Today, I'm thinking about the value of a person's vote in electing a democratic government of a country.

Obviously, I'm thinking about the world's largest democracy that is India. The General Elections are in progress for last couple of weeks here. I had discussed a little about the challenges and importance of this election in my post here

Sometimes weighing something vis-a-vis another thing becomes a difficult challenge. There could be some serious or more important circumstance where you would like to ignore your participation in the democratic process in order to pay your attention to those circumstances in your life. But it's always not like that

Venue for India's biggest Animal Liberation March has changed

Many activists from all over India residing as far as Jammu & Kashmir in the north to Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka & Kerala in the South had already made their travel arrangements to join this March.

In India, we need to plan our travel well in advance, especially if it's a long distance travel. You can never be sure to get a reservation for your journey on a short notice. So everyone has already booked their travel tickets and accommodation in Mumbai.

Unfortunately, the polling date in Mumbai was declared for 29^th April. So now, the permission from the authorities to organize this March was revoked as it was scheduled just a day before the polling day.

On such a short notice, it became difficult for the activists to cancel the event. So the organizers moved the event venue to a nearby city Pune. Voting for the elections in Pune was already over on 23^rd April. So there wasn't any objection from authorities. Therefore, now the event will take place on the same date at Chatrapati Sambhaji Park, Pune ...about 100 miles away from Mumbai.

Pune is not very well connected with rest of the India. Not as good as Mumbai is.

Earlier two activists had shown willingness to participate in this March from my city. But now no one is going to participate in Pune from my city. Today they have cancelled their earlier journey reservation to Mumbai, Do you know why?

The reason is my city is going to poll on 29^th April too. So the question one activist posed was, what's more important? Participating in the March or participating in the polling. Many people are pondering over this question.

My friend decided in favour of polling and declined to visit Pune. It's difficult to go to Pune without any prior bookings as Pune is not well connected with my city.

Hence came this question:

Shouldn't a country make a provision of 100% participation in voting?

Millions of eligible voter can't participate in this fundamental democratic process of casting their vote because they can't make themselves available in their home constituency. Many people are working or studying in some different city, far away from their home constituency. And it's not always possible to travel for the purpose of casting a vote. Some people are always on the move, some have to go to a different region for some other urgent assignment; all these people can't vote in spite of their willingness to cast their vote.

Shouldn't Election Commission make provision to include all such voters to make the election process inclusive?

Today, with the development of rail, road and air modes of transport, mobile communication technology and with the rise in average disposable income of citizens, people are travelling a lot more than they were doing in the last century.

So why can't one vote wherever he or she is, on the date of polling?

Our system has not kept pace with the changing trend of our society. In today's fast paced world, we shouldn't expect people to be static all the time.

Many people are travelling to their home constituency just for the sake of casting their vote. An hour back, one of my cousins called me to tell that she traveled to her constituency in Karnataka State by bus to cast her vote on 18^th April. She had got married recently and it wasn't easy for her to travel all alone. And due to delay in commute, she couldn't return back the same day as planned.

Addressing this problem can increase the voting percentage in the election along with saving many citizens from all these pain and wastage of their hard-earned money.