India tests democracy at poll booths today

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NEW DELHI, April 15 (Bernama): India's largest democracy in the world will be put to test when nearly 710 million people exercise their rights by casting votes in the five-phased national elections, beginning tomorrow.
After weeks of political wrangling, mud slinging, hate speeches compounded by two politically-motivated murders, the heated campaigns across India ended yesterday - perhaps, the most sullied campaigns in the highly politically-sensitised society.
"It's election fever all around, Indian democracy is a vibrant one as compared to some countries where elections are stage-managed. "Here, it is hard fought. It is a remarkable exhibition of democratic politics.
"Like any other election, this is an important one when the economy and security are of real concern. The new government has to grapple with it," B. G. Verghese, a visiting professor from the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research, told Bernama.
Behind a milieu of threatening economic slowdown, growing security risks, deepening communal divide despite India's secularism, caste-based politics and pressing rural poverty, Indians would decide the future political leadership of Asia's third largest economy over the next one month in the staggered-elections that end on May 13.
Rural and urban voters need to pick a stable pragmatic government that could steer India's modernisation policies, bolster foreign relations, stabilise the volatile South Asia region that is crucial for global peace, and ensure India, as a world's growing economic powerhouse, is able to throw its weight in the international arena.
The first phase of the 15th Lok Sabha or the Lower House election, to elect the 543 parliamentarians, is scheduled to kick off in Aurnachal Pradesh, Andaman and Nicobar Island, Chhatisgarh, Kerala, Lakshadweep, Meghalaya. Mizoram and Nagaland tomorrow morning.
Over 800,000 polling booths, plus over six million security personnel are fanned out across the country for the mammoth election.
About 1.3 million electronic machines are installed for the polls and four million staff hired to manage the world's largest elections.