Sacred Election: Lessons from the Biggest Democracy in the World

Political anthropologist Dr Mukulika Banerjee reports from India on the many surprising ways in which the country manages to defy apparently insuperable odds to deliver an efficient and effective democratic process.

An Indian general election is the largest single organised event in the world, with over 700 million voters, 800,000 polling stations and one million electronic voting machines moved in phases around the country; and, unlike many western democracies, electoral participation in India is positively buoyant, and rising.