When India goes to the parliamentary polls every five years, more than an eighth of the world’s population queues up over two summer months to elect a Government. For a populace that speaks 22 official languages and thousands of dialects, lives in rich urban suburbs or poor rural hamlets in terrain scattered across teeming cities, deciduous forests, scrub jungle, deserts and mountain villages, and is drawn from a cross-section of castes and creeds, it is perhaps the only exercise that offers a level-playing field.
The Election Commission of India (ECI), the constitutional body that conducts and regulates elections, has since its formation in 1950 faced many logistical challenges. It draws on the lakhs of poll workers and security forces to ensure free and fair elections. And, because no voter is made to travel too far from home to exercise one’s franchise, poll officers shuttle ballot boxes by even helicopter, boat, elephant-back and through knee-deep mountain streams to mark the indelible link on the index finger (a practice since the Third General Election in 1962) to indicate that one has chosen a representative.
