Editor,
India needs to learn a thing or two from the American election. In spite of being at the top of technologically advanced countries, the United States of America falls back on ballot paper voting to root out any suspicion of foul play stemming from voting through EVM.
Over the last two decades, the United States of America has gradually moved back from electronic voting machines to paper ballots. Given ballot paper voting, unlike EVM, builds confidence among voters and opposition party members, it undoubtedly strengthens democracy.
Another highly commendable step the USA election authorities have taken. They have printed the ballot papers in all major languages of a state, depending on its demography. While a voter in New York can choose a ballot paper in Bengali instead of English, Chinese, Spanish, and Korean, voters in Illinois can opt for a ballot paper printed in Hindi. It also shows how a democratic country should honour the mother tongue of even those voters who have origins in different countries.
These actions reflect the attitude of catering and prioritising the interest of the demos (people) above everything.
It must also be remembered that to impose a language ignoring the major languages spoken in a particular area flouts democratic principles. There is no room for the ‘one nation one language’ policy in a multilingual democratic country like India.
The Reserve Bank of India needs to take a cue from the American election. As per the 2011 language census West Bengal, like most southern and northeastern states, is not a Hindi-speaking state and has adopted English as its secondary language. I am a Bengali and a resident of Kolkata. The RBI has surprisingly been sending a number of important SMS to me in Hindi only.
I could only gather that those SMS were about how to save ourselves from online fraud. But I failed to understand the instructions in them.
If the RBI has to use Hindi, it should stick to India’s three language policy by sending SMS first in the primary language of the state, then in English, and at the end in Hindi to non-Hindi states.
India needs to get back to ballot paper voting and to use the major language of a state besides English in all official matters in that state in order to strengthen democracy.
Sujit De,
Kolkata