Voting across the sea

The government’s enthusiasm in pushing votes for NRIs is misplaced.

It is that time of year again. Winter has cooled down the subcontinent, and those with relatives abroad prepare to welcome them home on their annual visit. In this, both central and state governments follow the lead of India’s citizens. The various Pravasi Bharatiya Divas jamborees – in Delhi and in state capitals – had originally been envisaged as a focal point for government efforts to attract investment from the Indian diaspora, inspired partly by the enormous contribution that overseas Chinese had made to their homelands’ foreign investment numbers. Another aspect of these fairs, however, is to try and bind non-resident Indians (NRIs) closer to the governments they have left behind. To that end, no doubt, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reiterated in Jaipur on Sunday that NRIs will have the right to participate and vote in Indian elections. The Centre, he reminded the audience of 1,500 delegates from 60 countries, had issued a notification for the registration of overseas Indians under the Representation of the People Act. Naturally, the registration continues to be red tape-heavy, but Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs Vayalar Ravi has announced that his ministry is looking hard for alternatives — such as requiring nothing more than a self-attested copy of a passport in the mail in order to get onto the voting list.

The government seems to be oblivious to the dark absurdities of this situation. The American Revolution was sparked off by a protest against taxation without representation. The government now seems to be proposing representation without taxation; surely, resident Indians must wonder what they have done wrong. Or will there be a tax associated with the right to vote from overseas? Certainly, in Jaipur there was no mention of taxes.

There is a further anomaly. It is proposed that, even if you move continents, indeed even if you have never lived in the country, you can still vote in a particular constituency — but not if you move from your village to a town within the country. Move from Patiala to Paris, and the government will work to ensure you can vote comfortably from your adopted city; but no such attempts are planned for migrants from Purnea to Patiala. This continues to warp the politics of magnet cities and areas — as well as the voting patterns in the districts from which migrants originate. Focusing on NRIs while ignoring internal migrants is bizarre. The electoral system is based on the idea of local representation, on the idea of a relationship between a constituent and her MP or MLA. While overseas Indians may continue to invest in the idea of India, there is little reason to suppose that the issues that matter to many local voters – the quality of governance, for one – will have quite the same impact on someone living 7,000 kilometres away. Diasporic communities tend to organise their relationship with their places of origin along lines of tradition, ethnicity and community, not on the basis of sanitation, healthcare and power supply.