In a startling survey that may trigger a fresh debate on electoral process as a majority of voters either do not participate in voting or exercise their franchise under influence of ‘money and muscle power’.
A survey conducted by directorate of economics and statistics of Madhya Pradesh during May-June 2013 on knowledge, attitude, behavior, belief and practices of voters has revealed that 21% voters believe that money and muscle power and both were the reason for high turnout in elections. While 44.9%do not vote since they think ‘nothing will change with my voting’.
Similarly, the survey further revealed, 14.2% of voters ‘do not believe in electoral democracy.’ Also 1.6% voters have planned not to vote in forthcoming assembly elections scheduled to take place on 25th of November.
The survey (samples for tabulation and analysis have been done on 22,926 voters), reveals that 27.5% do not vote due to apathy towards elections, 11.7% on account of 'anger' and 10% experienced inconvenience at the polling booth whiile 38.4% explained different reasons other than apathy, anger and inconvenience which prevented them from voting.
The commission conducted a baseline survey in all fifty districts of the state in Madhya Pradesh. A Bhopal-based non-government organization Prayatna obtained the survey by using Right to Information Act. The state has a total of 46.5 million voters and of them 6.5 million voters are under age bracket of 20-29 years.
“The survey reveals that how political parties use muscle and money power in elections also the survey revealed that 6.5% voters admitted that decision to vote or not to vote is affected on advice of community leaders. These are startling facts,” said Ajay Dubey chief activist, Prayatna.
According to the survey, ‘Personal interest’ has emerged as most important influencing factor for 65.4% voters, while candidate of choice is second important influencing factor for 23.7% voters and 13.8% said head of the family impacted the decision to vote or not to vote.
As many as 2.4% voters in Madhya Pradesh said there was ‘too much’ security threat during last elections and 17.2% experienced security threat to ‘some extent’.
A considerable figure of 23% eligible voters said they could not exercise their franchisee for ‘not having electoral identity cards’ in last elections while 21.4% were not in their constituency, 13.6% did not have their names in electoral list and interestingly 10.7% came back home since there was a long queue or they had no spare time for voting.
All India Radio, and local channels, in terms of systematic voter education and electoral participation, had left impact on only 1.7% voters, while newspapers covered 32.2% voters followed by television for 30.1% voters.
