Politicians would rather not hear the truth. That would explain all the hemming and hawing after the Election Commission proposed that another option be added to the electronic voting machines: “none of the above”. The ostensible reason for the EC’s proposal is the falling voter percentage in urban areas, but other reasons could be adduced as well. For example, compared to the paper ballot, the EVM is at a disadvantage. There is no way that a voter can register his refusal to accept any of the given candidates or parties, while with a paper ballot, the vote can be deliberately spoilt to register rejection. Abstention and rejection are both democratic rights, and elections in a democracy should retain scope for both. Politicians would rather not talk about this, perhaps they are apprehensive of being rejected wholesale. Predictably, there has been a tellingly positive response to NOTA according to a recent survey, and a large percentage of people who have refused to vote at least once feel that the NOTA option would induce them to vote. The politicians’ nervousness is perfectly explicable.

There is a strong argument against the NOTA option. There is no point in elections if all that the results come up with is a majority verdict of dissatisfaction. Electing a government being the purpose, negative criticism merely disrupts the process. Such an argument is functionally valid. Given the meticulous and expensive co-ordination necessary to conduct general elections — and its differently timed replications in the many assembly elections — in a country like India, such an outcome would be truly wasteful. Another objection to NOTA is that it suggests criticism of particular candidates rather than of the system. This is less clear, since it ignores the representative aspect of candidate and vote, without which the electoral process would become absurd. But democracy is not only about the practical and functional, it is built on an ideal which, however elusive, has to be constructed over and over again. This ideal dimension cannot be wished away. Refusal to accept the given choices is also an opinion, it is not one that can be ignored if people’s wishes are to be taken seriously. True, this would cause tremendous confusion at first if it were to predominate over all other opinions. In the first place, that would be unlikely. In the second, rejection as the majority verdict would compel change in the long run in spite of the initial confusion. Democracy is constantly on the move, it evolves as people think and change. Democracy in India, which has often adjusted creatively to changing conditions, should have by now enough spunk to think afresh.