Migrants’ ‘lost votes’ responsiblefor low turnout in state: Experts

Patna: The low voter turnout witnessed in the first two phases of Lok Sabha elections in Bihar is being hotly debated by the political analysts and social scientists. They are attributing different factors for the decline in voting percentage. However, most of them agree that the ‘lost votes’ of the state’s vast population of migrants adversely impacted the turnout of electorates at the polling booths.
IIT-Patna’s associate professor of social science, Aditya Raj, pointed out that with over 400 million migrants, India has the world’s largest migrant population. “The amount of ‘lost votes’ due to the absence of migrants was 30 crore in the 2019 elections, as per estimate of the Election Commission of India. The lowest percentage of voting in Bihar is from those places which have the highest number of migrants,” he said.
“Many of these migrants are circulatory and seasonal. A majority of them are semi-skilled and under-employed at their workplace. Their income is so meagre that they cannot afford to spend any amount on travelling to the constituency back home to cast their votes. In private conversation, they admit that even though they are very much involved in the goings-on in their respective constituencies, they are not able to come physically from far-off places like Punjab, Kerala and Delhi on the polling day,” Raj said.
Section 19 of the Representation of People’s Act 1950 requires that voters are enrolled in the constituency of which they are resident. “Once they migrate, they have to enroll at their new place and at the same time get their names deleted from the old list. This is a difficult process for migrants from Bihar. The stakes are against the vulnerable migrants more because it requires physical presence at the polling booths,” he said.
Sudhanshu Kumar, an associate professor at Bihar Institute of Public Finance and Policy, said a crucial aspect determining the voters’ participation is their motivation to spend their time and energy waiting in line to cast their vote. “For some individuals, the cost of spending time in the election process could be as high as a day’s wage and, hence, they invariably abstain from exercising their franchise,” Kumar said. He further pointed out that it is essential to note that the migration of people to support their livelihood often results in a lower number of male voters at home, especially among working-age people.
“This situation has given rise to two possibilities that have affected voter turnout and social engagement. Either the female in the household takes over the decision-making responsibility, or the family unit restricts it to fulfilling only its daily needs. In the previous few elections, women’s empowerment has led to higher voter turnout of women as compared to men in many parts of the state. This higher female voter turnout indicates a more significant role of women in social engagements in these areas, even in the absence of the male head of the household. However, in many places, the lower availability of men, particularly young ones, leads to lower social engagements, reflected in lower voter turnout,” Kumar said, adding that one way to improve the voter turnout in the state is to encourage more female voters to come out and exercise their right to vote.
Patna University social science faculty’s former dean Nawal Kishore Chaudhary said that the lives of most migrants are characterized by extreme vulnerabilities and widespread socio-economic exclusion in their destinations.
“Many migrants struggle to integrate into destination cities, facing severe hurdles to accessing adequate housing, as well as essential public goods and services such as healthcare and education. Voting is a way of establishing eligibility for other basic rights of citizenship, such as housing and education,” he said.
Chaudhary suggested that the election commission and political parties should find ways to ensure the participation of all these migrants in the election process of their native constituencies.