Why India votes is more interesting than who India votes for

The approach of an election means our media explodes into a frenzy of speculation about who will form the government, who will ally with whom, who will get how many seats. But the most interesting thing about Indian elections is not whether the electorate will swing towards Narendra Modi or whether Arvind Kejriwal is the big spoiler. It's the fact that India votes in such huge numbers.Dr. Mukulika Banerjee is the author of Why India Votes? and teaches at the London School of Economics. She spoke to Firstpost at the Jaipur Literature Festival.

What is the scale of an Indian election like the one coming up this year?

The size of our electorate is about 720 million voters. This is larger than the combined electorate of North America, Australia and Europe. So it's vast. We use 1 million Electronic Voting Machines, 8 million polling booths, 2 million election officials. It's on an absolutely phenomenal scale. When a national election happens it is the largest humanly organized event in the world. It's more or less peaceful and free and fair. One must not take away from the fact that a lot is wrong about the kind of money that is spent, The people it keeps out and the rise of paid news. But actually in the conduct of elections it's quite remarkable.

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Why is it surprising that India votes?

It is surprising because it's unlike all the mature western democracies. In countries like Australia and Greece it's compulsory. But look at the UK, USA, France and others. Our national averages are comparable to theirs. But what makes it interesting is when you take out from the national average the urban educated figures, the rest of the country votes in even higher numbers. The poor vote more than the rich. So while our voter turnouts are comparable, the trend of our voter turnout is actually on the rise while in the west there is a very real concern about voter apathy.

The second thing is the more local the election the greater the turnout. That again is very unusual compared to other democracies. Thirdly the number of men and women in India when it comes to voting are about equal. These are the startling trends.

So why does the mature democracy tend not to vote?

They are thinking about planning a study in Britain around this... about why do people not vote. We do know from anecdotal evidence that people have to feel invested. They have to have a sense of ownership of the system. Otherwise they will feel no need to engage.

I have been stressing about the idea of citizenship being very important. What is citizenship? It's being able to imagine part of a collectivity that's much larger than one person. They have to imagine that if I do this as an individual I am creating something that's much bigger than me. It's this sense of participation, this sense of belonging that you have to have. It's a sense of duty and responsibility of what you need to do. And a sense of pride in being a citizen of having this right that has been given to you by the constitution that you need to fulfill.

You say part of the reason people fulfill this right is the peer pressure of the inked finger. What do you mean by that?

I was talking about the peer pressure in small-knit communities where people care and poke their noses into each others' lives all the time. If you haven't voted and you don't have ink on your fingers everybody asks you why you have not voted. And people feel it's easier to go and vote than to constantly answer questions about why they didn't vote.

What happens in urban areas which are less tightly-knit in that way?

In fact trends in turnout in urban areas are going up. It's the highest ever voter turn out in Delhi we have ever seen. This time people felt they were part of something new and something could change.

What are the other reasons you have found why people do vote?

The second thing is because India is a country of such deep deep social inequality when there is one day in the calendar when they can experience what equality feels like, when it really does not matter what the colour of your skin is or what caste you come from, that is when you begin to realize that this is important.

But you also vote because you might get something - a tin roof or a road or a school. You vote because you are loyal to a party. You vote because you want to punish your party. Or you vote because you are such a neglected part of society you vote to legitimate your presence by marking that machine. By pressing that button I prove that I exist because nothing in government policy seems to remember that people like me exist.

If nothing in policy remembers that person exists, why do they keep coming back again and again to vote?

Well, they live in hope because they want governments to be reminded that they are failing in their duty and governments that don't perform are punished routinely. Also the act of voting itself has meaning, which we must begin to understand. For a lot of ordinary people the sense of pride and belonging that just going to the polling station brings actually has meaning.

What are you looking out for this coming Lok Sabha election?

It will be interesting. There has been a shift in terms of debate about whether people can participate more. There is talk about greater accountability. There is a sense that with the big national parties we know what they are about, is there going to be something else. If these things are in the air it will be interesting to see if we have a phenomenally higher turn out. And I will be very interested to see the figures of NOTA – how many people are using that option.