The mammoth poll tamasha

Sandeep Sinha

The country will elect the 17th Lok Sabha next month and the Election Commission of India tasked with conducting the exercise in what is arguably the world’s largest democracy marks the beginning of its 70th year. Deriving its power from Article 324 of the Constitution, it was instituted on January 25, 1950, a day before India became a republic. 

To mark this momentous moment, a series of books offering a diversity of perspectives from keen observers of India’s democracy, has hit the shelves. Two former Chief Election Commissioner — SY Quraishi and Navin Chawla — have wielded the pen with felicity to document this “national spectacle, a collective drama, a deeply bonding experience, that contributes to the political and emotional integration of the country”. 

The books, The Great March of Democracy, edited by SY Quraishi, with a foreword by Pranab Mukherjee, and Every Vote Counts by Navin Chawla, are a remarkable account of India’s unique experiment in electoral democracy. 

The authors, with their ringside view of this exercise of franchise, have documented the maturing of an electorate where the system has evolved with the decades and where the voters have time and again shown that illiteracy is different from ignorance. 

The authors aver that in the past 71 years, India has seen a deepening of democracy and respect for constitutional morality. Lowering of voting age from 21 to 18 years in 1989 was of great significance in this direction. Heterogeneity of political parties and the rise of coalition politics reflect diverse aspirations and the positives of power-sharing and consensus building. A stunning example of the inclusive nature of Indian democracy is that a country with a Hindu population of 80 per cent, has had four Muslim, one Sikh and two Dalit Presidents, including the current one. 

Chawla cautions against the fault-lines in Indian democracy, observing that foreign domination was in the process of being replaced by a home-grown oligarchy that had placed power in the hands of a few. Money power, muscle power and a partially compromised fourth estate, in the form of paid news, had swept away everything that Mahatma Gandhi had stood for: “I understand democracy as something that gives the weak the same chance as the strong.”

The former CEC defends the use of EVMs saying they are stand-alone machines and the chip in them has a one-time-only programme and the source code is not known to anyone barring a few experts.  

Randomisation is a process that has worked wonderfully for the Indian electoral system, manifest in the allocation of polling officials and EVMS, to pre-empt any conflict of interest and both Quraishi and Chawla’s books describe in detail how it works. 

Chawla dwells on proposals for electoral reforms and lists his priorities: purging criminality and tackling breaches of spending limits; transparency of funding and spending; making bribery in elections a cognizable offence; deregistering political parties that do not contest elections; and, Constitutional protection regarding the removal of election commissioners. 

On the last proposal, Chawla has an interesting tale to narrate — how the mighty TN Seshan told the then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao that there was no way he would resign nor was he going to die so soon. The only way he could be removed was to impeach him. The wily Rao then came up with the idea of appointing two more election commissioner — MS Gill and GVG Krishnamurthy. Piqued, Seshan gave them no work until chastised by the Supreme Court. Seshan told Chawla: Do you see my skin? It is the skin of a rhinoceros. If you have to do your job at the Election Commission, you had better develop it.” In his essay in Quraishi’s book, TN Seshan says how the CEC was lined up before Parliament twice for impeachment and the problem in giving teeth to the Model Code of Conduct. The founding fathers did not want the CEC to be a stooge and Seshan definitely was not one of them. 

A ringside view

In the volume of essays edited by SY Quraishi, Karamjit Singh, a founding member of the UK Electoral Commission, has some brilliant observations to make. He was an observer in Varanasi from where Narendra Modi was contesting. His interaction with the staff and party workers lead him to acknowledge: that the staff felt it was their responsibility to do something to keep the electoral process functioning properly, the party worker felt with EVMs, it was no longer possible to indulge in bogus voting and the voter knew no one else could vote instead of him. 

The two books leave no aspect of the elections untouched — exit polls, paid news, administrative rigmarole, Constitutional showdowns, clash with the political establishment, holding elections in troubled areas like Naxalite-infested zones and J&K, besides transgender rights etc. That elections in India have always been held on time is a tribute to the poll panel. 

There are interesting asides. Navin Chawla recalls his meeting with Shyam Saran Negi of Kalpa in Himachal Pradesh who voted in the first General Elections in 1951 and was probably India’s oldest voter. Negi complained that EC restrictions had taken the fun out of elections and these seemed more like a funeral these days unlike the days of yore when there would be a festival-like atmosphere. 

There is also the account of the setting up of a polling booth for just one voter in Junagadh, Gujarat, in the heart of lion sanctuary. 

These are not just interesting asides but also throw light on the enormity and gargantuan task that conducting elections in India is. Mark Tully recounts in Quraishi’s volume how Chaudhary Devi Lal was miffed over long discussions on finalising the election manifesto. “Fool, I can’t tell you how many elections I have fought but I can assure you I have never read a single manifesto,” he told Tully. 

Both books recall the contribution of India’s first Chief Election Commissioner Sukumar Sen, who laid the foundation of a fragile democracy that now towers. 

The two books are a riveting account of the maturing of a fledgling democracy that keeps challenging itself through a process of ferment only to emerge with its halo intact. It is an exercise that gives people dignity, the chance to make a difference and to humble and mock pretensions.

The role of a political consultant has become a rage, contributed in no small measure by the success of Prashant Kishore who handled campaigning for leaders, cutting across political parties like Narendra Modi, Nitish Kumar and Captain Amarinder Singh. The use of technological tools like data analytics, surveys and alternative media for effective micro-targeted campaigns is the subject matter of this book. 

The author says his journey was prompted by a desire to develop an understanding of Indian politics, essential as narratives are being shaped through the use of propaganda, fake news, data analytics and technological platforms offered by social media and mobile connectivity. The author supported the BJP campaign along with Prashant Kishore and Ram Madhav and only then did he understand how a personality cult is created and an effective campaign transform a politician. The branding, slogans, messaging, advertisement blitzkrieg and creation of a buzz all play a big role in building a persona for a politician. Kishore’s recent elevation in the JD(U) is a testimony to how he did this not only for his clients but for himself too. 

The author gives a good account of how the constituencies are analysed; ‘favourable’, ‘battleground’, ‘a weak battleground’, or ‘difficult’. Constituencies are rated and outreach programmes undertaken by procuring telecom lists containing phone numbers and broadcast IVRS messages and send SMS. Targeted messaging informs different groups how the party would benefit them but the same data can be misused to fuel hatred. 

The author says the role of technology was amplified in the Cambridge Analytica case that gained access to data of 87 million Facebook users to influence voter behaviour and help Trump campaign. It was clear Facebook could manipulate the emotional state of its users through the kind of content it chose to display to them. All this led to concern over data privacy and the US, the UK, Germany and other countries launched a probe into the effect of Facebook on voter behaviour. 

The book says the BJP is ahead in the competition and is using WhatsApp to great effect to send a specific message to one group and a completely different message to a different group of people. By using their biases, individuals can be turned into supporters, something that is being taken forward by looking beyond WhatsApp, in the form of NaMo app.

With the information on electoral roll publicly available, analysts can get a person’s name, father’s name, booth location, voter ID number and age. With a simple code, a party can identify the caste and religion of a voter by analysing their last names. Once a party maps the caste and religion against the names of voters in the electoral roll, the phone numbers are included. In the absence of privacy laws, the numbers are available with data brokers who obtain it from low-level operatives of telecom companies or SIM card dealers. Details about socio-economic status, land records, BPL lists, census data and NSSO survey are also useful in identifying target groups. 

The author makes a few points succinctly. On which party is best in terms of governance or corruption, a party hardly matters. Ideology is immaterial when it comes to governance. What define parties are the communities they cater to, to win an election. For anyone who wants to achieve something positive through politics, the right way is to choose the one that is least offensive to them so that they can stay in it the longest to bring about a change. — SS