By Amit Roy
THE United States of America may be the most powerful country in the world but compared to India, its system of democracy does seem to be a work in progress.
American and British correspondents gushed that turnout in the 2020 US presidential election was the highest for over a century. In a country with 239.2 million people eligible to vote, the turnout was 66.9 per cent, the highest since 1900 when it was 73.7 per cent.
I looked up the figures for India and discovered that in the 2019 general election, with 911 million Indians eligible to vote, the turnout was 67.36, one per cent more than in 2014. This is remarkable given the level of poverty, illiteracy and a large rural population in India.
What is also remarkable is the speed with which the votes are counted in India, where losers accept the result without going through the “I was robbed” routine.
Americans also have this baffling electoral college which interposes an unnecessary barrier between the voter and their choice of president.
This is only partly a joke, but perhaps the Americans should hand over the running of their elections to India because they seem unable to do it themselves.
