Refusal to vote seems to be the only way to retrieve our democracy

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

The faulty electoral system has helped plutocracy to engulf Indian democracy and unless people refuse to vote for and under this system, our democracy cannot be retrieved.

The Constitution, which our Constituent Assembly had created, was far away from the purpose of our freedom movement. Dominated by the wealthy and elite, this Assembly had deliberately safeguarded their class interest in the Constitution and the toiling masses who had brought success to the freedom movement, were left in the lurch. Admitting this as a “contradiction”, which couldn’t be removed in the Constituent Assembly where there was no representation of the poor people of India, Dr. Ambedkar had expressed his considered apprehensions that, if the first batch of lawmakers elected by the majority i.e. the poor people of India through universal franchise shall not, by law, remove the contradiction, the victims of economic inequality, would rise in revolt and “blow up the structure of political democracy which this (Constituent) Assembly has so laboriously built up” (CAD Vol.XI, p.979). 

The first batch of lawmakers elected under the Constitution didn’t bother about what Dr. Ambedkar had portended and resultantly the country has gone into the hands of the wealthy and mafiosos; democracy has been transformed into plutocracy. People  elect their representatives in a democracy, but in plutocracy, non-communist parties plant the wealthy or agents of the wealthy as candidates and hence,  when the people vote for any candidate, except a communist candidate, the vote goes to the wealthy and/or the agents of the wealthy. This is happening in India.

The antipeople politicians have legally enhanced the expenditure limit in the constituencies to such high that the Communists or the parties of the poor people will never be able to contest on equal equal footing with the parties whom the wealthy class/ the mafiosos support. The recent exposure of electoral bonds and overwhelming numbers of hooligans with criminal cases pending against them being planted by registered national/regional parties as their candidates for the law making bodies makes it unambiguously clear that the electoral system is antidemocracy. 

Some feel that NOTA should be used by whosoever does not like the candidates in the fray. But, NOTA is nothing but acceptance of the faulty system. 

We are to reject this system so resolutely that plutocracy would stand rejected and out of the cocoon of plutocracy shall come out afresh our democracy. 

This requires us to refuse to vote.