Elections in India a time of celebration
By MADDIE BORA
Courier Political Writer
No matter what the media polls and the political pundits say, I can never have enough of the presidential election.
I have followed these elections as much as a political junkie as a political reporter. After reading media reports on how readers are getting impatient with the political impasse, I promised myself that I wouldn't write anything remotely associated with the election, but something happened today that threw me back on a nostalgic trip to all the campaigning days with my father.
My father is a politician from the state of Assam in India. As I write this, he is being wheeled away to an operation theater in Delhi for heart by-pass surgery. As my thoughts travel thousands of miles away to be with him, I recall the times we spent together in the roller-coaster world of Indian politics.
Unlike America, India is a young democratic country. After independence in 1947, the country chose to adopt the Westminster model. Therefore, the country has a parliamentary form of government, but it also has a figurehead president who is voted to office by an Electoral College. The prime minister, his cabinet of ministers are required to be members of either one of the houses in the parliament. Mostly they are elected by popular vote but if they are members of the upper house then they are voted to office by an electoral college.
It was a fascinating experience for me to report on the world's greatest democracy going to polls to elect its 43rd president. As I followed candidates on their campaign trail, I saw the stark differences in the way things work in the two countries.
Campaigning doesn't kick off until about four months before the elections in India, unlike here where it is almost a year-long affair. Friends and family members of the candidates jump into the wagon and religiously take part in the whole process. The most important form of campaigning is massive rallies, called "meetings." The size of these gatherings is a good indication of the support the candidates have, a subjective counterpart of the polls in this country.
There is usually a lot of drama and fanfare attached to the whole process. There are no campaign managers or PR people running the show. The candidate and his family manage everything.
I still remember those long, hard days before each election. I would set off with my father in the wee hours of the morning and never get back home until well past midnight. If I even got a grain of rice to eat during the whole day I used to consider myself lucky.
There are no TV advertisements or telephone calls, but a lot of political graffiti, holdings, and the most eye-catching massive cutouts of the candidates. Those four months of campaigning are a festival of colors, sound and intense political discussion, which ends 48 hours before the polling day. The polling day is usually a holiday.
Our campaigning used to take us to all the nooks and corners of his constituency. I would marvel at my dad as he would have to deliver a speech in three different languages on the same day and, no, there are no speechwriters. Most of the speeches were impromptu and without the aid of a teleprompter, which virtually is non-existent in India.
We were always late reaching a "meeting" in time, but still the people would wait for us, sometimes as much as five hours. And after that wait, they would expect a nice, good long juicy speech, entertaining and witty.
I was particularly fond of campaigning in the tea garden areas. Assam produces most of India's tea, which is well known in the tea-drinking world for its strong flavor. The state is peppered with massive tea estates, popularly called gardens, maybe because they are so beautiful to look at.
Since tea is made from small buds of a particular maturity, the plucking cannot be done by machines. We would speak with the leaf pluckers, crying hoarse trying to explain to them where they should stamp on the ballot paper. Every candidate runs on his party symbol or a symbol issued to him by the election commission -- a rule adopted by the original rule makers to make sure the illiterate are not disadvantaged. The challenge is to educate the voters on the symbol and how to fold the ballot paper.
Electric voting machines were first introduced in the nation's capital during the last elections.
The most exciting part is the counting. The votes are, of course, all hand counted. The counting does not stop until it ends and, for bigger constituencies, could run on for a couple of days. The counting area too looks festive, with bright lights and milling people.
Democracy, after all, should be celebrated.
Maddie Bora is the Courier's political writer.
