News is of a stunning upset in the Indian parliamentary elections. After calling a general election 6 months ahead of schedule, the ruling BJP party, hoping to bank on unprecedented years of economic growth, has conceded defeat. The Prime Minister is resigning and the opposition Congress Party is poised to form a new government.
The Congress Party was held together during the lean years of being out of power by Sonia Gandhi, Italian-born and widow of Rajiv Gandhi. The Nehru dynasty has reasserted its control over the party of Indian independence. The upset, which startled pundits and political observers, is said to be due to a big backlash from rural voters who feel left out of India’s economic growth.
The relative efficiency of the Indian electoral system, composed of millions upon millions of poor voters in a large country, puts our electoral process to shame. We might as well just have the Indians run our Comelec in the future!
the electronic voting machine or EVM is described here: http://www.eci.gov.in/EVM/index.htm (it is not too fancy but serves its purpose) their machines does not even use Windows, Linux or Unix.
let us put things in to proper prespective here.
in india, when they have national elections for the ‘lok sabha’ (lower house of parliament) indians only vote for one person (they now just push a botton on a machine) to be their MP.
indians do not elect their prime minister directly but their MPs.
in the philippines however, we have to vote for up to 20+ people directly in national and local positions. (president, vice-president, 6 senators, party list, governor, vice-governor, congressman, provincial board members, etc.) besides the philippines is an archipelago of 7,000 islands of course it will take some time for the results to be sent to manila.
if the philippines had the same electoral system as india we could have election results in record time.
more info:
Electoral Commission of India
http://www.eci.gov.in
BBC News’In depth coverage of Indian elections
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/south_asia/2004/india_votes_2004/default.stm#
The Indian population is so big that the election was done in shifts!
Am wondering too what operating system did the Indians use for e-voting? Windows? Linux?
in fairness to the indians, theirs is a far far older civilization; isn’t it a shame, though, that a lot of Indians are poorest of the poor that they’d attract Mother Teresas?
Pwede ba mag pilipino dito, medyo hirap ko mag-english.
Ang alam ko, Ang mga lider na Bombay (Indian) ay pinangangalagaan ang interes ng kanilang bansa (national interest), kaya naman ginagawa nila ang lahat ng paraan upang magkaroon ng maayos na eleksyon. Di tulad sa Pinas na kung saan ang gobyerno natin ay walang tinatawag na totoong national interest na pi-noprotektahan. Sapagkat sa India ang mga lider nila ay totoong makabayan (nationalistic).
Sa India mataas na rin ang antas ng kanilang Teknolohiya. Isa sa palatandaan sa pag-usad ng teknolohiya ng bansa ay ang pagkakaroon ng sariling makinarya o sariling ‘brand’ ng sasakyan — ang India meron silang Tata motors, ito ay naeexport na nila sa maraming bansa tulad sa middle east at ilang bansa sa Africa.