Till now, a voter in India has no choice. If he wants to exercise his voting right then he has got no option but to press one of the buttons listing out candidates of various parties or independents in the fray. In other words, he has to vote for any Tom, Dick and Harry selected by a political party. If all parties field known criminals, the voters have no say. With rampant corruption and criminalisation of politics having a field day in India the political parties are also not bothered to put up persons with clean image. This, despite the fact that there is rising anger among the masses against corruption.

The reason for this political apathy towards public opinion is our outdated electoral system, which is based on first past the pillar method. Today, the percentage of votes cast in favour of the candidate or against him does not count. What counts is the total number of votes.

With India boasting of 64 per cent literacy rate and bulk of the population voting in the Elections-2009 falling in the age bracket of 18-30 years, the time has come for introducing radical reforms. It is necessary that electronic voting machine must have a button for negative voting. A voter should have an option to vote for ‘None From Above’. If introduced, this will motivate even those voters to vote, who do not vote in the absence of a right candidate. The Indian middle class, numbering almost fifty million, the largest in the world, falls in this category. Coupled with this, if a minimum educational qualification is also made mandatory for a candidate, the political parties will be forced to take notice. Only then they will field candidates who are capable and are acceptable to the voters. Indian democracy after 60 years of maturity must now graduate into a more evolved democracy and not remain in the rut of mobocracy as it is today.

With electronic machines now counting votes in minutes, to elect the right candidate, acceptable to bulk of the population, elections in India must follow number of rounds method. Each round must eliminate candidates from the bottom end so that these votes must get recast in the account of the next acceptable candidate till a particular candidate polls at least 45 per cent votes. Only then can he be called a true representative of the people from a particular constituency.

In India to get appointed in most lowly of posts, certain educational qualifications and age denomination is mandatory. It is strange that for becoming a Member of Parliament in India no such qualifications are needed. In other words, these people on whose shoulders rests the daunting responsibility of framing laws and governing one billion people of India, could be rank illiterates. Needless to say, have Indian people been really conned by our Constitution? Did our founding fathers not foresee this possibility?

The answer is No. Our founding fathers were very wise but they were gentlemen. Instead of imposing and institutionalising education qualifications and other desired traits in the aspiring candidate they rightly surmised that these rules would be framed by the Parliament. They probably underestimated the character of Indian politics. Our politicians waste no time in forgetting their different ideologies and differences when it comes to their collective perks, pay and pension. These issues get passed without any debate. However, ask any person to frame rules so that only a person with education, honesty and clean image is allowed to contest in the polls and they will balk.

The spontaneous gathering of people of India on December 3, 2008 ,in all four metros of India, protesting against the lame duck and weak kneed-policy of the current UPA Government against terror, in the immediate aftermath of Mumbai attack is a burning example of what people’s power can do. The then home minister of India, Shivraj Patil and his counterpart in Maharashtra Government had to resign. It is this people’s power, which will have to exert its pressure on Indian politics in case we want India to be led by honest and capable people with crime-free image. For this, the like-minded people and NGOs will have to come to the forefront. To bank on our political class or political parties to reform themselves is asking for the moon.