousands who are on trains. What about people who are on shift duty away from home, leave alone those in the military or on the seas. Each one of them will be required to get a "clearance" from a bureaucracy that has already enslaved Indians from birth to death (and even after that). The number of new government departments and staff needed to handle clearance for the tens of millions who cannot vote due to genuine problems is mind boggling. It will open a new method to enslave free Indians. New methods to harass people, fine them, new modes of corruption, novel ways to milk people out of their time and money, all will become a possibility through this kind of a dictatorial order.

Other than opposing and punishing moral/ethical wrongs, the government has no business interfering in personal freedom. There is no difference between compulsory voting and government/dictatorial coercion. It is a kind of government fatwa. Every enlightened person needs to oppose it with all his might.
Dr. Johnson C. Philip, the founder of Shastri Numismatics Academy, is an internationally known physicist, theologican, and communicator