WHAT IF…

THE VOTER LIST FORGOT YOU?

This morning I opened the newspaper to find that democracy had acquired a new battlefield.

Not Parliament. Not the streets. It was about the voter list.

There were allegations, counter-allegations, objections, explanations and demands for resignation. The Election Commission said decisions were unanimous. Others said two Commissioners had repeatedly raised objections. I wondered what happens when the referee becomes part of the argument.

Then I imagined something more frightening. What if, one morning, I walked into a polling booth and discovered that my name was no longer there?

Not because I had died. Not because I had moved. Not because I had stopped being a citizen. But because somewhere inside a database, a decision had been made.

And suddenly I realised: Democracy does not merely depend on the right to vote. It depends on the quiet certainty that when you arrive to exercise that right, your name will still be there.

Perhaps that is the real test of an election. Not who wins or loses. But whether the citizen still trusts the hand that counts his vote.

— Rudra Bose, the Last Writer of Kolkata