On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 7:19 AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian <[email protected]>wrote:
> > s. > That assumption may need another look. Even now the "urbanized" population > of a city - the thinking and voting population, that's as mobile as you > describe - is minimal, not particularly organized (does not register to > vote / cant register as doesnt satisfy the residency requirements, and then > gets transfered out too often to interest itself in local politics). > Compare that to the "real" vote bank - the residents of the lower income > areas, slums etc etc (and, to some extent the middle class .. though its > vote bank might get heavily fragmented). > Very pertinent observation. It never makes sense to me that one of the conditions for registering to vote is that you must have lived at the present address for six months. Why is this necessary? I find that it excludes a lot of people, and when someone is once told that s/he can't vote, the alienation lasts. The person doesn't make any more effort to register, especially if s/he is in a job where transfers are frequent.. I once asked a politician why no one ever came to our apartment building to seek votes, and he (in a burst of honesty that's rare in the breed) explained that too many people in the building would have moved in an out for them to make a good vote bank. I'd like someone who knows the ways of law and politics to explain this residency requirement to me. So far, I have not got a logical explanation. And...we might be BPO's to the world...but resident Indians who are abroad during the elections cannot vote, either. We seem to write excellent code for others, and lousy stuff for ourselves. Deepa. Deepa.
