Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

An Indian, who is 18 years of age, has a right to be registered as a voter in a constituency irrespective of his or her race, religion, caste or sex. Standing as the world's largest - and one of the most vibrant - democracies, there is a need for providing a stronger constitutional foundation to strengthen the right to vote. Here government needs to make substantial efforts to ensure greater participation of its citizenry in the electoral process by implementing various forms of absentee voting, such as Internet voting ,proxy voting and postal voting, which have emerged as the most popular form of absentee voting in different parts of the world.

Due to circumstantial problems a large number of citizens in India are unable to exercise their right to vote, as there are no provisions in Indian law to enable migrant workers within India, non-resident Indians, travelling professionals, students abroad, senior or unwell citizens who are not able to travel to the polling booths to vote. Total population under the above heads comes to about 23 crores.

The limited form of postal voting which we have is not accessed by enough people to create a meaningful impact towards making the electoral process more inclusive. Special voters; service voters, voters on election duty, and voters subjected to preventive detention are entitled to vote by post in a parliamentary or assembly election. But still a large number of people who have unexplainable difficulties in exercising their right to vote are left out.

For a variety of impeccable reasons a large number of Indians are not able to be physically present on the day of the elections in the constituencies where their vote is registered. In the true spirit of Indian democracy, it is imperative that the country now expands the postal ballot system to allow all Indian citizens to exercise their right to vote by post.

Implementing a larger postal ballot system considering the issues relating to the security and integrity of the electoral process and eliminating the abuse of the postal ballot system would be a better answer to the riddle. This will necessitate thorough preparation, in addition to many other legal and policy issues that crop up when an electorate where 70 crores go to the polls. But these challenges should not discourage us as a mature democracy from developing a wider framework for implementing the right to vote through the postal ballot system and other policies to increase the political participation of people in the electoral process there by bringing out the real democracy as the depth of democracy depends crucially on the dimension of people’s participation. A lot more has to be achieved as we already have robust competition among political parties, but it is the participation aspect where we do not match the competition.

The electoral process in India should be far more inclusive and far less unwieldy, such that each and every Indian is able to exercise not only the right to vote, but also the opportunity to vote.