Hundreds of thousands of Indians are unable to return to their places of origin at election time due to long journeys and high costs. Most of them are daily labourers who would be forced to give up wages and look for a new job. Non-resident Indians face the same problem. Meanwhile, India’s main parties rejected a proposal made last year for remote electronic voting.

New Delhi (AsiaNews) – India’s elections, which began on 19 April, will wrap up tomorrow after seven phases in 28 states and eight Union territories, with almost 970 million eligible voters.

Still, hundreds of thousands of voters were unable to cast their ballots. Most of them are internal migrants, the backbone of the country’s economy, but due to long journeys and high costs, they cannot afford to go home to vote in their place of origin.

Most are day labourers, usually moving from rural areas to the big cities, to work as street vendors, bricklayers, or rickshaw drivers, forced to leave their farming communities.

The countryside no longer offers enough jobs, which can be found in cities, allowing migrants to send money back home.

Kartik Naik, 40, shares a room with Babulal Naik. They both hail from Odisha, and have worked in several Indian cities starting in the late 1990s. Their daily salary has gone from 100 to 900 rupees (US$ 1.20 to US$ 10.80) working 8 to 12 hours a day.

“I send around Rs 4,000 depending on how much work I get,” Kartik said, who is currently working in Kerala.

If he went home to vote, he would spend as much as a day’s wages, and miss several days of work. “If I could vote here, it would have been good. I would not have to spend that much money.”

For many migrants, voting also means looking for another job.

Despite their low wages, internal migrants contribute 10 per cent to India's gross domestic product.

According to a 2020 study, such workers number around 600 million, or 43 per cent of the country’s 1.4 billion people.

In the 2019 election, at least 300 million people did not vote. Not all were internal migrants, experts point out, but the lack of mobility certainly has an impact on turnout.

According to the Election Commission of India (ECI), the first phase this year saw a turnout of 66.14 per cent; the second, 66.71 per cent; the third, 65.68 per cent; the fourth, 69.16 per cent; the fifth, 62.20 per cent; and the sixth, 63.37 per cent.

These numbers are lower than in the 2019 elections, probably due to the scorching heat that has prevented many people from leaving their homes.

Results for the seventh and final phase will be released after polls close on 1 June, while counting will take place on 4 June.

Earlier last year, the ECI proposed remote electronic voting, but in March 2023 the Union government reported that it had no intention of introducing remote voting for migrants. The opposition too, most notably the Indian National Congress, showed no interest in the matter.

“Empowering internal migrants with voting is a paradigm shift,” said Ashwani Kumar, a social scientist and lead author of a 2015 study on the right of internal migrants to vote.

“Considering the number of missing voters, letting migrants vote [remotely at destinations] can substantially alter electoral outcomes nationally and regionally. The missing voter is a huge democratic deficit.”

Such a problem, if not addressed (starting with a new census, because seasonal workers are often not even counted among migrant workers), is destined to come up again in the world’s “largest democracy”.

According to the most recent data, India is expected to experience a migration rate of around 40 per cent by 2030 with an urban population of around 607 million people, an increase that will be almost exclusively due to internal population movements.

India’s parties, on the other hand, appear interested in another group of Indian migrants, those living abroad, but who face the same problem. After registering as "non-resident voters,” they have to travel to India to cast their vote for their constituency.

According to India’s Ministry of External Affairs, nearly 16 million Indians live abroad, “non-residents" or NRIs. The largest group, 3.4 million, is in the United Arab Emirates, followed by 2.5 million in Saudi Arabia, and 1.2 million in the United States.

According to the ECI, 71,000 people, less than 1 per cent of those abroad at the time, registered to vote for the 2019 elections. This year, the number is up to 118,000. But, like with internal migrants, registering is not the same as being able to exercise the right to vote.

INDIAN MANDALA IS THE ASIANEWS NEWSLETTER DEDICATED TO INDIA. TO RECEIVE A WEEKLY UPDATE EVERY FRIDAY, CLICK HERE.

• india
• elections
• internal migrants
• non-resident Indians
• nris
• poverty
• heatwave