ELECTIONS '98
COMMENTARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ARCHIVES
ELECTIONS '96

How to rig elections: A Primer

Prem Panicker

"Mulayam to kya hai, ek pehelwan, his brains are in his muscles. As for Laloo Yadav, woh to lallu hi hai!"

It is well past midnight as the car I am in races down the highway from Pathankot to Jalandhar. And I am conscious of a chill -- not from the late night air, but from the conversation of the man seated beside me.

He is a senior functionary of the youth wing of a political party with national-level ambitions. And he is, with what for me is a stupefying calm, giving me a basic primer in how to rig an election.

And what is truly frightening about it is that there is never, in his face or word or gesture, any indication that he is aware that the sum of what he is telling me amounts to a total subversion of the democratic process.

The conversation in fact began innocently enough. Everywhere I had gone in the Punjab, whether town or village, I had come across this strange phenomenon, wherein the state government's flagship project was the one that was actually turning the voters against it.

The ruling Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party regime in Punjab had decreed that free power would be provided to all farmers for their pumpsets, borewells et al. However, the fallout was that in order to foot the bills, the rates for domestic power consumption had to be hiked -- which meant that while the big farmers benefitted, the smaller ones and Joe Citizen ended up paying a hefty 30 per cent extra.

Sort of reminds you of Muhammad Bin Tughlak's various reforms, that. So, I ask, do you suppose the anti-incumbent factor will work here, given this situation?

No, he tells me, it is actually advantageous fighting an election if you are in power in the state. Easier to fix a poll, he says casually.

It conjures visions of goon squads marching into polling booths, taking them over -- a la incidents, from recent history, in the likes of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

It is that thought of mine that draws my companion's indictment of the "brainlessness" of what I guess can be called the Laloo-Mulayam style of rigging.

"That kind of thing attracts the notice of the Election Commission, a repoll is ordered, they flood the place with security and observers and you are in trouble," he tells me. "But there are far subtler ways of doing it, especially in rural areas."

Give me a for-instance, I ask.

"Well, if the government is in your hands, it is easy, first, to bring pressure on the local village leaders -- you squeeze them a bit, hold out a monetary carrot, and ensure that he does what you want him to."

Which is?

"Well, in every village, you know for sure who your hardcore supporters are. You identify them, and ensure that the village head knows who they are. And they are the ones who will fix things for you."

How?

"It is easy to identify the polling officers -- the lists are there, with the government, you get a copy well in advance, and lean on them a bit. Mostly they are local government servants, school teachers, people like that, leading little lives, afraid to buck the system, glad of any carrot you can give."

That, he tells me, is the underpinning. What follows is apparently mathematical.

The voting slips of the chosen are marked with a little secret sign, which the polling officer concerned is clued in to.

"They go to vote only after say 3, 3.30 pm -- haven't you noticed how, in many booths, there will be almost no polling through the day and then, suddenly, there's this big queue?"

Why the last minute thing, I ask. So that the polling officer knows who has voted and which votes remain to be cast, is the explanation.

"So when the polling officer sees a voting slip marked in the special way, he knows what to do, he takes not one ballot paper but five, six, and hands it to the voter, who stamps them all and pushes them into the box. How is anyone to know? It is not overt, like taking over a booth -- here, the guy goes into the voting booth holding what looks like one ballot paper, but is actually several, and there is no one looking over his shoulder as he quietly stamps them!"

The entire process, apparently, is well thought out, finely honed to the smallest detail.

Thus, the number of ballots each of the select voters gets is determined by how many un-cast votes remain.

Then how come there is no 100 per cent polling, I ask.

"Because care is taken to ensure against it," I am told. "When a constituency records 100 per cent polling, the EC gets suspicious. Generally, legitimate polling is just around the 40 per cent mark. So care is taken not to push it beyond say 60, 65 per cent -- and anyway, that many bogus votes is enough to make sure the candidate in question wins, so why risk a repoll?"

In areas where the sentiment is predominantly anti-the ruling party, he tells me, stronger measures are sometimes called for. Such as the switching of ballot boxes.

What of the seals, the armed escort, and such?

"If the state government is with you," he asks, with seeming contempt for my naivete, "how difficult is it to duplicate the seal, to bribe the escort? The van drives off with the sealed boxes, at a selected point en route it stops, the boxes are substituted and when the van reaches its destination, no one can see anything amiss. It is all very simple really," he tells me in the most matter of fact tone imaginable.

The car speeds on into the night. And I sit there, thinking of all the reams of copy I have either written, or subbed, down the years.

Informed analysis of voting patterns. Predictions based on percentage of polling, which used to hold that low to medium polling benefits the Congress (now, perceived wisdom is that it benefits the BJP) while high percentages argue an anti-incumbent bias among the electorate.

And so on, ad nauseum.

All very well reasoned out. And, I realise, about as useful as yesterday's refuse.

General election, in the "world's greatest democracy"?

Call it, rather, the Great Indian Dope Trick!

Elections '98

Tell us what you think of this report