Like many of my fellow citizens, I collected my Special Intensive Review form from my block-level officer. While lawyers battle over the nitty-gritty of the SIR in the Supreme Court, I can vouch for one thing: the SIR form itself creates confusion. The manner in which the questions have been framed is not consistent, requiring us to think twice before we fill in some of the columns. Such a form is prone to elicit mistakes from voters. Instead of making sure that every legitimate voter remains on the electoral list, the exercise can lead to the removal of names. While Opposition parties are looking at possibilities of political interference, I am suggesting that deletions are probably the result of just a badly formulated process.
When I cross-checked with friends and family about what happened in their constituencies, it was clear that there were discrepancies in what each BLO was informing voters. The officers are obviously under great stress and have not been given uniform or clear guidelines. At some centres, it has been straightforward; at others, you are sent on a wild goose chase. Voters are expected to remember or find out the constituency number, section, and personal electoral roll number at the polling station where they voted during the previous SIR in 2003-2004!
If, as an educated individual, I found the process confusing, one can only imagine what is happening in the case of those who have little awareness. Those who are illiterate are asked for the Aadhaar card by the BLO officer who then fills the form for the voter. Once done, the information entered is not cross-checked with the individual. The officer has only a small window in which to upload this information onto a server. Mistakes are bound to happen and voters will lose their right to vote for no fault of theirs. Many were not even told that the copy that needed to be filled and signed by the BLO was proof of their submission; which basically means voters do not have any evidence that they submitted the form. The Election Commission of India must be tone deaf and utterly uncaring if it believes an everyday person will file an appeal if his name goes missing: he just follows orders sent out by the government. By rushing this entire exercise, the EC is exploiting that naivety and has made it easy for people to delete names on and manipulate the voters’ list.
This complexity is not a feature of just the SIR. Every form or process that the Indian government has established for its citizen seems to be made to confuse rather than enable, making it nearly impossible for the citizen to complete the task without fear. Filling a form and submitting it to the authority concerned are always tense exercises. We are worried that we misunderstood something. The language is abstruse, the follow-up question is usually framed differently, often not in the sequence it should be in, and, sometimes, the form itself is illegible. When submitting the form, we cannot ask questions of the officer as we would be pounced upon or ridiculed. The illiterate are at the mercy of a middle man or the officer who filled the form. For the marginalised, this can mean life or death.
The income tax return process is a classic case of how difficult things are. Successive governments have claimed that they have made things easier. For them, changing from paper documents to online filings seems to be synonymous with simplification. Nothing can be further from the truth. The ease needs to be in access for the citizen, the series of actions that need to be taken, in the quality of the human interaction, and the final mode of submission. In the case of income tax returns, nothing is comprehensible for a non-accountant. All those who file accounts trust their chartered accounts and, to use a musical phrase, ‘go with the flow’. That is not how it should be. Individual filing needs should be simple to understand and complete. This ambiguousness is also true of any government grant application. A cultural organisation based in rural India complained about how it was impossible to even apply for a grant because it just did not know how to navigate the online system. The local government representative will not help. He will just say, ‘it’s all online, go file it there.’ The manner in which the government interacts with its citizens through its bureaucratic systems is condescending, hierarchical, and discriminatory. While we often discuss discrimination in terms of human behaviour and social interaction, we forget that inequality is perpetuated through simple things such as application forms, access to information, and officer-citizen interface.
Why does the State behave in such a manner? Some blame it all on red-tapism and a bureaucratic culture that the British left behind. Others will probably point to legal requirements. I believe the answer lies in the State’s propensity to display authority and control its citizens. The entire bureaucratic apparatus is built on this nature. The State is a being on its own. Individuals, however kind, become a part of this larger character once they enter its fold. It is in fact impossible for them to survive as a servant of the State unless they wear that robe. Corruption, too, is a result of the State’s character, one that everyone within the structure feels they need to embrace, accept, or ignore. Citizens have also normalised such behaviour with the ‘this is how governments are’ rhetoric. Any change in how the State interacts with its citizens is not only about the transformation of the people who work for the government but also about changes in the actual grassroots processes. One example of something being done right, despite little change in the people within the State machinery, is the Right to Information architecture.
When the EC made symbols the mode of identifying political parties, and then ensured that every citizen irrespective of his/her geographical location, would be able to vote, it prioritised the citizens’ right to vote over everything else. The EC needs to rediscover that spirit.
T.M. Krishna is a leading Indian musician and a prominent public intellectual