Root Cause : Voting Option - None of the above.

A very recent discussion with one of my teachers made me sit up and think about an option which has been doing rounds in the Indian media - should 'None of the above' be an option during elections ?

The media and lot of intellectuals argue that it should be, because the current lot of politicians are in no way deserving. They are a rotten lot. They are mean, bad, corrupt, immoral, inept, illiterate and what not. None of them are worthy of leading our people and nation from the front. And hence, to express this idea of dissent that the people are not happy with the politicians who are standing in an election, they choose the last option - None of the Above. And by doing this, they express to the Election Commission that they want better candidates.


There is an inherent fallacy in the argument, and exposes the hypocrisy of human nature in general. We often hear people saying that nobody is perfect. And a lot of times, human errors are ignored and made less severe, attributing it the fact that nobody is perfect. Then why wait for a perfect politician to arrive on the scene ? Or should it be The Politician ?

An example to simplify this. An ambulance driver is waiting for the next emergency call. He is stationed in a big metro city and its evening 7 P.M. - peak hour mess ! He gets a call and is asked to report to the accident site right in the middle of the city - which is around 10 km away from where he is currently. Now, he has got two options. First - he thinks that he has got to drive 10 km's, and that too in peak hour with roads all jammed and red lights. And decides against driving there. Second - he decides to go to the site, despite of all the traffic mess and the red lights. And plans out a strategy to reach earlier, by taking shortcuts, even if he can save 20 seconds per every alternate road, he would save around 2-3 minutes in total. And could be critical in such a case.

So, there we go. When we say that 'None of the above' should be an option, we are acting like the driver selecting the first option. We wait for the perfect politician to arrive, then to stand as a candidate and then vote for him. We want all the roads to be empty, all lights green. The second, we decide and work actively to study each of the candidates or parties meticulously, enlisting their agendas, goals, past records etc. Now, even if all of them are 'bad', having police cases against them, having been to jail, being illiterate - at least one of them is the best, relatively speaking.

The squint is the king amongst the blind. We have to select the best out of them. And then vote for the candidate / party. We have to start somewhere. So to refrain is to run away. To refrain is to be a coward. Changes take time. Evolution did not happen in a few years !

Or we go the way the media wants us to - wait for the perfect politician - and he never arrives - and we never vote!