India has certainly risen to the occasion and perhaps, even to the pole position in adopting the digital age. Since the launch of ‘Digital India’ and due to the continued focus of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on using technology to solve mammoth problems, India has been able to achieve some remarkable feats. More than 1 billion secured and useful identity provider, Aadhar Card, UPI transactions (record 3,874 crore transactions in 2021), more than 150 crore COVID vaccine doses administered using COWIN platform, showcase India’s prowess in digital and online world. This is, perhaps, a natural extension of this would be an online voting system in the world’s biggest democracy which is also endowed with a very young population.
Since the onset of Covid pandemic, the need to think of ways to hold activities that involve mass gathering differently is of paramount importance. Online polling, which has for so long just been talked about and possibilities of the right conduction of which have been discussed in pre-COVID time only too vaguely, has attained all the relevance and priority in the new-normal era. One encouraging example of success of experimenting online voting is the country of Estonia which held its and world’s first national Internet election, back in 2007, when a total of 30,275 citizens used the Internet to cast their vote. The popularity of online voting has gained a lot of momentum in Estonia, as in its 2019 parliamentary elections too, 43.75% of all participating voters voted via the Internet.
A country as densely populated and as largely diversified as India, could run the world’s largest vaccination drive with inspirational efficiency. This ability betokens India’s converged technological, cyber and digital furtherance. Additionally, the way the Aadhar project has been finished and being administratively maintained in the country, shows that with the right planning, the country can undertake tedious manual projects. Technologically, thus, India now seems to have reached a level where it can take a lead and think of developing a world-class Online Voting setup.
India has been one of the fortunate nations, where landline telephones have had a fleeting existence due to their direct leap to mobile phones, saving it a great deal of infrastructure cost, time and cutting the technological lag. Mobile adoption has aggressively contributed to the country’s digital progress. So much so that in 2019, over 73% of India’s total web traffic is said to have come from mobile phones. Internet penetration rate in India went up to nearly around 45 percent in 2021, from just about four percent in 2007. This advancement combined with Blockchain technology may become a global solution, unlocking a door to not just online elections, but also for creating secured global virtual fora, networking channels, cyber collaborations, and other unlimited spaces. Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora had recently affirmed that the Election Commission of India is working with IIT-Madras on using Blockchain Technology for remote voting and considerable development in that direction is expected by 2024 General Elections.
Given India’s rich history of being among the first nations to adopt major democratic shifts, whether it was the concept of universal adult franchise or introduction of EVMs, India may want to thus start experimenting in the domain of online voting too. It may start with letting Army staff and Election officers on duty itself to go online. Another set of testing may be performed during by-elections which are less tangled.
With digital voting, the existence of postal ballots may meet the same fate as landlines. With the success of the COWIN app that has been able to manage massive registrations (96,77,24,432 as on 10th January, 2022), record-keeping and rolling out the vaccination drive in the country, India has cracked a code for development, implementation and sustainability of technology. A similar technological platform for online voting may cater to not just voters within India, especially the working population, but also come as a cherished solution for NRI voters.
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