Voting under a thick security blanket
We have entered that phase where the Election Commission could be said to be ruling over India, in a way. The EC has primed us for a marathon: Fatigue may set in by the time results are out on May 23. West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have a seven-phase schedule. Obviously, the EC had to factor in the logistics of security. It’s partly the same reason why Jammu and Kashmir, which has been without an Assembly since November, could not redress that gap along with the big polls.
The political class, civil society and the four wings of the state—executive, legislature, media and judiciary (in that order)—need to put on their thinking caps to find a reformist solution. As our democracy matures, can we continue to be hand-held and nurtured through the might of security forces? For our elections to truly become a festival of democracy, we need to be able to shed this semi-war-like preparation. Then only can we rejoice over the queue outside the polling booth as, perhaps, our best social equaliser.
The EC, no doubt, has an unenviable role. To hold a national election in one million polling stations with 10 million officials, for a 900-million-strong electorate, up from 2014’s 830 million, is no cakewalk. Even if not everyone’s name figures in the voter list, or cares to vote. But increasingly, they do. And it is not just the obvious evils of money and muscle power that need countering, the climate too cannot be kept hostage to mediatised events in the interim.
Nor should policy-making be kept in suspension for long. The basic logistics being dependent on the finite numbers of polling personnel and troops sounds too primitive in days when technology solutions should be within reach. However bitter and hard-fought the elections are, this is part of the EC’s ethical obligation to the people.