In light of Government nod likely to voting for NRIs, i think we are about to go cuckoo officially. Let me explain how.
I will start with accepting that NRIs are citizens of India. They have ideas, knowledge, skills, perspectives, capital and human resources
that add to the quality of India’s politics, policy and industry. Leaving them out of the political process is unfair and wasteful.
They must have a political voice.
And thats the exact problem which was solved by Representation of the People Act 2010 to allow NRIs to come back and
vote in their constituencies. Many NRIs came back to vote in the May 2014 elections.
Now Government is going to allow NRIs to vote through electronic medium. This has several problems.
To begin with, this is logistical nightmare for Ministry of External Affairs and Election Commission of India. As someone noted,
The sun doesn’t set on the Indian Republic so reaching to everyone on foreign soil will not be easy.
Method being suggested is electronic transmission from ECI to individuals and they send back physical copies. This will entail a lot of security and validation to say the least.
However, the real problem is more than just logistics. NRIs voters have a moral hazard: the NRI voter is not around in the constituency to directly benefit from or suffer
the consequences of his/her political decision. This insulation from the direct effects of his own voting decision weakens both the representativeness and accountability of
the democratic system. The NRI has insurance too: if he does not like the outcomes in India, he can choose to continue foreign residency or take foreign citizenship.
Of course, resident Indians can emigrate too, but thats lot more difficult.
Because NRIs does not directly benefits/loses from his voting choice, Most voting will happen on emotional and ideological basis which is often hardline and uncompromising.
Resident population has a greater need to balance emotion and ideology with practicality. So they make more pragmatic compromises.
Another problem with NRI ballots is the question of constituency. Which constituency should an Indian citizen who lived in San francisco for X years belong to?
He might have friends and relatives in one constituency—but putting him on the voters list of that constituency is against the principle of domicile-based voting.
Many resident Indians live in one constituency but have family links in other constituencies, but they get on the electoral rolls of the constituency they are resident in.
(Some resident voters do prefer to vote in their native constituencies, but they travel to do so). Domicile-based electoral rolls are important for representation and accountability,
and our San Francisco-based voter might not know or care how bad public services are in his Indian native town are for him to hold the elected representative accountable.
A better way to allow participation of NRI community is to create a NRI constituency in the Rajya Sabha and the upper houses of state assemblies (not all states have upper house), and allow all NRIs to pick representative who will voice their interests. We might need several NRI seats because different NRI populations have different needs.
It is important that all Indian citizens are included in India political system. But voting should not be made cheap and hurdle-free. (*I do not 100% agree with idea of internet voting but that will be another day's topic).