In India’s election, a towering test for democracy – and our reporter

Episode transcript

Lindsey McGinnis: The world’s largest-ever democratic election is officially underway in India. But in the nation of 1.4 billion people, the state of democracy is looking rocky. Will trust in elections prevail? Or will it falter, as we’ve seen in the United States and, more recently, in Pakistan? It’s a question we asked Fahad Shah, the Monitor’s correspondent in India, to investigate. 

This is “Why We Wrote This.” I’m Lindsey McGinnis, the Monitor’s Asia Editor and this week’s guest host. We’re on the phone with Fahad Shah. 

Thank you for joining us.

Fahad Shah: Thank you.

McGinnis: Typically, I rely on our cohort of local stringers to tell me what the important stories are in India. But this idea of looking at India’s election through the lens of trust was something I proposed to my writers. Fahad, you were the first to volunteer.

What drew you to this story? 

Shah: I think it was a very interesting perspective and an interesting angle of the story, because we have seen a lot of people covering elections – other media houses and … newspapers and … reporters – but it’s always about something to do with the election from the top level, like, who is fighting and what is going on, what the wave is like, what are the people saying and stuff like that. But this was a very interesting angle to pick, on a subject like trust within the election and the election process. I think that’s what made me pick up this story because it was a very different angle and a very different way of doing an election story. That was the main aim behind that.

McGinnis: That’s definitely something I was striving for when I reached out to you, because we needed a story, of course, to mark the kickoff of this massive election, but we [also] wanted our coverage to go a little deeper, so I’m really glad that you were excited about that angle as well.

And one of the other things that we’ve talked a lot about is India’s democratic backslide, and how this election is sort of a litmus test for India’s democratic spirit. I’d like to talk a little bit about that democratic backslide. What does that look like on the ground?

Shah: It’s a humongous election. There are like, 968 million voters, and out of that 26 million other first time voters, so the whole election process in India, which has so many states, and it is such a big country with such diversity. So there are a lot of issues that have been going on in the last 10 years in the country.

There are various institutional degradations that have been happening. There is a lot of talk and a lot of reports about the democratic values being attacked or the constitution being attacked.

So on the ground also, there are a lot of people who will talk about those kinds of things, like opposition leaders, being arrested or the dissent not being allowed, within the country or people who have different opinions than what the government wants, being asked to be – or forced to be – silenced.

So those factors have largely affected the democratic character of the country and that has been the main point of the opposition in this election – that this is a very important election because after this is the third term that this party will get. [And] if they get it, then the country will be in danger. It will have repercussions. There could be constitutional changes also. So that’s a very important and main point or the agenda that the opposition leaders are fighting the elections on.

McGinnis: Hmm. You touched on this shrinking space that exists for political dissent. There’s also a shrinking space for dissent more broadly, especially in the media. Could you speak a little bit about the crackdown on press freedom in India? You have first hand experience with this, I know, having spent more than 600 days in prison in Kashmir.

Shah: I think, in any country where one particular party becomes really popular and it’s a populist government and then that particular government tries to finish off every kind of opposition or the voices that exist there and the media becomes one of the first tragedies or the victims of that crackdown.

So, yes, in the last two terms of the government, there has been a lot of censorship, there has been a lot of attacks on the media also, there have been multiple arrests, like, yes, of course, obviously, as you mentioned, I myself was in prison for like 21 months, uh, for the same reasons, and so I have experienced it firsthand.

McGinnis: One thing that I found interesting about your reporting was that you did find declining trust in India’s democratic institutions. People are feeling mistrusting of India’s election commission. They’re feeling mistrusting about the political parties that are running. But you still found people who were excited to go and cast their ballot who still believe that they have a voice in this election.

Since then, we have seen deep fakes of Bollywood celebrities giving political endorsements going viral, as well as communal violence at polling stations in northeastern India. Do you feel as though that democratic spirit will persist? Are you feeling hopeful about the resilience of Indians’ faith in the election system?

Shah: See, as I mentioned before also that this is a very huge election, so, of course, there will be issues in terms of the trust with the institutions. And it is also very technical. Like, there are three election commissioners in India who are elected, and earlier there was a different procedure to appoint them, and now there’s a different procedure.

And there have also been issues regarding the machines that are being used, like the electronic voting machines, EVMs, as they are called, so there have been a petition also going in the Supreme Court that the process of the counting with these electronic machines should be verified, there should be second verification to that, a physical kind of verification where you have a paper slip coming out of the machine, and you need to count that also.

But that hasn’t gone through.

So we haven’t seen much [on] electronic voting machines coming out, but yes, like we met some people on the ground, like there were few voters who mentioned that we are making sure that I have cast a vote for a particular party and it is for that party only that my vote went.

So that kind of tells that even the common voters have a little distrust that the thing that the opposition kept saying for the last five years had reached … the common voters also and they were making sure that the voting is going through.

And when you have institutions being targeted or the institutions being run by the government itself or being overwhelmingly pro-government, then there is obviously an automatic rise of distrust in the process. But despite that fact, we met people who are going out like walking miles to vote.

In these last few weeks, there has been a lot of [news] about that, what is going on, like what the government is saying, what the messaging is, there’s a lot of talk about the minorities going on, there are some, uh, deepfake videos also emerging, both from the opposition side and from the ruling side also.

McGinnis: That’s an interesting point about the voting machines, and how that’s been internalized by some voters, not so much as disengagement or disinterest in the democratic process, but in vigilance, right, and, and carefulness as they go to cast their ballot.

You talked a little bit about how this is a massive, massive election and it is going to be inherently somewhat chaotic, right, as it unfolds over the seven phases, in six weeks of voting. What are some of the challenges that you have already run into as you’ve tried to report on these elections.

Shah: As a reporter, you will always find challenges when you are reporting any kind of a story, but, particularly, when I did this story, there weren’t [many] challenges, just the geography, and other stuff like that. But there is a very clear divide in the voters, like, you can easily say, OK, “this side of the voters is voting for the ruling party, and these people are voting for the opposition.”

There is quite a lot of talk, and you know, like, a lot of things are happening on the internet. Like, there is a huge social media influx. There are a lot of videos coming every day on social media, on Instagram, on YouTube. Like, there are so many YouTube channels that have emerged in the last few weeks and they have got like thousands of followers and subscribers and everywhere you will see a person holding a mic and asking a group of people, “So what do you think? Has the BJP done well? Do you think Congress will do well?” So, there are these debates going on and on. I think one of the issues that the election process is facing in India right now is because of the summer. There’s a heat wave, the weather is really bad and that is affecting some of the areas because, generally the weather in India is very hot.

So, in the central part of India, there are a lot of issues in certain areas, a lot of people are not coming to vote, because of the weather. And even when we were doing this story, there was heavy rainfall at that point of time and people who are the polling agents were saying that, oh, people are not coming out because there is rain.

So I think the weather has played one role, one kind of a challenge in this election. 

McGinnis: Yeah. Well, I’m glad you brought up the rainfall. I mean, speaking of weather, one of the reasons we’re doing this podcast now and not when we ran the story, is that you got stuck on the highway because of a landslide.

Shah: Yes, of course. There was huge rainfall at that point of time and that quite affected the voting percentage in that area because people were saying we couldn’t go out because we had to walk miles and there was rain and then there was a landslide on the road and that kind of delayed the whole process.

So weather has been challenging because it’s a huge country and in different parts of the country, there is different kind of weather right now, but largely in most of the states right now, it’s very hot weather.

McGinnis: You also mentioned this sort of information overload, which I think is really interesting. How do you pick who to speak with when you’re out and reporting, on elections at polling stations, things like that?

Shah: For me, it’s pretty easy, like, I would go to a polling station, I would just wait, and I would see people walking in or people coming out. I would pick up someone and have a little bit of chat and be like, “Oh, did you vote, or have you come to vote,” and someone would be like, “yes, I did vote,” and then, I would continue talking to that person.

And that is how I try to also meet these polling agents, who are from the political party and they’re helping voters to find their names in the electoral list and everything like that. So, that kind of thing is what I mostly do while covering the elections and then also speak to the political parties and the local, small-level politicians in the area, because they kind of have a sense that, uh, where it is going. And then of course you can talk to the experts and other people in terms of what is going on. But in terms of the information overload that I was talking [about] ... it feels like while the opposition and the ruling party is fighting, campaigning for the elections on the ground, physically available – in the rallies and other road shows – there is also a campaign going on, on digital world, like on [the] internet. 

McGinnis: So, this is going to be a very, very long election. It’s pretty unique for us. It’s a unique reporting challenge. We’re not going to get results until early June, right? At the earliest. I know that you and I have agreed to do a story later in May about Kashmiris heading to the polls for the first time since Delhi revoked the region’s autonomy. So we have that on the books, but what else are you watching out for as this election unfolds?

Shah: Well, right now, this week, I have been looking a lot at the deep fakes, and the AI technology.... So I think it’s kind of a precursor to the elections in the U.S. also, like I think everybody is watching how AI is playing a role in this election in India, and I think this will kind of become a benchmark for other elections also. 

Even the companies, the AI developers and the companies who are working with the political parties on producing the AI content for their political campaigns are kind of taking this as a trial and they are using every technology and method to increase the reach of their political clients.

And I think this is going to be like a first step towards the larger use of AI into elections in other parts of the world, especially in the U.S. 

McGinnis: Excellent. That sounds important to keep an eye on. Thank you, Fahad, for being on the show and for your reporting on the election so far.

Shah: Thank you. Thank you, Lindsey. Thank you.

McGinnis: And thank you to our listeners. You can find more, including our show notes with links to the story we just talked about and to more of Fahad’s work, at CSMonitor.com/WhyWeWroteThis. This episode was hosted by me, Lindsey McGinnis, and produced by Mackenzie Farkus. Jingnan Peng is also a producer on this show. Our sound engineers were Noel Flatt and Alyssa Britton, with original music by Noel Flatt, produced by the Christian Science Monitor, copyright 2024.