The May of this year was a big event for everyone in the world. As the world biggest democracy conducted its nation-wide election. More than 900 million people were eligible for voting, and estimates show 67% of them turned up on their respective voting day. Strangely enough, it went through like a hot knife through butter. This is no easy feat, but the election commission of India (EIC) is one of the most efficient and unbiased organizations in India. Today, we will look at how EIC has been conducting such huge elections throughout India for years without trouble.
How big is the Indian election?
Well, to begin with, 900 million people were supposed to vote. 1.035 million polling booth was set up across India, and the whole election took 38 days to complete. As compared to the USA, the second biggest democracy, where only 140 million came out to vote in the 2016 presidential election. The disparity is clear, and above this, India has recorded history of corruption, so to conduct an unbiased election is a triumph.
There are many reasons as to why EIC is able to pull off the event:
- It is a focused task in limited duration: If we breakdown the election, it is organizing similar events throughout the country, and the same thing is repeated over and over again. All of it lasts for 7 weeks max. This makes the work lot easy, similar efficiency can be seen in the National census, which also taken place with precision.
- The event is organized technologically: India was among the first country to adopt digital voting. Applying for a voting card, date, and venue of each voter is available online, and even voters receive messages and slips from the EIC. This makes voter fraud almost void as each voter is given a particular number and is verified with a voting card. Additionally, India uses an Electronic voting machine (EVM), which can’t be hacked and doesn’t require counting votes.
- Voting is considered a pride: Everyone involved in organizing the election is under intense public scrutiny. Each state wants a clean election to stop public outrage. Police, EIC members all want to do their job well. All of the pieces join together for a competent job. This can be seen in India’s space agency where the people are involved and the people working wants to do an excellent job.
- EIC is an independent organization: EIC is an independent organization that is free from the meddling of politicians and corruption. This makes the job of bureaucrats much easy as they can do the job in the best interest of the nation. This was evident when EIC banned Modi’s biopic, which was supposed to release ten days before the election. A sitting PM had to wait for the election to be finished in a fair democracy.
- The process is fair and transparency: The EIC doesn’t decide who can vote or not. They don’t even decide the venue of certain voters. This eradicates the concept of bribery as there is no advantage in doing so. Moreover, EIC comes under right to information act, people can get any information they like regarding the election.
As we can see, it is quite a simple process which doesn’t involve huge responsibilities. Moreover, the Indian election is very simple as compared to Australia’s preferential voting, New Zealand proportional voting, etc.
Plus, the public is very enthusiast for the election, security is tight, media covers each and every booth. This adds up to a world-class election which is yet to be rivaled.
In a nutshell, a combination of people’s willingness and sophisticated technology is the reason behind India being good at conducting elections.
-Travelrasoi
