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A figure worthy of a genuine gasp

Nearly three quarters of a billion people are eligible to vote in India's general election

It isn’t often that facts and figures bandied about by the press tend to shock me these days. By the time we were a few months into the financial crisis, a billion dollars here or there being used to bail out the banks barely triggered any reaction. It took the headline grabbing $1 trillion which emerged from the G20 meeting in London to make me sit up and acknowledge just quite what a pickle the world is in.

How is it that I have become so blasé about what are often genuinely extraordinary numbers? Perhaps, like many others, I simply struggle to process the endless stream jostling with each other for the front pages.

In spite of my inexcusably lethargic attitude I can’t help but be completely taken aback by some of the facts about the current election in India, the Commonwealth’s largest country and home to half its citizens.

With this election there is one figure in particular which amazes me.

It isn’t the 4,617 candidates standing in 543 constituencies, although these are clearly impressive statistics. Nor is it the 828,804 polling stations and 1,368,430 voting machines being used.

It is the 714 million eligible voters. That’s around one in nine people in the world who can vote in one election in just one of the world’s 190-odd countries! Little wonder that six and a half million staff are involved in the electoral process.

Wind the clocks back around six months and like everyone else in the world I couldn’t get enough of the American elections. And rightly so. We were witnessing history in the making as Barack Obama swept into office as arguably the most powerful person on the planet. As well as the candidates, it was the US electoral system, with all its idiosyncrasies and complexities, which was wonderful to witness. All told, just shy of 130 million people voted in this historic election.

How then, is there not more attention from all over the world being paid on India where it is expected that most of the three quarters of a billion eligible voters will go to the polls in an intriguing electoral process which has five stages and unfolds over a period of four weeks?

I know America clearly remains one of the main players in the world and as such it was understandable for such attention to be paid during its elections. But in an increasingly globalised world there are no longer a handful of industrialised countries which stand isolated as the economic powerhouses. There are a number of others that play a leading role and will no doubt continue to do so as the 21st century unfolds, not least Brazil, China, Russia and of course, India.

Some media establishments are doing an admirable job in covering India’s elections but even so. Surely as one of the emerging economic global heavyweights this election deserves more of our attention.

After all, India’s citizens are electing a government that will lead over 1.1 billion people – a sixth of the world’s population. This is a giant task for any leader and party and as such, for me, the 714 million eligible voters is, wait for it – gasp! - the worthy headline grabbing figure of the moment.

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