By Rajendra Abhyankar
Rajendra Abhyankar, former Indian Ambassador, is currently The Asia Foundation’s Director of India Programs in New Delhi. He can be reached at rabhyankar@asiafound.org.
Observing from the welcome shade of a neem tree in the quadrangle of this school, I watched clusters of colorfully dressed women, undaunted by the 43 degree Celsius (109.4 degree Fahrenheit) temperatures, stride up to the polling centre. I was in Bhilwa, a small village on the edge of the Great Indian Desert in Rural Jaipur. India’s Election Commission had invited me – along with Election Commission officials from Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines – to witness the election process in this part of the country. As the women moved to vote, we were struck by the depth to which democracy has seeped into India’s polity. These women voters were part of the Dausa constituency, a region that has recently seen clashes between and protests by the region’s two main tribes, the Meenas and Gujjars.
The results of India’s mammoth, one-month-long General Elections were finally known on May 16th. 714 million Indians registered to vote; and 57 percent of them voted. This represents, in the democratic world, the acme of political mobilization and organizational complexity. The suspense and dire predictions of a hung Parliament are now over. All of the political parties were hoping to gain leverage in this election, yet the perceptive Indian voter has, once again, ignored the rhetoric of religion, caste, and personality and put stability and governance first.
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