You may expect me to provide a moral argument for not voting, or to say that the right to vote includes the right not to vote. Perhaps you expect me to repeat the familiar claim that all politicians are crooks, so it makes no difference whom I vote for. Unfortunately, I do not even need to consider any of those arguments.

Not long ago, I lived in Garden Estate, a beautiful residential community in Gurgaon, India. It is beautiful because it is self-managed. By contrast, the three-kilometer stretch of road outside Garden Estate—where some of India’s leading domestic and multinational companies have offices—is full of potholes, broken traffic lights, and squatters.

I went to the commissioner’s office several times to collect my voter identity card. The building looks futuristic from the outside, yet motorists are illegally charged to park along the roadside under the authority of the commissioner. This is where it all begins, as it so often does in India: the law does not apply to corrupt bureaucrats.

Inside, the office responsible for identity cards was staffed by a couple of sleepy officials who put on airs of importance and went out of their way to ignore visitors. When I enquired about my card, they refused to provide any information and responded rudely. But what is unusual about that? In which government office in India can one expect to be treated decently?

I was asked to pay a bribe of INR 500 to receive my card. I refused, even though doing so meant giving up my fundamental democratic right to vote. The world’s largest democracy? What a joke!

There appeared to be no complaint system that the Election Commission actually operated. Try its website if you do not believe me: www.eci.gov.in. To contact the commissioner of Gurgaon, see: gurgaon.nic.in/welcome.htm.

Jayant Bhandari
July 2003