The world’s largest democracy, India, goes to election starting April 16, 2009. The month long general elections to the 15th Lok Sabha will be held in five phases on April 16, April 22, April 23, April 30, May 7 and May 13, and the results will be announced on May 16.
This is an important election for India, in the context of a series of terrorist attacks last year that shook up the country, and a worldwide financial crisis that threatens to derail its strong economic growth. However, even as analysts debate about the big issues that will shape the upcoming elections, they will do well to remember that India’s 714 million voters elect their 543 representatives based on small local and regional issues, instead of the big national issues.
This local nature of India’s national elections is at the core of India’s coalition politics. In the last decade, both Indian National Congress (Congress) and Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) have had to form coalitions consisting of several small regional parties. The BJP led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was in power from 1999 to 2004 under BJP leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The Congress led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) has been in power since 2004 under Congress party’s Manmohan Singh. Parties opposed to both the Congress and the BJP are also talking about forming a Third Front, but previous experience has shown that such coalitions tend to be fragile.
Both the alliances have announced their prime ministerial candidates. On December 11, 2007 the NDA announced that BJP party leader Lal Krishna Advani will be their candidate (BBC). It has built its campaign around L K Advani, with the slogan Kushal Neta, Nirnayak Sarkaar (able leader, decisive government) (IBNLive). On February 6, 2009, Congress leader Sonia Gandhi wrote in the Congress party magazine Sandesh that Manmohan Singh will be UPA’s candidate (IBNLive). Congress is using the Oscar winning soundtrack Jai Ho (let there be victory) from the movie Slumdog Millionaire as its official campaign tune (Financial Times), but its campaign seems to be more focused on Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi, than the official candidate Manmohan Singh. This, however, is in line with the Congress party’s long history of dependence on the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.
The election has already witnessed a controversial tussle between the outgoing Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) N. Gopalaswami and the incoming CEC Navin Chawla (Indian Express) and legal battles over alleged hate speech by BJP candidate Varun Gandhi (IBNLive). During the election period, we are sure to see the usual controversies that surround general elections in India: the use of government resources for campaigning, incidences of divisive and inflammatory rhetoric in campaign speeches, changes in the coalition alliances before, during and after the elections, and allegations of booth capturing and other irregularities during the elections.
In this special coverage on the 2009 Indian elections, the Global Voices team will capture the Indian blogosphere’s reactions to the campaigns and the controversies, and also highlight interesting digital initiatives to build a vibrant networked public sphere in India, get out the vote and build transparency into the election process. Stay tuned.
