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Saturday, May 09, 2009

stupid idea on stilts: Compulsary voting

The state of the polity requires some comment. I see a lot of nonsense about compulsory voting in the media (with the traditional honourable exception of The Hindu). I would ignore this but for the fact that this is clearly propaganda from the religious right that always benefits from the same. Bit of sociology, but we will not get into it now. Forgetting ideology, any policy that cannot be enforced is stupid. How will the 'government' enforce this when the census is half baked and we have a billion folks around. Do all urban voters (who are not so difficult to enumerate) enfranchised ? If so why do i see pictures of disenfranchised voters holding their EPIC's in my morning paper ? How can every eligible voter be made to turn out ? Clearly this is a red herring. There is no scope for any compulsory anything in a human society. Of course this is to appeal to the Taliban & Rama Sene ! Want Some ?