India's inclusive, mind-boggling polls

February 01, 2014 01:06

A thriving and vibrant electoral democracy has been India's distinct and durable identity, long before it asserted itself as an economic, nuclear or information technology major. Over the past 63 years, the Election Commission of India (ECI) had delivered 15 elections to the Lok Sabha (the Lower House) and more than 350 elections to state legislative assemblies, facilitating peaceful, orderly and democratic transfer of power.

The statistics of today's Indian elections may be mind boggling, even if you look at them purely as numbers. There are around 780 million electors on the Electoral Roll of India, as of Jan 1, which is more than the population of both the North and South American continents taken together or all the countries of Europe or of Africa combined. The last elections to the Indian Parliament, held in 2009, could be described as the biggest humanly- managed event in the world.

Read S Y Quraishi's column on The New Straits Times

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