India 'vote banks' threaten world's largest poll
Updated
The world's largest democracy, India, kicks off its five-part month-long general election today and the money spent is estimated to be in the billions of dollars. The controversy of so-called "vote banks" still overshadows Indian elections.
Presenter: Lily Yan
Speaker: Professor Swaran Singh, Nehru University in New Delhi; Professor Robin Jeffery, Australian National University
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LILY YAN: The song 'Jai Ho' was made famous by the movie Slumdog Millionaire but few expected it would play a role in India's general election. India's ruling party Congress has reportedly paid $US200,000 for exclusive rights to use it for their election campaign. This is just a tip of the iceberg. The election will cost an estimated $US2 billion, twice as much as the last election five years ago.
There are fears that much of this money will be used to buy votes from the poor, who might receive promises of work or gifts or even cash from contesting candidates. Professor Swaran Singh from Nehru University in New Delhi says the poor are used by political parties to boost voter turnout numbers in their favour and that has made the middle class and elite feel more detached from the ballot.
PROFESSOR SWARAN SINGH: Poor people in India are vulnerable to any kind of allurements, whether it is simple food, it is a piece of cloth, it is simply just go from city A to B which is free for them so all kind of allurements are utilised to transport more people and these are called "vote banks" in India and they're sort of facilitated to be brought to polling stations and the government vote for the candidate who is facilitating or providing these allurements. So it's kind of a festivity for them at that time where it's people who are aware and educated and middle class people, they are very often disillusioned by the fact that their one vote is not going to make a huge difference because somebody is going to bring truckloads of people to work for a particular party.
LILY YAN: But Professor Robin Jeffrey from the Australian National University does not agree. He's just back from India and says the election means a great deal to the poor and they exercise their rights carefully.
PROFESSOR ROBIN JEFFREY: Because they value their vote more. You'll often hear people say, 'I'm poor, I only have two things - I have my ration card and my vote'.
LILY YAN: Analysts have described the elections as the world's biggest carnival, they're simply huge. This election will run from 16 April to 13 May and the number of voters is expected to be 714 million - more than the entire population of any country in the world except China.
Professor Jeffrey says the sheer number and the diversity of the voters are beyond imagination.
PROFESSOR JEFFREY: So you imagine Australia, it's a big country, so it's like the size of Australia. But then add to Australia New Zealand and the differences of Kiwis, then add to Australia all the Pacific islands, add Papua New Guinea, then add Indonesia, then add the whole of mainland South East Asia and you're getting close to the size of the Indian electorate and the diversity that's contained in that electorate.
LILY YAN: But among millions, illiteracy is still a widespread problem. This means the argument over ideology or party policies can become less important than visual symbols, slogans or even songs like Jai Ho. Professor Singh again.
PROFESSOR SINGH: Other than the parties who are extreme left, there's hardly much of a difference as to the manifestos of most of the parties. In fact experts normally say any party to rule this country will have to be centrist party because that can get maximum number of endorsements and people voting for them.
LILY YAN: But Professor Singh says this will change as the younger generations become more and more active in India's political scenes.
PROFESSOR SINGH: In mid-1990s we have a young prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, and he did changes in the way we work here. So apparently there's a huge number of younger voters who are eligible to vote and which means these are people who are relatively ambitious, less disillusioned, they want to see change, they want to use their right of voting. Also large number of younger people for last 10 years have started entering politic and entering Indian legislature. So this whole change is very, very visible and therefore I think they're the people who are going to make a change.
