Between April 7 and May 12, 2014, a period of 72 days, the world’s largest democracy will see 81.5 crores of her voters, nearly four times as large as the next largest— the US with 21.9 crore in the presidential poll of 2012 exercising their right to vote. India’s electorate has risen 9.7 crore since the previous election in 2009. This is almost five-fold rise since the first Lok Sabha election in the country in 1952, which had 17.30 crore voters. Of the total number of eligible voters, 42.7 crore are males and 38.8 crore are females. Utter Pradesh has the largest number of 80 parliamentary seats followed by Maharashtra with 48 sets. The total number of parliamentary constituencies is 543. Nearly 1.1 crore personnel, half of them paramilitaries will be deployed for smooth conduct of polling across the country.
Simultaneous with parliamentary election, polling for the assembly seats in three States of Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Sikkim will also take place. Telengana, as it comes into being, will also go through the process of assembly election as per existing system in Andhra.
When the founding fathers of the Indian Republic drew the constitution, they declared that India would be a secular, democratic country. Showing equal respect to all religions, it promised secular government because India was home to the people reposing faith in almost all major religions of the world. Moreover vast social, economic, geo-physical and other diversities demanded that India remain a secular democracy so that interests of all communities big or small were well protected and promoted.
From global view, the parliamentary election in India is a marvel by itself. Never before has human history seen such a large number of people deciding the change of government through the power of ballot and not the bullet. Juxtaposed to the violent ways of changing regimes in many developing countries, Indian democratic process serves roll model for nascent democratic countries to emulate. Notwithstanding the fact that ours is the largest democracy in the world, even larger than four major democracies put together, we cannot claim that our political arrangement is flawless. Persevering with the system, we have today far better understanding of what our democratic dispensation needs to be careful about or to avoid than what we knew during previous elections. A nation has to mature when it gives itself up to democratic arrangement.
What is uppermost in the mind of ordinary voter in the context of forthcoming parliamentary elections is the looming shadow of corruption. People ask the simple question that if democracy is the best known form or the most humane government, why it has failed in India to arrest corruption and eradicate this malaise lock, stock and barrel. Why have our elected representatives let us down? These are pertinent questions and the people are within their right to seek answer. To be very honest, the fault essentially lies with us and not with the representatives. It is the voter who decides his own fate and the fate of the entire nation. Therefore the foremost requirement of a democracy is that the voters are well educated and politically conscious of the great responsibility falling on the shoulder of each voter. The job of political activists, of whom there is no dearth with any mainstream political party, is to educate the voter on the pros and cons of voting for or against a certain candidate. The government has gone to the extent of allowing the voters the choice of not casting their vote in favour or against a candidate who it feels would not be able to deliver the goods. The responsibility of countrymen is to ensure the sanctity of this enviable and rare gift called democracy.
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