Bridging the Trust Deficit in EVMs

                                                                                    *Saumitra Mohan

            The Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) are said to have been first used in 1982 for the North Paravur Assembly by-election in Kerala for a limited number of polling stations, but were approved for wider use by the Election Commission of India (ECI) in technical collaboration with Bharat Electronics Limited and Electronics Corporation of India in 1989. But EVMs made their universal debut in 1999 Parliamentary Elections after extensive consultation with all the relevant stakeholders and have since become an indispensable part of our electoral system in India.

            The doubting Thomases from across different political parties have questioned the credibility and efficacy of EVMs from time to time. But, the cry against EVMs seems to have reached a crescendo lately with a section of the political class demanding their replacement with the erstwhile system of paper ballots. While there are a huge number of countries including most of the developed countries which still use paper ballots for exercise of right to franchise or for any sort of voting, India was one of the few countries which introduced EVMs to get over the multiple problems associated with the system of voting through paper ballots.

            The introduction of EVMs saved humongous costs involved in production and printing of crores of ballot papers, their transportation and storage. It was a very eco-friendly move by consequent saving of millions of trees for obtaining the required paper. An estimated 10,000 tonnes of ballot paper is saved every general election and many times more whenever an Assembly or local body election is held due to use of EVMs. Voting and counting have both become faster while the same has also resulted in substantial reduction in the number of counting personnel and the remuneration paid to them. Indubitably, India’s general masses have found it easier to exercise their franchise through EVMs than the ballot paper system.

            EVMs are not only easier to transport and store because of their lighter weight and portability, but are also are safe from the elements due to being enclosed in polypropylene carrying cases. The shelf-life of these EVMs is approximately 15 years. The EVM stores the result in its memory before the same is cleared manually. Its powering system is efficiently designed as the power pack is required only to activate the EVMs at the time of polling and counting. The same could be switched off conveniently at the end of polling.

            After the rulings from Delhi High Court, the Supreme Court and the demands from some political parties, the ECI has recently decided to introduce the voter-verified paper audit trail or VVPAT for further increasing the confidence of the stakeholders in the authenticity and effectiveness of EVMs. The system allows a voter to ensure that the vote cast by her/him could be verified to have been cast in favour of the desired candidate.

            Besides, there are enough avenues and scope provided to the individual candidates, political parties and any other stakeholder to verify the accuracy, authenticity and reliability of an EVM during the three-time commissioning of these machines preceding the actual polling. Before these commissioning sessions where EVMs are checked for any defects and prepared for their eventual use at respective polling stations, multiple rounds of meetings and training sessions are organised for all the stakeholders for explaining the various nuances of polling through EVMs where the booth level assistants (BLAs) for political parties apart from their senior representatives and office bearers remain present. Conducted under foolproof security, close circuit TV and videography, the EVM preparation and commissioning are done very meticulously and diligently to the satisfaction of all the stakeholders in their presence.

            The commissioning schedule and protocol are so designed to ensure that no malfunctioning EVMs, if at all, are used for the actual polling. Every commissioned EVM goes through multiple checks and trials to the full satisfaction of the contesting candidates and authorised representatives of recognised political parties before being accepted for the actual polling. Every EVM also has to undergo a Mock Poll of mandatory number of votes and for any number of votes for a certain percentage of randomly picked EVMs as desired by the stakeholders. After the commissioning of EVMs, the same are stored in pre-sanitized Strong Rooms amidst three-tier security cordons where contesting candidates and authorised representatives from the political parties are given freedom to watch the Strong Room to ward against any suspected hanky-panky or possible tampering of these EVMs.

             Assuming things could still go wrong notwithstanding these checks and controls, a further opportunity is afforded to the contesting candidates or their polling agents present in respective polling booths. Before the start of actual polling, a further Mock Poll is held under the supervision of the Presiding Officer (PRO) to assure oneself against any foul play or tampering of the EVM. A Mock Poll certificate is signed by the PRO with polling agents of contesting candidates appending their signatures to the same. Besides, the Election Observers, polling officials and other stakeholders including polling agents or contesting candidates or their authorised representatives have full liberty to check the functionality of EVMs from time to time while the voting is in progress. VVPAT, as introduced recently, only further enhances the authenticity and credibility of the EVMs.

            So, the system is so designed to ward against any suspected foul play before, during and after the voting. The contesting candidates or their representatives are given full freedom to satisfy themselves of the genuineness of the entire process or the effectiveness of the EVMs before the votes are finally counted on the day of counting. In the interim, EVMs are duly secured in the Strong Room before they are against taken out for the counting amidst very tight security and electronic surveillance. The counting protocol is also very minutely planned and structured to pre-empt against any negative manoeuvring by any side. The entire system is intricately designed to ensure a free and fair poll to the full satisfaction of all the stakeholders.

            Against this background, it is really very unfortunate to hear and know of the putative loss of confidence of a section of our political class in the efficiency and effectiveness of the tried and tested EVMs. As someone who has been associated with the conduct of many parliamentary, Assembly and local body elections and has seen the effectual functioning of these EVMs at close quarters, this is really quite disconcerting and perturbing. This is more so because the ECI has afforded opportunities to all the stakeholders to prove their apprehensions of any possible tampering of these machines. The political class needs to understand that the alternative available to the EVMs does not inspire any confidence at all. If one’s car goes out of order or pollutes, that does not mean we should go back to the bullock cart. Similarly, alternative to the EVMs can never be the erstwhile ballot paper system which is very cumbersome, costly and retrograde as the same brings to the fore the possibility of the familiar scenes of ballot box snatching or bogus voting, something EVMs have eliminated.

            The EVMs could be made further effective and efficient if the voter identity could be verified biometrically by importing and grafting the voter’s individual biometric data into the elector’s photo identity cards (EPICs) to be utilized as a voter-identifying tool to further reinforce and strengthen the system. One is sure that our democratic polity shall come out of this trust deficit in EVMs through further dialogue and discussion, but any contemplation of reversion to the ballot paper system shall be a backward and retrograde move.

             

The Emperor Has No Clothes

The Emperor Has No Clothes

                                                                                    *Saumitra Mohan

            Notwithstanding the world contracting geographically and digitally, we have actually gotten more distanced from one another instead of coming closer. Faster transportation, faster communications, abundant knowledge and better creature comforts have not meant better inter-personal relationships amongst us. So, despite being closer to one another physically, people are no more close to each other emotionally than they ever were. Often lost in the impersonal cyber world through their digital devices, many of the Homo Sapiens have become more of automatons today.

            A new ‘Digital Divide’ is perceptible in our society notwithstanding the amplified access to the World Wide Web. Oxymoronically, the facile access to the very digital devices has created this digital divide where many of us are too engrossed in our alienating material world to look for more uplifting meaning to our ephemeral lives. The upshot of it all is a reality where despite being online in the cyber world, a good number of us are offline in our relationships and oblivious to the transcendental non-material reality.

            Overwhelmed by our bloated ‘Ego’, many of us have so much dug ourselves in our respective cocoons that we don’t wish to see beyond our ‘Self’ and it is this ‘neo-narcissism’ that is doing us in. Our over-inflated ‘Ego’ often incapacitates us to be able to cognize the existence of the ‘Super Ego’ (read society). Our perceived superiority complex is nothing but a masquerade for our inferiority complex otherwise a ‘superior’ individual does not need to assert or prove one’s superiority. Such a mindset also prevents us from accepting any critics or criticisms. Critics are, in fact, seen as ‘Green Devils’ out to hurt and harm our existence.

            By imbibing such spurious belief systems, many of us have unwittingly surrounded ourselves with apple-polishing toadies who keep fawning on us. The consequent blinkered vision does not allow us to look beyond the tip of our nose as we shy away from facing the stark reality. By cultivating such outlook, we habitually don’t want to hazard to do the same to others as the same compromises our immediate short-term interests. Hence, most of us neither accept the truth nor do we tell the truth. The consequent result is often disastrous, much to the chagrin of us all.

            There have been several instances of people in history who had the delusions of invincibility about themselves, but they were all consigned to the footnotes of history as a small speck or dark dots, just because they refused to see the writings on the wall. Be it the real-life personalities like Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Saddam Hussain, Osama Bin Laden, Joseph Stalin, General Noriega, Idi Amin, mythological figures like Ravana, Duryodhana, Kansa or organisational entities like Orkut, Nokia, USSR, League of Nations or closer home, Indian National Congress or CPM in India-they have all suffered from cognitive derangement or delusions of self-importance to cut themselves away from the truth or winds of change to lose out in the race of survival to go down as failed entities who could not keep pace with time.

            Though as failures, they definitely have their own significance for the posterity, but the point is today the number of such people is increasing by leaps and bounds – both in our personal and public life – who neither comprehend the reality themselves nor are enlightened by others. They are, actually, the ‘Naked Emperors’ walking the lengths and breadths of our planet who don’t have the luxury or privilege of having genuine advisors or critics who could tell the truth on their face. Otherwise, there would be no reason for politicos like Donald Trump, Kim Jong-un or many of our home-grown politicos to keep conducting themselves the way they have done so far, unconcerned and oblivious to the harsh truths or hollowness they preside over. Such people think that if they plug their ears, others will not hear the toll of the bell or if they shut their eyes, the bad and ugly would cease to be visible.

            Such people decline to believe that in this world of complex interdependence where global problems could be resolved only through globally-coordinated moves, such self-seeking and self-centred approach would boomerang to their own detriment. So, if the US is debunking the Kyoto Protocol today or if North Korea is brandishing its nukes (which Mao Zedong once termed ‘paper tigers’), they don’t know that their unsuspecting Frankenstein would slowly sneak on them to finally devour them at a time when they would have no time or opportunity to react and respond.

            Being victims of exaggerated self-image, these people or entities never have their feet on the ground and often float in the rarefied ethereal world, not realising that the Newtonian Law of Gravity catches up with us all by ensuring a very hard crash-landing for those who don’t prepare for the same. Such ‘Naked Emperors’ are walking in the buff without any veneer of dignity, without sensing the quiet chuckle the world is having at their expense.

            The tragedy is that such a thing is happening at the micro level as much as at the macro level. The advisors don’t share the inconvenient truths, the spouses don’t tell the truth to each other, the parents don’t share the truth with their children or our friends ingratiate to us without being truthful. Our apprehension of earning others’ wrath or jeopardising our interest has attenuated our spine and guts. The ‘Homo Erectus’ is forever stooping and bending to conquer his world with insidious consequences. Their triumphs are confined by the four walls of their own self interests.

            A herd mentality has ensued and enveloped us all. In our bid to feather our nest, none is willing to question others and ruffle their feathers. This is turning out to be dangerous as the same has ensured the continuance of the ordinary and mundane beyond the prudent limit. Below par is par for the course now. There are ‘naked emperors’ all across in abundance, not realising themselves being without any dignity as there are not many left among us who could call a spade, a spade. Most of us are looking sideways when it comes to declaiming the inconvenient truth because a selfish interest keeps us from doing so.

            As a human being, we have created false images and imaginary values and have been chasing them ever since. And most of us are doing this at the expense of our eternal self interest i.e. our own spiritual growth and liberation from the cycle of life and death. People are not at all clear about the purpose of their birth in this world nor do they want to even know the same immersed as they are in their daily struggle for survival.

            Ergo, if we wish to grow as a society, we not only need to realise the immediate purpose of our advent in this world, but we should also start questioning and countering the normal and regular to go rediscover the values of life as hidden in this vast universe, to progress further and take our civilisation beyond the routine and mundane. We need to reinvent ourselves to subsist and survive. Otherwise, as a civilisation and as God’s best creation, we shall remain doomed. We should also stop being ‘naked emperors’ ourselves and we should ensure that the other ‘naked emperors’ amongst us are appositely clothed. The sooner, the better. A life of open, free and reinvigorating discussion and discourse enriched by constant criticisms is something we must nurture with due care and caution to continue cherishing and relishing this human life.