India is the most populous country in the world, with more than 1.4 billion inhabitants (including me!). That’s 35 times more than Canada!!!
India is also a democratic country, meaning that all adults have the right to vote to elect members of Parliament, usually every five years.
In fact, in the last few weeks, India held an election. Organizing an election in India is a big deal. The numbers are staggering! This year, there were 969 million registered voters. 15 million people were hired to operate 3 million electronic voting machines in 1 million polling stations.
By law, all voters must be able to vote within 2 kilometers of their home. Employees have therefore had to trek for several hours or even several days to remote communities that live on top of a mountain or deep in the jungle. And all this… while transporting electronic voting machines, on their backs or on that of a donkey!
Unfortunately, during the last day of voting, a very intense heat wave cost the lives of more than thirty electoral employees…
In short, the conditions were very difficult.
Oh, but with all that, I still haven’t told you about the election results!
For the third time in a row, it was Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP (the “Indian People’s Party”, in French) which won the election.
He has been in power for 10 years and is what we call a “Hindu nationalist”. This means that according to him, Indian society should reflect the values of its religion, Hinduism, which is also that of 4 out of 5 Indians.
Mr. Modi’s opponents accuse him of discriminating against those who practice another religion, particularly Muslims. Since he has ruled India, violence against Muslims has increased significantly.
However, Narendra Modi’s victory was not as resounding as in the last two elections. For the first time in his political career, he will have to agree with politicians from other parties to pass laws. He will therefore have to learn to compromise!
Frédérick Lavoie, Les As correspondent in India
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