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Carnival of Democracy

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Carnival of Democracy
The Economist
Mar 5th 2014, by A.R. http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2014/03/elections-india My post is a current event regarding politics in India. From April 7th until May 12th, the biggest democratic elections in the world will take place in India. General elections in India occur every five years and involve several different phases of voting. The 2014 elections have nine different phases of voting. Each vote will pick a constituency representative in the national parliament, made of 543 members.

The article states that India’s “mammoth electoral effort is an example of India working at its best,” given the “rise of undemocratic China and weakness of Western powers.” There are potentially 100m first time voters for this election, which the writer compares is approximately the population of The Philippines. A smooth transition from one party to the next will also be a sign of the maturity of the Indian democracy.

The article continues by comparing elections in India to neighbouring Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. These aforementioned countries tend to have less peaceful, and often fraudulent, elections compared to India. Furthermore, India has invested heavily in electronic voting, with the installation of 1.4m voting machines. Coupled with the extra security forces monitoring voting booths, the government hopes fraudulent activity will be prevented.

The article concludes by mentioning four likely outcomes of this election. First, the writer expects that there will be a high turnout, which the election commission predicts to be 70%. Secondly, the election campaign will be more urban in character. Politicians will be using phones, televisions and the Internet to reach voters. Even the politician’s voting campaign will take into account the movement of people from rural to urban locations, by talking of urban

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