Icheoku says to say that the ongoing elections in India is the biggest mass mobilization of humans on planet earth is akin to admitting that the night is dark. It is simply obvious that getting 800 million voters out of the over 850 million registered voters to cast their ballots, in an election phased into nine and spanning six weeks is one such mammoth effort.
The Indian electoral commission it would seem have mastered the art of conducting elections so well that they do this with relative ease all things considered; spreading same through six weeks to efficiently use the much needed 10 million poll workers and security personnel needed to midwife such exercise and enabling them to concentrate their effort one phased election constituency or area at a time. These people man 930,000 polling stations and 2 million voting booths, using 3.6 million electronic voting machines and also ensure that not more than 1,500 Indians use one booth and that no voter have to go more than 1.2 miles to find his/her polling station. Then add the ballot boxes, ballot papers and indelible ink for thumb-inking and we are talking about a real exercise of monumental proportion.
Icheoku therefore queries if India could pull this feat off despite their peculiarities including a very geographically challenged environment, some so inhospitable that one such voter has to have his ballots air-dropped to him, why then cannot Jega of Nigerian Electoral Commission with less than 65 million voters, give Nigerians a hitch-free beautiful election? Your guess is as good as Icheoku's but suffice it to say it is indeed lamentable.
FYI:- other mind boggling facts about India.
It is interesting to note that in this country of 1.3 billion human-beings that women pay men to marry them. That once a girl reaches the age of 24 without being married, her case is as good as foreclosed. In India, women outnumber men and because of this pregnant mothers now abort female fetuses in order to avoid paying dowry on their daughter to the very scarce men. India is a land of such complexities and so much poverty that Icheoku wonders why some Nigerians go there to die in the name of medical tourism. A country that is inundated by its own 700 million people living in poverty and you wonder what they have left for others - foreigners? India has only 37000 millionaires and a few billionaires and unlike in America where we are talking about the 1% rich, in India's it is in the negative percentile. India, a country of predominantly Hindus has over 100 million Catholics as well as millions of other religions practitioners including Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhas, animists etc. India's most famous person is Mahatma Gandhi.
It is interesting to note that in this country of 1.3 billion human-beings that women pay men to marry them. That once a girl reaches the age of 24 without being married, her case is as good as foreclosed. In India, women outnumber men and because of this pregnant mothers now abort female fetuses in order to avoid paying dowry on their daughter to the very scarce men. India is a land of such complexities and so much poverty that Icheoku wonders why some Nigerians go there to die in the name of medical tourism. A country that is inundated by its own 700 million people living in poverty and you wonder what they have left for others - foreigners? India has only 37000 millionaires and a few billionaires and unlike in America where we are talking about the 1% rich, in India's it is in the negative percentile. India, a country of predominantly Hindus has over 100 million Catholics as well as millions of other religions practitioners including Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhas, animists etc. India's most famous person is Mahatma Gandhi.
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