NEW DELHI – India’s gargantuan election, the biggest in history, kicked offon Thursday with Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking a second term fromthe South Asian behemoth’s 900 million voters.
Opinion polls put 68-year-old Modi as the favourite, but he faces a toughchallenge from two scions of India’s storied Nehru-Gandhi dynastyattempting to capitalise on his poor record on jobs and rural poverty.
Because of the vastness of India, the election will be held in sevenphases, from the tea plantations of Darjeeling to the slums of Mumbai tothe tropical Andaman Islands, and everywhere in between.
Security forces were on high alert due to the perennial danger of violenceat election time, with five people including a local lawmaker killed in anambush by suspected Maoist rebels this week.
Online too a war rages with social media awash with disinformation, fakenews, trolls and bots in Facebook and WhatsApp’s biggest market where theworld’s cheapest data tariffs have fuelled a smartphone boom.
Thousands of parties and candidates will run for office between now and May19 in 543 constituencies across the nation of 1.3 billion people, withresults not due until May 23.
Some of the 1.1 million electronic voting machines will be transportedthrough jungles and carried up mountains, including to a hamlet near theChinese border with just one voter.
Phase one on Thursday sees some 142 million people able to cast ballots.
Polling stations in northeastern states like Arunachal Pradesh borderingChina were the first to open followed by parts of Uttar Pradesh in thenorth, Jammu and Kashmir in the Himalayas and Telangana in the south.
In Assam in the northeast, queues began forming 45 minutes before votingbegan, including many young people — there are 84 million first-timevoters in this election — visibly excited about taking part.
“It’s a great feeling to cast the vote, which makes me a part of thedemocratic system and makes me responsible for electing a good leader whocan run the country,” Anurag Baruah, 23, told AFP.
– ‘Good days’ –
Modi appealed in an early-morning tweet to his almost 47 million followerson voters to “turn out in record numbers and exercise their franchise.”
Modi and his right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept to power in 2014with their famous promise of “achhe din” (“good days”), becoming the firstparty to win an absolute majority in 30 years.
Critics say the BJP has since sought to impose a Hindu agenda on India,emboldening attacks on Muslims and low-caste Dalits trading in beef — cowsbeing holy for Hindus — and re-writing school textbooks.
Modi has simplified the tax code and made doing business easier but some ofhis promises have fallen short, particularly in rural areas where thousandsof indebted farmers have killed themselves in recent years.
Growth in Asia’s third-biggest economy has been too slow to provide jobsfor the roughly one million Indians entering the labour market each month,and unemployment is reportedly at its highest since the 1970s.
Rahul Gandhi, 48, hoping to become the latest prime minister from hisdynasty — and aided by sister Priyanka — has accused Modi of causing a”national disaster”.
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Gandhi’s Congress party appeared last year to profit from voterdissatisfaction, winning in December three key state elections, chippinginto Modi’s core support base in the Hindi-speaking heartland of northernIndia.
– ‘Empty suit’ –
Gandhi, the great-grandson, grandson and son of three past premiers, hasgrown in stature since being derided in leaked US diplomatic cables in 2007as an “empty suit”.
Election adverts show him hugging an emaciated peasant woman, whileCongress’s leftist manifesto pledges to end abject poverty by 2030 and givecash transfers to 50 million families.
But Modi and the BJP’s formidable campaign juggernaut — the 68-year-oldhas been addressing three rallies a day in the campaign — will be nopushover, promising a $1.4-trillion infrastructure blitz.
Playing to its Hindu base, the BJP has also committed to building a grandtemple in place of a Muslim mosque demolished by Hindu mobs in the northerncity of Ayodhya in 1992.
But most importantly, India’s latest military altercation with arch-rivalPakistan in February has allowed Modi to portray himself as the “chowkidar”(“watchman”) protecting mother India.
“Nationalism is our inspiration and inclusion and good governance is ourmantra,” Modi, whose stern bearded face stares out from ubiquitous posters,said at the launch of his manifesto.
But opinion polls are notoriously unreliable in India and much will dependon the BJP’s performance in several key states, in particular Uttar Pradeshand West Bengal.
“It’s difficult to predict,” said Parsa Venkateshwar Rao, a veteranjournalist and political commentator.
“It reminds me of 2004 when (premier Atal Bihari) Vajpayee and the BJP lostwhen everyone expected them to win,” he told AFP.
Opinion polls put Prime Minister Narendra Modi in front and likely to win asecond term
Once a poor tea seller, now India’s prime minister is running for a secondterm
The election will be held in seven phases
Thousands of parties and candidates will run for office between now and May19 in 543 constituencies across the nation of 1.3 billion
Opinion polls put Modi (R) as the favourite but he faces a tough challengefrom Rahul Gandhi (L), of the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty. APP/AFP
