Swami asks what “strategic” use non-voting could be put to.
Why, that’s simple. Suppose that you are a hardcore BJP supporter. I mean, so hardcore that building a Ram Temple at Ayodhya is the only issue you are concerned with and is your life’s mission. Suppose further that the BJP (not just NDA) has a comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha and cannot give the compulsions of coalition politics as an excuse anymore. And yet the BJP isn’t bothering to build a temple in Ayodhya, because it has other things to do, like building a shining India and making money for its own ministers.
So what do you do? You can’t vote for the Congress because the Congress isn’t going to build a temple for you either. You can’t vote for an even more extreme right-wing party, because either it doesn’t exist or because it has no serious chance of capturing power at the Centre. Your only choice is to stay at home and hope that the BJP gets a message that it can’t take you for granted.
I think in this scenario, the hardcore hindutva guy would be better off voting either for the BJP itself, which has atleast a chance of delivering on the mandir, OR voting for the All India Hindu Mahasabha, which I was surprised to find on the ballot for Thane. The latter choice would send a clearer message to the BJP about how many people are really interested solely in the construction of the mandir and allied issues of Hindu superiority.
So even a vote to a non-winning candidate can be more important, even indicative to the winning candidate/party about the sentiment of the constituents.
Under the assumption that the vote is the solitary means of revealing political choices, strategic non-voting MAY be relevant. But there are plenty of supplementary avenues for expressing opinion, especially through party machinery, RSS, media, opinion polls, mass movements etc. A favourable government only makes things easier – remember Gujarat.
All of those might be choices. I don’t deny that. I am only pointing out one case where not voting could be a good choice.
Though a highly hypothetical situation, let me try to go forward.
Even if iam in the situation described by you, i would still vote for BJP (or the right’er party however small) because i dont want to make Congress chance better because it is a party that i dont want in power!
So, strategically, voting still seems to be better than abstaining.