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When Indians start heading to the polls on Friday, it will be just the beginning of a colossal democratic process. Not until June 4, after six weeks of voting, will India know whether its powerful prime minister, Narendra Modi, will remain in office for a third term.<\/p>\n
Why does it all take so long? The short answer: India is the world\u2019s most populous nation<\/a>, with 969 million eligible voters. That\u2019s more than one-tenth of the world\u2019s population, or about four times the number of eligible voters in the next largest democracy, the United States.<\/p>\n The longer answer involves India\u2019s geography, election rules, security apparatus, holidays and electronic voting machines \u2014 a complicated choreography for a big, complicated nation.<\/p>\n India\u2019s first national parliamentary elections, from 1951 to 1952, lasted over 120 days. In 1977, they took five days. But, generally, they have taken weeks or months, even without primary elections, because of their sheer scale.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The country has a land area of more than a million square miles, with people in megacities<\/a>, scattered throughout the Himalayas<\/a>, in the Thar Desert<\/a>, inside forests<\/a> and along the Ganges<\/a>.<\/p>\n India\u2019s laws also state that voters can\u2019t be required to travel more than 2 kilometers, or 1.2 miles, from their home to get to a polling station. To make that possible, 12 million election workers will traverse the country to set up polling stations this year, sometimes by foot, bicycle, helicopter or boat \u2014 or even by horse, camel or elephant.<\/p>\n Some of those trips can take days. In 2019, the country\u2019s highest polling station was more than 15,000 feet above sea level in the Spiti Valley of the Himalayas. In 2009, a team of five trekked deep into the Gir Forest<\/a> in Gujarat, in India\u2019s west, to reach the lone inhabitant of a remote Hindu temple.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt is an honor, it really is,\u201d the priest, Bharatdas Darshandas, told reporters after the election that year. \u201cIt proves how India values its democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In the early years of India\u2019s democracy, clashes between supporters of rival parties turned deadly. Candidates were kidnapped. Local police officers, failing to maintain order, were accused of taking sides under pressure from the ruling politicians. So, starting in the 1990s, national paramilitary forces began to be deployed on a large scale in elections.<\/p>\n India is deploying over 300,000 members of its federal security forces to help transport voting machines and maintain peace at voting booths this year. Because they can\u2019t cover the entire nation at once, elections are split into multiple stages. In each stage, the soldiers shift from one region to another.<\/p>\n These safety precautions prolong elections that would otherwise take a few days, said Vikram Singh, the former police chief of India\u2019s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, who had supervised security forces in past elections. But he said voters were safer because of them.<\/p>\n Violence<\/a> is infrequent at polling stations today. The presence of soldiers there also instills confidence in the election results.<\/p>\nMind-Bogglingly Large<\/h2>\n
Preserving Order<\/h2>\n