New Delhi: Better employment opportunities, healthcare and drinking water were the top three issues on which voters want the government of the day to work, a national survey conducted by a volunteer organisation Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) has claimed.
As per the survey which was released on May 13, the performance of the government has been rated 'below-average', Jagdeep Chhokar, founder member, National Election Watch, ADR, told reporters here on Monday.
Chhokar claimed that as per the report, the performance of the government, measured on a scale of 1 to 5, was rated "below average" on top 10 governance issues.
"The government's performance score on the top 10 voters' priorities is below average. This evidently indicates that the voters are unsatisfied with the government's performance. Hence, the government needs to prioritise and invest more particularly in these sectors," he said.
The survey was conducted between October and December in 2018, and covered 534 Lok Sabha constituencies with 2,73,487 voters participating in the exercise.
It was spread across various demographics such as voters' priorities on specific governance issues; voters' ratings of the government's performance on those issues, and factors affecting voting behaviour.
Better employment opportunities figured as the highest priority among voters (46.80 percent), followed by better healthcare (34.60 percent) and drinking water (30.50 percent), better roads (28.34 percent) and better public transport (27.35 percent), as per the national survey.
Talking about the voting behaviour, he said, "As per All India Survey 2018, 75.11% voters disclosed that CM candidate was the most important reason behind voting for a particular candidate, followed by candidate's party (71.32%) and the candidate (68.03%) himself or herself."
"In relation to voting candidates with criminal antecedents, maximum number of voters (36.67%) felt that people would for such candidates because they are unaware of his or her criminal records. 35.8 9% voters are also willing to vote for a candidate with criminal records if the candidate has done good work in the past," he added.
When asked if national security was one of the issues listed in the survey, Chhokar said, "terrorism was one of the 31 listed issues, and it figured on the 30th position in the survey".
He said as the survey was conducted last year, "Balakot airstrike, the national security issue was not included in the list".
"It is important to note that agriculture-related governance issues featured predominantly in the top 10 list of voters' priorities, e.g. availability of water for agriculture (26.40 per cent) that was ranked sixth, agriculture loan availability (25.62 per cent) at seventh, higher price realisation for farm products (25.41 per cent) at eighth, and agriculture subsidy for seeds, fertilisers (25.06 per cent) at ninth," he said.
