Delhi, the political capital of the country, where every person flaunts that they know some politician or bureaucrat, is, without doubt, the most politically aware city of the country. Every day, there is a dharna in some corner of the city, by some political or human rights activist. The number of activists per square foot area in Delhi is probably the highest in the world, as every person who does not have a permanent job is some sort of activist here. The nature of activism ranges from good to bad, from RTI to anti-nuclear weapons, so on and so forth.
Delhi is also home to most of the intellectuals- writers, journalists, academics- who are most opinionated people on earth, with expertise ranging from sports they never played to movies they never watched and places they’ve never been to.
However, despite the hyper-politicized environment of the city, with the highest density of the ‘politically opinionated’ people per square feet; why the city has one of the lowest voting percentage among the major cities of the country, is beyond comprehension for many Indians who get most of their news curated from Delhi.
The voter turnout of Delhi crossed 60%, which is the lower spectrum of voter turnout in India, only thrice, that is in 1993, 2015, and 2016. In the very first election, the voter turnout was 61.8 per cent and declined dramatically to 49 in the 1998 election. Since then, the turnout has been on the rise till 2015, but, declined once again in the 2020 assembly election, when the city fell below 60 once again.
The people in elite, wealthy circles of Delhi are hyperactive on social media and do not miss the chance to comment on political topics like CAA, NRC, Article 370, Ram Mandir, and so on. But, when it comes to voting, they would rather sit back in their comfortable homes, drink the costly wine and Swiggy ordered food, rather than getting in line towards the polling booth. The people of the city would rather enjoy the Polling day as a holiday and spend what they consider ‘quality time’ instead of heading to the polling booths.
Delhi has always been a hotbed of academia; bureaucracy; political activism; media activism; civil society activism. In a city which is politically hyperactive, voting percentage below 60 is simply unacceptable.
Mumbai lagged behind in this kind up activism but the elitist left-liberals in Mumbai tried hard to establish what they call “intellectual” environment in the city, but, the spirit of Mumbai always made a pushback. In spite of the best efforts from the ‘activist classes’, Mumbai remained the poorer cousin of Delhi in such activities, and so remain the educational institutes of the city.
The Modi government took many important decisions on the national security and brought some fundamental changes to the polity of the country, but, the hyper-opinionated people of Delhi presented their views on social media instead of voting for or against the policies of the government.
This shows that a large number of registered voters in Delhi care very little about the city as they do not view voting as a duty and are ungrateful for the gift that is a robust democracy. And this is why, despite the expenditure of the billions of rupees by the union as well as state government, the city of Delhi is not clean, and has the worst performance in socio-economic indicators.