On the need for postal ballots for migrant workers

To strengthen the political rights of our country, every citizen must be given access to vote. Only then, can we attain an inclusive democracy which would re-integrate society with economy and polity. The development of our country depends on the country revisiting its roots.

Universal suffrage is one of the measures that has been in practice for a long time; that is, aiming for equal voting rights for all adult citizens, regardless of wealth, income, gender, social status, race, ethnicity, or any other difference. This must be adhered to strictly, in order to establish a comprehensive democracy.

Migrant workers help in the country’s development by constructing buildings, sweeping floors, cleaning trucks, sewing clothes and delivering goods. Their movement across the country makes the idea of India a concrete reality for the majority of her poor and impoverished populations. They build India from below, but they live in fenced and guarded worksites, with conditions similar to those of labour camps. Many of them live under tarpaulin roofs with poor amenities. They work tirelessly, day and night, with little to no overtime payments. They are not acknowledged for their labour.

During elections, when the workers can make their presence felt, their voting rights are overlooked and disfranchised. In many cases, due to their economic insecurity and the lack of social footing in the host-state as low-paid migrants, they find it hard to travel to their villages to cast their votes. There are many social barriers for them to overcome, even when they work in a factory.

Our ideas about citizenship must be reviewed. Politicians, the Legislatures and institutions such as the Election Commission of India need to take action against their electoral exclusion and ensure that migrant workers can exercise their right to vote as citizens, irrespective of their physical location on election day. Their electoral exclusion speaks ill of the world’s largest democracy.

These migrant workers are numerically strong, and are internally networked through family, caste and local or regional level connections but lack bargaining power as they have not yet enrolled themselves as part of a political community or constituency in competitive electoral politics. In 2018, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had proposed a bill to grant “proxy voting” rights to overseas citizens. While the bill was passed in the Lok Sabha, it remained in the Rajya Sabha. Similarly, no such voting provisions were made for migrant workers.

In India, internal migration of the working class has historically been a “State subject”. The introduction of postal ballot will drive competitive electoral politics of the migrants’ “homeland” to these peri-urban construction sites, which in turn, will make the sender states more responsive to their needs, keeping in mind the electoral patterns.

The migrants’ question can then be understood through citizenship and not just from the perspective of livelihood. The horizon of political subjectivity of migrant workers cannot be solely captured through the lens of either only workplace rights or voting rights. The concern here can be read in another way: not of migrants, but as a concern of democracy. It is not enough to simply grant migrants the right to vote without providing the infrastructure to exercise that right. Migrant workers’ inability to vote either in their villages or in the towns designated to them, puts them in a vulnerable position.

Therefore the rights of each citizen must be protected and recognized. The availability of the postal ballot system for migrant workers will help in ensuring that every vote is taken into consideration. It will also increase voters’ participation in the election process and strengthen the political freedom of our country.

Editor: Dainty W