Sokhela Tayang, 44, lives alone in Malogam village, Arunachal Pradesh. Her parents died some years ago, and her estranged husband, Janelum, moved to another village. Sokhela’s village is just a hill away from China.
On April 19, a team of Indian election officials and security personnel trekked 40 km through mountainous terrain with heavy polling equipment to collect her lone vote from the 52-Malogam polling station, set up just for her.
About 3,500 km across the breadth of Bharat, another set of election officials travelled two days in a bus and trekked through the dense forests of Gujarat’s Gir — home to the endangered Asiatic lion — to set up a booth in Banej for another lone voter. They ensured that Hindu monk Mahant Haridasji Udasin, who lives in the jungle, is not excluded from the democratic process.
From the highest polling station at tiny, icy Tashigang in Himalayas’ Spiti Valley where 62 voters get inked at 15,256 feet to Warshi in Ladakh where just a family of five (Rinchen, 23, her parents, and grandparents) vote, the Indian democracy goes to unthinkable lengths to ensure that not one of the 969 million voters, representing 1.4 billion Indians’ collective political will, get left out.
Eligible Indian voters comprise more than 10 per cent of the world’s population. And yet, numbers are not really what makes this mahayagna jaw-dropping. It is the scale of superhuman physical effort, million ant-cities of detailing, managing surreal diversity, and keeping every bully in the gully in check.
Today, the Narendra Modi-led BJP won a diminished but historic third mandate against a reviving Opposition.
But the bigger win today is that of India’s democracy. Just to cast its vote, it braved landslides in the Northeast which killed three dozen in Cyclone Remal and the 52.9-degree centigrade heatwave which killed 15 in Delhi.
This year, 2024, more than 70 nations are going into general elections. But India, with 97 crore eligible voters, was not only the largest in terms of population, it had more than 2,600 parties contesting. At least 1.8 crore first-time voters and 19.47 crore voters between 20 and 29 years got inked. And as gender wars rage in the West, 48,000 third-gender voters quietly participated in the Indian elections, along with 82 lakh people with disabilities and 2.2 lakh citizens who are over 100 years old.
The Election Commission of India did an outstanding job keeping the 10.5 lakh polling stations bloodless (except a few places in Mamata Banerjee-ruled West Bengal). Even Kashmir saw the highest voter turnout for the first time in the last three decades since 1996 at 38 per cent, with Anantnag-Rajouri recording 54.3 per cent.
And while the Indian Opposition kept viciously attacking the efficacy of electronic voting machines (EVM) — and went silent after it discovered to its surprise that it had done better than the last time — 55 lakh EVMs efficiently did their job.
Bharat had invited the largest-ever group of 75 international delegates from 23 countries to witness the miracle of her democracy first-hand. They praised the transparency of the process, initiatives like Green Polling Stations, and the use of technology like the randomisation of EVM-VVPATs.
When Narendra Modi takes oath as Prime Minister for the third successive time, the faceless Indian election officials, security personnel, and voters who make the largest magna of democracy happen every single time will smile from the shadows.
Abhijit Majumder is a senior journalist. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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