“Don’t know”, “Can’t say”

It is that season again, indeed has been for some time now. And, I am coming in late, as usual.

With Netizens being more active than ever, this election season has brought the termites out of the woodwork. Every website that is worth its salt is conducting online surveys and in bushels. Throwing a question is not all that difficult and it is equally easy to answer them. As a respondent is anonymous there is no burden to be truthful, indeed be meaningful. The survey designers further ensure that the results will carry no meaning, by giving one simple option to the respondents. What is it?

It is the escapist “Can’t say/Don’t know” option. I am justified in equating this option to NOTA in the ongoing elections. The other day I saw a newspaper article that claimed that Delhi voters had not been taken in by this option. They are dutifully, rightly or wrongly, voting for one among the candidates slated in. I was feeling happy because I had vouched for this behavior, of eschewing NOTA in a recent post [1].

What NOTA does, in my perspective, is let the chooser take the escapist route. Likewise, at a much lower level of civic participation, even in informal polls, the “Don’t know/Can’t say” option allows the participant in the on-line surveys to go the non-committal route. Why take that route instead of merely staying non-committal? Not respond to the on-line survey?

Here again I raise the same question. The “Don’t know”/”Can’t say”ers do not give a clue as to what they need to know before they would flip onto either side of the fence. Why is there such aversion to expose oneself, even in this anonymous space? Is there any premium in cyberspace to mark your absent presence, by choosing the non-choice?

I would tend to think so. The more you respond to these polls/surveys it is most likely you will score some points on that website that may give you some benefits down the line. But, that would negate the newsworthiness of the effort, if there indeed is any. There will be no objectivity. Of course, no one claimed that these polls espouse any objective reality. It is on this score alone I am OK with the choice, even as I am not OK with it. Isn’t that a fitting ending to a post on “Don’t know/Can’t say” conundrum?

Raghuram Ekambaram

References

1.    http://nonexpert.blogspot.in/2014/03/i-am-not-nota-voter.html