NEW DELHI: The scion of the Gandhi dynasty told Indians that the country’s “soul” was at stake yesterday, as millions braved the hot sun to vote on day one of the world’s biggest election.
Opinion polls put Prime Minister Narendra Modi as favourite to win, but he faces a possible backlash from India’s 900 million voters over unemployment and rural poverty.
Because of India’s vastness, yesterday marked just the first of seven phases in the election to take place from the tea plantations of Darjeeling to the slums of Mumbai to the tropical Andaman Islands, and everywhere in between.
Security forces were on high alert due to the perennial danger of violence at election time, with five people including a local lawmaker killed in an ambush by suspected Maoist rebels this week.
Online too, a war rages with social media awash with disinformation, fake news, trolls and bots in what is Facebook and WhatsApp’s biggest market, where the world’s cheapest data tariffs have fuelled a smartphone boom.
Thousands of parties and candidates will run for office between now and May 19 in 543 constituencies across the nation of 1.3 billion people, with results not due until May 23.
Some of the 1.1 million electronic voting machines will be transported through jungles and carried up mountains, including to a hamlet near the Chinese border with just one voter.
Phase one yesterday sees some 142 million people able to cast ballots.
Polling stations in north-eastern states like Arunachal Pradesh bordering China were the first to open, followed by parts of Bihar in the north – where women in multi-coloured saris queued – and Jammu and Kashmir in the Himalayas.
Modi appealed in an early-morning tweet to his almost 47 million followers on voters to “turn out in record numbers and exercise their franchise.”
Modi and his right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept to power in 2014 with their famous promise of “achhe din” (“good days”), becoming the first party to win an absolute majority in 30 years.
Critics say the BJP has since sought to impose a Hindu agenda on India, emboldening attacks on Muslims and low-caste Dalits trading in beef – cows are holy for Hindus – re-writing school textbooks and re-naming cities.
Modi has simplified the tax code and made doing business easier, but some of his promises have fallen short, particularly in rural areas where thousands of indebted farmers have killed themselves in recent years.
Rahul Gandhi, 48, hoping to become the latest prime minister from his dynasty – and aided by sister Priyanka – has accused Modi of causing a “national disaster”.
Gandhi’s Congress party appeared in December last year to profit from voter dissatisfaction, winning three key state elections and chipping into the BJP’s Hindi-speaking northern heartland.
Gandhi, the great-grandson, grandson and son of three past premiers, has grown in stature since being derided in leaked US diplomatic cables in 2007 as an “empty suit”.
Election adverts show him hugging an emaciated peasant woman, while Congress’s leftist manifesto pledges to end abject poverty by 2030 and give cash transfers to 50 million families.
But Modi and the BJP’s formidable campaign juggernaut – the 68-year-old has been addressing three rallies a day in the campaign – will be no pushover, promising a $1.4-trillion infrastructure blitz.
Playing to its Hindu base, the BJP has also committed to building a grand temple in place of a Muslim mosque demolished by Hindu mobs in the northern city of Ayodhya in 1992. – AFP
