Online or E-voting in India: An idea whose time has come

If we are banking and shopping online, why can’t we vote online?

For the largest and vibrant democracy that is India, we have made a smooth transition from paper ballot to electronic voting machines (EVMs.) The EVMs were first used on a trial basis in 50 polling stations of Parur Assembly Constituency of Kerala in May 1982. Since November 1998, EVMs have been used in each and every general- and bye-election to Parliamentary and Assembly constituencies in the country. India can proudly claim to have turned into an e-democracy in the 2004 General Elections when 10.75 lakh EVMs were used across all polling stations in the country. Today, EVMs are used in all elections without exception.

If we could embrace EVMs long before the world did, there is no reason why we cannot graduate to e-voting now. It goes without saying that it cannot be accomplished overnight, not least because internet penetration is not uniform throughout the country yet. Only about 200 million of the 800-odd million voters in India today have access to internet and only half of the 200 million are reported to be active on social media. But it is in vogue in some countries and it could become a reality in India, too. Switzerland and Estonia are good examples of how technology can be put to best use for voting. Estonia, in particular, introduced online voting in 2005: All that voters there had to do was to prove their identities using an electronic national identity card in order to be able to vote online. Norway is another European country that harnesses the power of technology in conducting elections; it even allows the less tech-savvy voters among them to vote telephonically.

In the UK, its Electoral Commission has said that reforms such as allowing internet voting should be considered to engage younger voters who are turning out in declining numbers. Only about 44 per cent of the eligible voters in the UK under the age of 25 exercised their franchise, according to some polls. Jenny Watson, the head of the Electoral Commission in the UK, is reported to have said that “we plan to look at a variety of options [such as e-voting], assessing how they will help citizens engage more effectively.” She explained her decision thus: “By doing so we could by proxy help address some of the issues with turnout, particular amongst an increasingly disenfranchised younger generation[.] Unless our electoral system keeps pace with the way many voters live the rest of their lives – where the way they bank and the way they shop has been transformed – it risks being seen as increasingly alien and outdated, particularly to young voters as they use it for the first time.” The Electoral Commission in the UK plans to launch online voter registration this year.

Online voting has its benefits: For instance, it could encourage more young voters to exercise their franchise, thereby increasing the voter turnout. The Election Commission of India is already overseeing the implementation of the Systematic Voters Education and Electoral Participation(SVEEP) scheme for the last few years in order to encourage more voters, particularly women, first-time voters and voters living in remote areas, to exercise their franchise. According to the Election Commission, more than two crore voters in the country are aged between 18 and 19 years. Out of a total of 81-odd crore voters in the country, 2.3 crore are between 18-19 years, thus constituting 2.8 per cent of the national electorate. Also, e-voting could come in handy for the defence personnel who otherwise have to rely on postal ballot. “Transmission time can be cut down if blank ballot papers are sent electronically, providing more time for their return. Better still would be to develop online voting and what better way than to provide it to the group that deserves it the most? We certainly owe it to our Armed forces personnel to do all that is possible to enable them to exercise their franchise,” wrote Mr N Gopalaswami, a former chief election commissioner, in a signed newspaper article. He was referring to the Supreme Court directing the Election Commission (EC) to allow defence personnel to vote as general voters in peace stations. In the future, online voting could benefit non-resident Indians (NRIs), too, after making the required legislative and/or logistical amendments.

Online voting is not without its concerns, though. Fears of rigging or manipulation abound. Also, insulating it from hackers and cyber-criminals could pose a challenge but it is not insurmountable. The Aadhaar card devised by the Unique Identification Authority of India can be among other things a valid proof of identity for online voting.

Fortunately for India, its Election Commission has not been one to shy away from putting technology to use. According to reports, it plans to webcast voting live from some of the 1.4 million-odd polling stations in the country in this year’s general elections. The move will help the EC to keep a check on sensitive polling stations. In the past, it has co-opted technology to make Indian elections free, fair and transparent.

So to come back to my original question: If we can bank and shop online, why indeed can’t we vote online?

Author's Note:
You may also like to read:
1. Polls 2014: EC mulling option to allow NRIs to vote via the net in future; and
2. Indian expats divided over option of voting online

Shades of grey in India-Sri Lanka ties: Time for reshaping India's neighbourhood policy

This article was published by www.rediff.com on 28 March 2014 under the headline "Time for reshaping India's neighbourhood policy" and by www.atimes.com on 31 March 2014 under the headline "UN vote shows strains in Delhi's diplomacy":

President Mahinda Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India

Abstaining from voting on a UNHRC resolution on Sri Lanka was dictated as much by necessity and self-preservation as by a desire to place bilateralism at the front and centre of New Delhi’s ties with Colombo, says Ramesh Ramachandran.

In a departure from its hitherto familiar voting pattern on United Nations Human Rights Council resolutions critical of Sri Lanka, India on Thursday abstained from casting its vote on the resolution that approved an independent international investigation into certain alleged war crimes and gross human rights violations committed by the government of Sri Lanka during the 2009 civil war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

The customary ‘explanation of vote’ by the permanent representative of India to the UN offices in Geneva said, among other things, that: 

* “In asking the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to investigate, assess and monitor the human rights situation in Sri Lanka, the resolution ignores the progress already made by the country in this field and places in jeopardy the cooperation currently taking place between the government of Sri Lanka and the OHCHR and the council’s special procedures. Besides, the resolution is inconsistent and impractical in asking both the government of Sri Lanka and the OHCHR to simultaneously conduct investigations”;

* “India believes that it is imperative for every country to have the means of addressing human rights violations through robust national mechanisms. The council’s efforts should therefore be in a direction to enable Sri Lanka to investigate all allegations of human rights violations through comprehensive, independent and credible national investigative mechanisms and bring to justice those found guilty. Sri Lanka should be provided all assistance it desires in a cooperative and collaborative manner”; and

* “It has been India’s firm belief that adopting an intrusive approach that undermines national sovereignty and institutions is counterproductive.”

After having voted for the UNHRC resolutions on Sri Lanka in 2012 and 2013, India’s abstention this year is indicative of a course correction in New Delhi’s engagement with Colombo that is aimed at retrieving the ground lost in the intervening years, burnishing India’s credentials as a relevant player in the island nation’s affairs and signalling a return to bilateralism as the centrepiece of India-Sri Lanka ties (not necessarily in that order).

If India’s support for the resolutions in the previous years exposed an utter bankruptcy of ideas on how to engage with Sri Lanka (thereby implicitly admitting to a failure on the part of New Delhi to either influence the course of events or bring about the desired change in Colombo’s disposition), the abstention should be seen as a belated attempt to pull the relationship back from the brink.

Of course, it helped that the reaction from the regional parties was muted this year and that gave New Delhi extra room for manoeuvre, enabling it in the process to regain its voice vis-a-vis the states on foreign policy matters.

It needs to be said here that India cannot claim to adhere to a consistent policy towards Sri Lanka. First it nurtured the LTTE and burnt its fingers in the process. Then it extended a tacit support to Colombo -- before, during and after the end of the Sri Lankan civil war in May 2009 -- only to later, in its wisdom, support the UNHRC resolution piloted by the United States. The 2013 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting summit in Sri Lanka was as much in the news for the renewed focus on the human rights record of the host nation as for the decision by the prime minister of India not to take part in it. In his stead it was left to External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid to lead the Indian delegation for the biennial event of the 53-nation Commonwealth.

In a letter of regret that was hand-delivered to President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Singh informed Rajapaksa of his inability to attend personally but he did not assign any reasons for it. Suffice it to say that a careful reading of the history of India-Sri Lanka relations would make it evident to just about anyone that India’s policy towards this island-nation in the Indian Ocean can be described as consistently inconsistent, characterised by myopia and self-inflicted crises.

For the ministry of external affairs, what should be particularly worrying is the erosion in India’s standing, in what it calls, its sphere of influence. The recent debate over which way India should vote on a UNHRC resolution on Sri Lanka is instructive to the extent that it illustrated how far India has come from being an influential actor in its neighbourhood to being a marginal or fringe player.

Put simply (not simplistically), some of the key questions were: Is it advisable for New Delhi to vote for the resolutions and risk losing whatever goodwill and leverage it might have had with Colombo? Should not all other options have been exhausted before India (figuratively) threw in the towel and (literally) threw in its lot with the West? Thursday’s abstention has partially answered that question. However, there remains another worry:

The protestations from Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa and her rival and DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi over India’s vote on Sri Lanka in 2012, coming as they did a few months after West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee ‘vetoed’ an agreement on the sharing of the Teesta river waters with Bangladesh, injected a certain degree of dissonance in the conduct of foreign policy. What fuelled the diplomats’ anxiety was the precedent that would be set if the Centre caved in or succumbed to the states on matters that fell in the Union Government’s realm. Already, India’s engagement of Pakistan on one hand and China and Burma on the other are determined to an extent by the domestic conditions prevalent in Jammu and Kashmir and the north-eastern states, respectively. 

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh betrayed his frustration when he said in the Lok Sabha that difficult decisions were getting more difficult because of coalition compulsions. He called for bipartisanship in the interest of the country. At the same time, what cannot be denied is that there exists a view among a section of serving and former practitioners of diplomacy that devolution of foreign policy to more stakeholders than what is currently assumed should not be entirely unwelcome.

As a former foreign secretary told this writer, “Foreign policy today is made not only in New Delhi but elsewhere, too. There are multiple stakeholders and one can’t deny states a say in foreign policy if it relates to them.” In other words, it is argued that if the states assert their rights and/or seek more consultations, then the Centre must respect those sentiments.

Having said that, an impression seems to be gaining ground, erroneously at that, that foreign policy is the worst sufferer of this nouveau phenomenon of the states having their say in matters pertaining to foreign policy. A cursory look at recent years would show that the states have consistently been vocal on a host of other issues, too. The recent examples of certain states or regional parties opposing the policy of raising the cap on FDI (foreign direct investment) in single-brand retail is a case in point. As is the opposition to the Centre’s proposal for setting up a National Counter Terrorism Centre.

In some of these cases New Delhi chose to yield, albeit temporarily, but in some others it had its way. Therefore, it would not be accurate to suggest that regional influences are wielding a ‘veto’ over New Delhi. Also, it would not be fair to either paint the states as villains of the piece or to apportion all the blame for the Centre’s foreign policy woes to regional parties that are, or could be, aligned against it in the political arena.

For instance, the Centre accuses the West Bengal government headed by the Trinamool Congress party of scuttling a river waters sharing agreement with Bangladesh. However, the Congress, which heads the ruling coalition at the Centre and also in Kerala, is guilty of playing to narrow political sentiments, too, as was evidenced by the state government’s and the party’s stand on the two Italian marines who are facing murder charges for the deaths of two Indian fishermen off the Kerala coast.

On balance, it is time for reshaping India’s neighbourhood policy in a manner that it reflects the broadest possible national consensus on the way forward in reshaping ties with countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Nepal, Bangladesh, Maldives, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. A reset is imperative, irrespective of which coalition forms the next government in New Delhi. India can ill-afford a Pavlovian foreign policy.

Equally, framing India’s foreign policy options as a binary choice can be self-defeating. There needs to be a dispassionate debate and a greater appreciation of various shades of grey (pun unintended.)

After the 2006 vote against Iran, India abstains on Syria, but questions remain

(L) President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, and, on the right, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano

New Delhi

10 June 2011

India abstained in Thursday's (9 June 2011) vote in the International Atomic

Energy Agency (IAEA), which decided to report Syria to the United Nations security

council (UNSC) over its alleged covert nuclear programme.

The 35-member board of governors of the Vienna-based UN nuclear watchdog decided by

a 17-to-six vote, with 11 abstentions, to refer Syria to the UNSC for building an

undeclared nuclear reactor at a site in Dair Alzour (which was unilaterally destroyed by

Israel in 2007), for not allowing the IAEA to carry out investigations, and for not adhering

to its safeguards agreements.

The last time the IAEA reported a member-state to the UNSC was Iran in February 2006.

India's votes against Iran had been widely criticised at home, but Thursday's abstention

did not go unchallenged either.

A section of the official circles described India's decision to abstain, and to not cast a 'no

vote' along with Russia and the others, as being dictated by a desire to keep the US and

Israel in good humour. It felt that the IAEA vote was meant to bully President Bashar al-

Assad of Syria into submission and to set in motion a process to effect a regime change

(similar to Libya) in order to disrupt the Syria-Iran axis.

However, New Delhi defended itself by maintaining that states were required to comply

with safeguards obligations and it has consistently been against clandestine

proliferation. At the same time, it pointed out, scope for dialogue should be fully utilised.

The IAEA's referral of Syria to the UNSC should be seen in the context of the attempts by

the West to push for a UNSC resolution condemning Syria's crackdown on protesters.

With Russia indicating that it might veto any such UNSC resolution against Syria, New

Delhi was of the opinion that putting it to vote in the 15-member UNSC, of which India is a

non-permanent member, would be pointless.

In Thursday's vote, 17 countries voted for reporting Syria to the UNSC. They were: the

US, the UK, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Singapore, Germany, Italy, Japan, South

Korea, Australia, Belgium, Cameron, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, and the UAE.

Six countries voted against the motion: China, Russia, Pakistan, Ecuador, Venezuela

and Azerbaijan. India and 10 other countries abstained, which included Argentina, Brazil,

Chile, South Africa, Peru, Jordan, Kenya, Niger, Tunisia, and Ukraine. Mongolia was absent from the vote.