This is not vox populi electoral democracy. In fact, democracy in India has been hacked. Yuval Noah Harari’s scientific prediction of algorithm hacking organism as stated in his world famous book, Homo Deus, has already arrived in India. So soon! Many thinking people in India, in particular of Andhra Pradesh were dismayed at the results of 2019 general elections; but silently wrapped up themselves to keep quiet, probably for the reason that they lack patent evidence or proof and fail to understand the programming of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).
As a student of MTech in Information Technology, it’s understandably stated that any technology is hackable because it’s the handiwork of humans. Marvellous intellectual potential, that is a factor of human thought process advanced to this stage over a period of 70,000 years as Homo Sapiens. Those acquainted with even a little bit of programming can understand that one step of instruction in the source code may be tampered to add a fixed percentage of votes, say twenty percent extra to the desired party, by which that will sweep over other parties. This way, the winning winnable candidates would be those scoring more than the desired party. The chances of other prospective party, if at all, would be slim.
This might be one paradigm – hacking or tampering endeavoured to benefit a particular party. The voice or vote of the public is snubbed successfully and the entire democratic process of gathering public voice is bulldozed to the demise of democracy which makes its presence cognizable only through free and fair elections. The Election Commission behaved outrageously to outwit one party in rejecting their appeals and passed orders without minimum verification of the factual ground realities. People were given a chance, valid enough, to suspect the bonafides of the Constitutional body.
I have never witnessed, in fact anybody in Andhra Pradesh, has never observed such a terrible performance of a State Election Commissioner. He may not be honest but he should appear to be honest in the eyes of the public! The people must’ve reminisced the days of TN Seshan, who was a path-breaker and trailblazer during the 1990s as Chief Election Commissioner. That was the power of an IAS officer, against the present breed of IAS who are shamelessly hobnobbing and debauching with politicians. We hold them in high esteem but they are presenting their ignoble character to amass wealth along with other corrupt bugs in the society.
One instance quoted in a book by TSR Subramanian when he was Chief Secretary of Uttar Pradesh is resounding while writing this article: the Election conducted once the President’s Rule lifted one year after the Babri Masjid demolition. Mulayam Singh Yadav returned to power with thumping majority and assumed office as Chief Minister. The Chief Secretary mentioned to the CM that the latter has liberty to choose his Chief Secretary and if suggested so, TSR was ready to leave that post. Mulayam looked surprised. He said, there was no question of asking TSR to leave and added that he owed his post of Chief Minister entirely to TSR.
TSR admitted that he couldn’t understand his words, being quixotic rather that a CM owed his post to a CS. Then CM explained that the CS organised a tight, efficient and impartial election process, clean and safe Election conducted that year were mainly responsible for his coming to power. That was how a CS was credited for doing his duty with integrity. TSR narrates on another occasion as to how Mulayam as CM commented the IAS gathering in an annual function:
“Why do you come and touch my feet? Why do you come and lick my shoes? Why do you come to me for personal favours? When you do so, I will do as you desire and then extract my price from you.”
What more chastisement do the IAS deserve, always stooped in craving for their promotions, their transfers and postings, their international travel, VIP privileges and facilities, never bothering about the common citizens, always sitting in the AC rooms attending only to the calls of ministers, no field visits to learn the ground realities of India . They ought to read Philip Mason’s The Men Who Ruled India to learn how the IAS is now reduced to a defamed organisation.
It’s reported that the VVPAT screened the voted marking for only three seconds instead of seven seconds as per the mandate. This is one instance to say that EVMs are influenced. Again, the counted votes are far exceeding the polled votes, which is another instance to endorse my surmise that programming is tampered. If the Election Commission is correct in their duties, they should come forward to clean dirty linen off their hands.
The Lagadapati Survey sounds to be correct, because the data he gathered is out of his team’s interaction with the voters, not with lifeless EVMs and therefore it can’t said that he failed in his psephological venture. There’s no reason in his renouncing his beautiful hobby provided he ensures that the next elections would be conducted with the ballot box.
Pawan Kalyan, the chief of a party, withdrew himself to be silent when he was declared defeated, whereas he has the personality of someone to yell on top of a vehicle, only to be joined by thousands of his fans. It’s now time that he should come on to the streets and start fighting for replacing EVMs with ballot boxes. The only malady with ballot boxes is the vulnerability of booth-capturing which can be checkmated effectively by strengthening the security personnel massively. Moreover, ballot boxes are in tune with a Cave Man principle which the world famous physicist Michio Kaku propounds as follows:
“Whenever there’s a conflict between modern technology and the desires of our primitive ancestors, these primitive desires win each time. That is the Cave Man principle. For example, the Cave Man always demanded ‘proof of the kill.’ It was never enough to boast about the big one that got away. Having the fresh animal in our hands was always preferable to the tales of one that got away. Similarly, we want hard copy whenever we deal with files. We instinctively don’t trust the electrons floating in our computer screen , so we print our e-mails and reports, even when it’s not necessary. That’s why the paperless office never came to be …. This is the reason cyber tourism never got off the ground…”
Several such instances which don’t encourage technology in matters like voting, where the voter would have the fulfilment that they recorded their voice on a ballot paper which is visible and tamper-proof and subsequently to the hand-counting.
Chandrababu Naidu need not analyse these election results; it’s not based on his performance the past five years. The 2019 election results are conjectured as manipulated. During my interaction with many people, every one expressed wonder and bewilderment. Jagan Mohan Reddy won the battle, but the debacle of Naidu’s loss is the handiwork of the invisible hand. Naidu had to work for thorough investigation of the entire election process. Now, he has to reinvent and rejuvenate himself, to grow up creatively to know the ground realities, instead of banking on second or third hand information.
After all, he’s the iconic politician who provided employment opportunities to lakhs of software engineers here and abroad. The coming generations are now placed in a Kafkaesque situation when the very technology which Naidu brought into governance has defeated him through malicious means.
Failure has several fathers, success will have only one. Talk is wild that CBN committed this and omitted that, did this and didn’t do that; it’s natural as people tend to be gullible. It’s nothing wrong to take this as an occasion for soul-searching; every government will have faults. It doesn’t mean that there are just one set of reasons for his defeat. Our leaders, political or otherwise, being highly conditioned psychologically, cannot function as human beings per se with total integrity. Our leaders are still living in medieval mindsets with superstitions, obscurantism and what not. This weakens them in their own administration. The leaders at the helm of affairs are damaging the very image of India by slaughtering the voice of the people this way. If people lose their confidence in the election system, the consequences will be catastrophic.
Why is VV Lakshmi Narayana of JanaSena Party keeping quiet on the election system? It’s time that the opposition parties who failed to get free and fair elections of 2019 should march forward with a clarion call to summon up the support of youth in colleges and universities. There’s a lot of whispering in the public, particularly among software engineers, believing that EVMs have undoubtedly been hacked.
Prannoy Roy, in his book The Verdict, opined rather naively that EVMs are not hackable. He needs to check this opinion against the election results of 2019. It’s high time that the intelligentsia and social activists speak out through media of all forms.
Today, Chandrababu Naidu was affected by introducing EVMs in polling, it may be others’ turn tomorrow. Countries like the United States of America, Germany, Singapore, and Netherlands already use ballot boxes. Why not us?
When the time comes, whenever any of our leaders come on to the streets about this issue, we must join them to save democracy. This time, the nation decided to fool itself. It’s in our hands to let it happen again.
Featured image for representative purpose only.
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