India’s Digital Public Infrastructure – achievements and possibilities soon?

India has a great digital infrastructure stack with its unique Aadhaar foundation. This is mostly owned and sustained by Government, therefore, it is referred as Digital Public Infrastructure. There are already many successful applications that have reached the remotest and poorest habitats in rural and forest areas. After introduction of Low Earth Orbit Satellites communication networks, India can opt for developing and implementing many new exciting services which make for 100% inclusion and help create a more responsive democracy. Before we start discussing those, lets become aware of few facts and possibilities from 2025 onwards.

Today India has among the best, if not the best, Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) of all major countries of the world. Other countries that have a great Digital Infrastructure have private players owning most of it; this is not so in India where ownership is significantly that of the Government or Government subsidised services constitute most of the DPI (China may be an exception).

In India the number of people who make online transactions as a proportion of literate people will likely be the highest in the world. The DPI provides great quality and reliable services free of cost and private players have built applications on top of it. Even the not-so-literate street vendors display a QR Code of their UPI (Universal Payment Interface) account mapped to their bank accounts or Paytm wallet accounts and people make payments into their account from their bank accounts or electronic wallets. India's top payment wallet players are listed at the end of the article.

The DPI has three pillars – what PM, Modi, the acronyms making champion, calls the JAM trinity. Jan-Dhan Bank account, Aadhaar ID system and Mobiles. In 2013 digital transactions as well as DBT (Direct Benefits Transfer) by the Government were already taking place among those who had bank accounts.  

On August 28, 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) with the goal of promoting financial inclusion by opening bank accounts for the unbanked. Banks were encouraged to open many accounts quickly, and reports claim that over 18 million accounts were opened in just one week as part of this initiative. PM forced RBI to drop the onerous requirement of KYC (Know-Your-Customer) paperwork and allow banks to open accounts for any Indian citizen above 10 years of age and having an ID proof. With this initiative, the financial inclusion, contemplated by Nilekani under the UPA regime, was scaled up rapidly. Today there are over 500 million Jan-Dhan active bank accounts, 56% belong to women and 67% are in rural and semi-urban areas.

The foundation of the DPI stack was laid in 2009 by the launch of Aadhaar project. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recruited Nandan Nilekani who had proposed a biometric based ID System for every resident Indian. Nilekani had described his vision of an online ID System and its potential benefits, in his book, “Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century”. The project faced opposition from most of the people in positions of power – political leaders and bureaucrats – at the Centre and State Governments. As the Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) in the rank of a Cabinet Minister, Nandan Nilekani did a stellar job of convincing almost all CMs and Cabinet Ministers, and conceptualizing, designing, developing and deploying Aadhaar ID System across the country. Nilekani was easily one of the best IT Managers in the world, a billionaire entrepreneur and one who was highly articulate. Time magazine had chosen him the Businessman of the Year in 2003. Nilekani joined Indian National Congress in March 2014. He contested from the Bangalore South constituency. Contrary to all expectations, he lost by 228,575 votes to BJP candidate Ananth Kumar in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Modi had actively canvassed against him calling the Aadhaar project a big scam and one which deserved to be buried ASAP. Though Nilekani chose to retire from politics, he sought a meeting with the victor, Narendra Modi and convinced him about the utility of Aadhaar. After the meeting, Modi changed his stance and asked his government to aggressively continue issuing Aadhaar to all Indian residents. Today 99.8% of Indian residents have Aadhaar number.

By 2013, Aadhaar had been linked to 600 million Voter Cards (EPIC – Electoral Photo Identity Card). Had this exercise been continued with legislative support, India today would have had the biggest online voting system, far more reliable than the existing EVM System, in the world.

Unfortunately, Modi made the mistake of Passing the Aadhaar as a Money Bill. The Aadhaar Act, 2016 was passed by the Lok Sabha on March 11, 2016. The Act was introduced as a money bill, and certain provisions came into force on July 12, 2016. Money bill requires majority vote only in Lok Sabha. As BJP was not sure of securing +50% votes in Rajya Sabha, it did not propose Aadhaar as a General-Purpose ID System bill. As a result, Aadhaar cannot be legally mandated or used in applications which are not monetary in nature. Furthermore, SCI (Supreme Court of India) has ruled that even if one does not have Aadhaar, Government cannot refuse the monetary or other entitlements of that person.

If Aadhaar is passed as a security or General-Purpose ID System bill by both houses of the Parliament and extended in scope to the presently excluded territories of Assam, Jammu & Kashmir and Meghalaya, India can have a very robust security system besides online voting system and the world's most inclusive financial system.  

Here are some statistics, to console ourselves, that indicate how the investment in India’s DPI has paid off.

Year	Number of digital transactions per   day	Value of digital transactions per   day
2015	5.7 million	Rs.25,205 crores
2020	24.2 million	Rs.1.2 lac crores
2025	284 million	Rs.6.3 lac crores

 

Today the Government makes over 9 million DBT (Direct Benefits Tranfer) transactions daily of the value of Rs. 1,726 crores. The annual value of DBT in 2023-24 was Rs.6.9 lac crores. Approximately Rs. 2.2 lac crores have been saved due to avoidance of corruption and leakages through intermediaries. In future, DBT could be made "coupon linked money", in which the redemption of money could be made for specific purchases only - for e.g. school fees, food grains not just at PDS Ration shops but any shop! As of June 30, 2023, there were around 545,000 Fair Price Shops (FPSs) in India. These shops are the backbone of the country's Public Distribution System (PDS) and are responsible for distributing subsidized food grains to millions of citizens.

Over 1.2 billion mobile connections are active in India today. As of October 2024, there were 941 million broadband subscribers of which 896 million were wireless.

Over 99% of Indian families have at least one member with a bank account in India.

The above are statistics which must be sobered down a bit by the following statistics, which show India has long way to go in terms of user education and digitalisation, i.e. digital literacy and digital usage.

• Account Ownership: As of 2021, about 77% of Indians above 15 years owned a bank account.

• Digital Payments: The total transaction value in the digital payments market is projected to reach $1,892 billion by 2025 (China will reach a value of $4,240 billion).

• Online Banking: Approximately 51% of Indians use online banking channels (China's figure is 80%) .

While Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT) have helped in bringing more people into the banking system, true financial inclusion also involves regular usage of financial services, access to credit, insurance, and financial literacy.

Going forward, the following applications will deliver great efficiencies to users, thanks to India's DPI:

1. Account Aggregator (AA) network was introduced as a financial data-sharing system by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) when it issued the Master Direction viz Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC) - Account Aggregator (Reserve Bank) Directions, dated September 02,2016.
   
   
2. DigiLocker is a key initiative under Digital India program. Aimed at providing paperless governance to the citizen. Citizens can log into DigiLocker account to securely access and manage their digital documents, e.g. Aadhaar, Driving License, PAN, EPIC, Ration Card, Ayushman Card etc. provided by various government departments.
   
   
3. National Digital Health Mission envisages a secure online platform for storing and exchanging health related data of citizens. The Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission aims to create a connected digital health ecosystem in India. It intends to enhance accessibility and equity of healthcare services by ensuring continuity of care with citizens being the owners of their health data. This mission will link the digital health solutions of hospitals across the country.
   
   
4. After introducing Aadhar linked EPIC, India can not only have online voting for elections, it can introduce online Referendum voting - making Indian democracy truly responsive. Furthermore, India can easily introduce Two-Round System (TRS) in place of First Past The Post (FPTP) system. In FPTP the winning party can have much below the 50% Vote share but much above the 50% Seats share! Not so in TRS, the winner will always be the one having over 50% Vote share. FPTP distorts democracy in a multi party country like India much more than it can in a two-party country like USA.
   
   
5. After introduction of Coupon linked DBT, Government can remove all subsidised prices which distort the markets. Examples are - PDS prices at Ration Shops will be changed to market prices, Fertiliser prices will be made market prices, Electricity will be made market prices - because targeted beneficiaries will be given Coupon linked DBT for specific purposes. Going forward we will discover true cost of Subsidies AND we will be able to introduce market efficiencies - as consumers will have freedom of choice - she can buy rice from any shop not just PDS shop etc. Going sill further, we can remove all subsidies or coupon linked DBT and introduce DBT for targeted Basic Income (modified UBI - Universal Basic Income meant for all the poor people - i.e. BPL people).

 

List of top ten payment wallets in India:

Bajaj Finserv App: offers a wide range of services including bill payments, UPI transfers, and financial products. 

Paytm: A comprehensive app for UPI payments, bill payments, ticket booking, and shopping.

Amazon Pay: Provides a seamless payment experience with Amazon-specific offers.

WhatsApp Pay: Facilitates UPI transactions directly from WhatsApp chats.

Mobikwik: Combines digital wallet features with UPI payments, offering bill payments, mobile recharges, and credit line options.

BHIM: A UPI app developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) for simple and secure transactions.

Freecharge: Offers UPI payments, bill payments, and recharges with cashback options.

JioMoney: Provides UPI payments, bill payments, and recharges, integrated with Jio services

EVM VVPAT Petitions and the SCI - Voter verification even more important than 100% manual vote count (updated 27th April'24)

 The spectacular bluff of two "silos" of data of Electoral Bonds (EB) that State Bank of India (SBI), represented by top lawyers, tried to pull off was live streamed to the whole country from the Supreme Court no.1 in the month of March 2024. The two "silos" were actually two tables of data. Such data of EB buyer and EB recipient in two tables of a Database (or even Excel worksheets) would require not even three minutes to match but the lawyers of SBI, FICCI and GOI asked the five-judge bench to grant them three months. Had SBI used the word tables instead of "silos", any computer literate person could have pointed out that the matching is a trivial exercise of writing one join query in a database or "vlookup" command in an Excel worksheet.

Another more spectacular drama of EVM System hackability has been unfolding in the two-judge bench of the Supreme Court but this time it is not live streamed; as only constitutional bench proceedings are live-streamed at present. This time ECI is the culprit for obfusctions or outright lies which have left everyone confused. What could have been argued and concluded in two hours went on for three days without any order by the bench. As a result the General Elections of 2024 which have commenced from 19th April with status quo on the EVM System which people of India rightly suspect can be gamed.

The petitioners have laboured to convince the court that EVM System has deficiencies and the possible hacks can be easily foiled by making two changes in processes: i) allow voter to verify the correctness of the printed vote slip and ii) manually count all the printed vote slips and compare with the EVM count (in case of discrepancy, as per existing ECI rules, the manual count prevails). ECI's lawyers and experts argued that there is no deficiency; ECI representatives actually lied and made self-contradictory statements (such contradictory statements also exist on ECI's website).

Firstly ECI has claimed that EVM machines are a standalone system - standalone in IT industry means, "not ever connected to Internet or any network (WAN or LAN)". Secondly, ECI claimed that EVM has only "firmware" as opposed to "software". ECI claimed that the VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail) into which Symbol Loading Unit (SLU is a "red herring" name for a pen drive, like silo was the fancy name for a data table) has only OTP (One-time-programmable) memory and that no software (or malware) can be transferred into it through the SLU or by any other means. Both these claims are contradicted by ECI's own admission - as visible on its website pages. 

Search for "standalone" and "OTP" in the linked note here and here - you will find multiple occurrences of "standalone", "laptop" and "OTP" - you can read in five minutes in context what ECI has mentioned. EVM machines (BU, CU and VVPAT) are not the whole picture - EVM System is the whole picture - it comprises of a Central Server to be accessed via Internet, Laptop (in the custody of DEO/RO) and SLU. EVM System by no means is a standalone system and VVPAT has programmable memory too. This being the case, malware (software written by a hacker) can enter the system: via the central server or via the Internet into the Laptop, via the Laptop into the SLU, and finally via the SLU into the VVPAT's programmable memory. This infiltration of malware can occur with or without the knowledge of District Election Officer/Returning Officer or field engineers deployed in the over 1.2 million booths to commission the EVM during the 15 days prior to poll commencement. The malware can make the VVPAT misbehave as per multiple parameters set by the hacker, for e.g. date, time slots, constituency, the party to favour, the party to steal votes from, preceding rate of voting (i.e. misbehave only when there is rush) etc. Prashant Bhushan, ADR's Sr advocate, did try to explain some of these characteristics but the Justices cut him off frequently. 

The petitioners have made very sensible and feasible demands. Will the bench grant these reliefs? Without these reliefs, the 2024 Election's system will be highly fraught and its results untrustworthy. The public, at least a large section, will lose complete faith in the ECI's and GOI's democratic credentials.

Reliefs sought:

RELIEF # 1 to defeat 1st method of "steal the same successive votes - hack": The voter should be able to pick up the VVPAT printed slip for verification and physically insert it into the ballot box; else the voter should be able to see the vote slip printed is correct and it is actually cut and dispensed into the ballot box - it is not sufficient for the voter to just see the vote slip (because it could be the previous voter's slip which has not been cut and dispensed due to a hack) - this means the light should remain on and not merely for seven seconds, as is presently the case. This is a clever hack because it cannot be caught - the stolen consecutive 2nd or 3rd or successive votes (as parameterised) - cast in favour of the hacker's party - will not be seen because their printing, cutting, dispensing into ballot box and writing into the CU will all occur only when the light is in the switched off state and in few seconds after the button for a different party's candidate is pressed by a subsequent voter or when the stealing parameter count is reached. In this hack, the vote count in CU and the manual count of VVPAT printed votes will match. Therefore, even a 100% manual vote count cannot foil this hack. This delayed printing of consecutive vote will likely be the preferred method of hack.

 

RELIEF # 2 to defeat the 2nd method of "print correct vote slip but write vote in CU for hacker's party candidate - hack": The election results should be based on a manual count of 100% slips. In case of discrepancy between the manual count and the CU count, recounts may be ordered. Ultimately, the manual count would prevail and not the CU Count. This change in process is required to foil the second method of possible hack of VVPAT printing a vote slip for one party and writing into the CU a vote of another party. Compared to the above method of hack, this one is laible to be caught and, therefore, less likely to be preferred by the hacker.

 

RELIEF # 3 for safe transport: After the Polling finishes, the CU and the Ballot Box pairs are transported to the counting station. During the journey, oversight of contestants' representatives should be allowed.

 

RELIEF #4 for enabling genuine complaints: Presently a voter who complains to the Presiding Officer (PO) in the Polling Booth that his/her vote is not properly generated, i.e. the VVPAT has printed the wrong vote - is required to prove the allegation is correct through a retest. If the error is repeated well and good but if it is not repeatable, the voter can face a fine of up to Rs.1,000 and imprisonment of up to 3 months or both. It is a matter of common knowledge that programs can be written to work with random parameters or based on parameters such that without the knowledge of source code, no one can predict if the error will repeat nor when it will repeat. The punishment under rule 49MA - Section 177, should be totally removed as it is illogical, and it works as a deterrent for genuine voter complaints - unless source code is made public, and its auditability allowed before and during elections.  

   

The RELIEF#1 and 2 are essential but the 1st one is more important. Without these changes, the results of 2024 General Elections will always be suspect.

Both ECI and SCI have treated the challenges to the EVM usage in elections with contempt and derision. Requests for a meeting of political parties, citizens councils and lawyers to ECI have been ignored, not even acknowledged.

The petitions principally focused on EVM vulnerabilities have been pending with the SCI for many months or even years. In March'24, when Kapil Sibal and Prashant Bhushan, on behalf of ADR (Association of Democratic Reforms) requested SCI for an urgent hearing since the General Elections 2024 were set to start from 19-Apr-24, they were told that there are many pending matters and their pleas will be heard and decided before the polling starts.

The bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta finally heard the petitioners on 16th April, 18th April and 24th April for about 2.5 days and finally reserved the order. On 24th April the bench had asked ECI to provide answers to six questions. One question was about the repgrammability of microcontroller program in the EVM - in the VVPAT or the CU? This is a wrong question to ask. Even if the program is unalterable because it sits in the OTP memory, the device can be hacked - by malware being loaded into the programmable memory (VVPAT has both OTP and programmable memory) and intercepting the commands going into or out of the program. So the elections have started with status quo being maintained, no one knows when and what the bench will rule on the two main demands of the petitioners.

RELATED

EVM VVPAT petitions - proceedings in SCI 16th, 18th and 24th April 2024 

SY Quraishi explains counting 100% vote slips is easy and not comparable to counting old paper ballots

Search for "laptop" in the proceedings - live updates from Bar & Bench here

There is a crucial fact of use of a laptop in every election cycle in every constituency, possibly every booth, where "EVM" must be commissioned within two weeks prior to polling date - this has always been obfuscated by ECI. Judge asks an incoherent but a leading and somewhat meaningless question, "software by ECI has a lock mechanism". Firstly, the software according to ECI does not exist in VVPAT - only firmware exists in VVPAT, secondly ECI itself does not have software which is kept secret by BEL and ECIL; no one knows what is meant by "lock in mechanism", ECI does not provide an answer either.

  

Excerpts (copied from Bar & Bench updates):

12:03 pm, 18 Apr 2024

•   
•  

Supreme Court: The SLUs are not stored to ensure that there is no tampering. etc.? Of course, very difficult.. SLU is done from the computers.. laptop etc used by returning officer.. The software by ECI has a lock in mechanism.

ECI: Yes, it is a secured software.

------------------------------------------------------------

21-Apr-24 The Leaflet this article reproduces portions of the proceedings and highlights the relevant issues here

Terminology primer for non-IT readers:

Any computer system or an intelligent device (e.g. VVPAT, Smartphone) works with the following components:

Hardware

Firmware - this sits in OTP (one-time-programmable) memory

Operating System - OS (or Control Program) - this sits in programmable memory

Application Program

Data (input from keypad or sensors or attached devices like pen drive)

Hacker corrupts the Operating System or the Control Program - if someone has the source code (or even the object code - from the set of stolen EVM machines - object code could be retrieved and reverse compiled - this is surely within the reach of a sophisticated hacker) then malware can be written into the programmable memory - in context of VVPAT, this can be done at the time SLU is inserted for copying the candidate data file; the SLU would likely be infected via the DEO/RO's laptop. 

Any laptop requires an OS and the OS can be infiltrated by malware knowingly or unknowingly by the user. Everyone knows when a computer is connected to Internet, virus can enter the computer - even if anti-virus program is installed on the device - this happens unknowingly - user can also download a malware knowingly, if he wants to. Everyone knows Windows OS is easy to hack, that's why antivirus programs are necessary to instal. Most of the computers today run under Windows OS. We donot know which OS runs on the laptops the DEO/RO use in commissioning the EVM. ECI representative at some point mentioned in the court that PO's (Polling Officer) laptop is used in commissioning of EVM, whereas on ECI website, it says, DEO/RO's laptop is used. The SLU (pen drive) inserted into an infected laptop will carry the malware and transfer it into any other computer or intelligent device (like the VVPAT) into which it is inserted. This is not rocket science.

23-Apr-24 The Wire article based on the above blog

Electoral reforms - Online voting and funding reforms needed; Not One Nation One Election

Updated: 18-Dec-24

ग़रीब लहरों पे पहरे बिठाए जाते हैं,
और समन्दरों की तलाशी कोई नहीं लेता.....
~ वसीम बरेलवी

Given one hour to save the world, I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and 5 minutes finding the solution. ~ Albert Einstein

The real problem of our democracy is
i) how to get more numbers of honest and smart people in positions of power and
ii) how to make the Government more responsive.

Electoral reforms are a large part of the solution. Common lament we hear is that politics is a dirty business and only crooks enter and thrive in it - qualifications or track record of public service or philanthropy matter little. This is ofcourse mostly untrue, however, there is no gainsaying that money swings the election results. If we dig deeper we can easily find the larger part of the problem - it is the system and the play it gives to dirty money that is the culprit and not the politician or the wannabe politican!

WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY: 

One Nation One Election Bill has been introduced on 17th Dec'24 in Lok Sabha CLIP For it to be passed, 2/3rd majority vote will be required, after Joint Parliamentary Committee has vetted the 322-page report. Before this can happen, the citizens of India have a rare opportunity to discuss election reforms holistically. The reform of "1N1E" a.k.a. #One-Nation-One-Poll, can be substituted by another set of reforms with all the claimed benefits and more. Protagonists of 1N1E or 1N1P need to be educated, but more importantly, we - the citizens - must push for making Indian democracy safe and more vibrant.  

In the interdependent triad of contributors to the progress of the nation: PEOPLE - POLICIES - SYSTEMS - we should start with the "SYSTEMS" reform because it is doable with the flick of a pen and it will have a significant and immediate impact. Moving one log can clear a log jam!

The current election system is such that more honest and smart candidates likely lose elections and those who bend the rules (or their party does) likely win elections. Fortunately, today India has the digital public infrastructure and a flexible Constitution, capable of amendments, therefore, we can attempt to undertake what is proposed here - a set of urgent "rules reforms" which we can do before 2026, and "online voting systems reforms" which can be done during the 2024-2029 time-frame. These reforms can be done through the existing "democratic system". Most politicians will resist this change for reasons that are too obvious to review. Without public pressure, the existing legislators likely have no interest  to understand and demand the required changes. 

The idea of syncing all elections conflicts with the spirit of the existing federal structure envisaged in the Constitution of India. If the benefit we are looking for is to cut time and cost of conducting elections, debate should centre on leveraging the Digital Public Infrastructure  (DPI) we already have.

We know there are monetary and non-monetary costs of conducting elections (1- footnote).

For e.g. the 2024 General Elections were estimated to have cost $14 billion and the 2019 GE were estimated to have cost USD 7.5 to 10 Billion, i.e. Rs.60K to 80K Crores - of which at least Rs.50K crores was spent by candidates and their parties and Rs. 9K crores was Government's share of expenditure. After syncing all elections, i.e. General Elections, State Elections and Local Government or Panchayat Elections, it is hard to guess what the total expense will balloon to. 

 

The official declared income of BJP and INC is less than 10% of the abovementioned election expense figure (Visit Myneta ADR website for all details)! In other words, the elections are conducted with massive amount of money mobilised and spent under the table - one can imagine the quid pro quo in such transactions and the inevitable corruption that ensues. If we stack up the costs of State level and Panchayat level elections, the total will be staggering - likely to be few lacs of crore rupees and the quid pro quos several lacs of crore rupees. The cost of the government employees and security forces deployed to oversee these elections is invisible. The deployment of millions of staff, results in lost productivity and loss of school time as teachers and school resources are extensively requisitioned in organising elections. Due to logistical reasons, elections in many states stretch over several weeks!

The non-monetary costs include the adverse effects of governments going into seizure due to MCC - Model Code of Conduct which gets kicked in ahead of election dates. The government is not allowed to announce policies and it cannot roll out plans that may seem to influence the voters.

The dominant BJP and INC national parties have their leaders over stretched due to perpetual election cycles; the regional parties are not unhappy with the current situation; they likely view with suspicion the debate over syncing elections. Check Election Commission of India: ECI recognises 6 or 7 political parties as national parties. BJP is reputed to win elections because of Modi ji's personal popularity which made the 2019 Parliament (Lok Sabha) elections look like a Presidential election. PM Modi has also come to believe that he alone is sufficient to win all elections. His recent boast in the Parliament (Rajya Sabha) on 9-Feb-23:"एक अकेला कितनों पे भारी पड़ता है "! PM Modi wants to sync elections ostensibly to save costs but in his heart, he may be wanting the elections to become Presidential type.

To tamp down the abovementioned monetary and non-monetary costs, Modi ji has proposed a debate on "One Nation One Election". The democratic system envisaged in the Constitution of India requires a five-year term provided the government has a majority of members in the house, if it loses the majority and an alternative government cannot be formed, elections have got to be triggered within a stipulated period of x months. Therefore, this rule will conflict with the proposition of One Nation One Election as soon as any Government collapses before x months remain in its 5-year tenure. A constitutional amendment will be required to compress or stretch the period of tenure that remains in every case of premature cessation of a Government to sync all elections.

Rather than amend the constitution to accommodate the 1N1P idea, is it not better to discuss how to make elections less costly and quicker? No one seems to be debating this question!

Practically, all resident Indians and overseas Indian citizens, who are eligible voters, today have Aadhaar IDs. Over 1.3 billion (over 99.8% of all adults) Aadhaar Ids generated. 

 

WHAT WE NEED TO DO

 

Aadhaar should be passed as a security bill - at present it is emasculated by the order of the SCI because Aadhaar was passed as a Money Bill - Modi Government was scared so it bypassed obtaining voting in Rajya Sabha by legislating Aadhaar as a Money Bill. SCI has therefore, curtailed mandatory applications of Aadhaar to financial benefit (transactions) schemes or tax compliance issues like PAN linkage with Aadhaar. (Myths about mandatory use of Aadhaar and risks of sharing Aadhaar number). Those who apprehend risks due to Aadhaar linkage with voter ID should read: Common misconceptions about Aadhaar.

 

First, the past lapse of passing Aadhaar as a money bill has to be rectified so that necessary legislative support is provided for allowing Aadhaar to be used in non-monetary applications like the security and ID authentication, required in our voting system. The latter proposition is certainly likely to find acceptance with all parties - provided BJP and GOI make their intentions explicit. 

With today's DPI in India, it is very easy to conduct electronic online voting. First step, as mentioned above, is to get the legislative support to mandate linking the Voter Card (proof of citizenship) with Aadhaar Id (proof of Id) - this will ensure there are no duplicates in the voter database AND all voters are authenticated every time they vote. This process will also include the process of syncing names on the two cards - it is estimated that more than 80% of the people have mismatching names between their Aadhaar and Voter ID cards. 

 

Without a data protection act, it would have been justifiably considered objectionable to link Aadhaar with Voter ID. Recently THE DIGITAL PERSONAL DATA PROTECTION ACT, 2023 has been notified in the Gazette of India (11-Aug-23). Voting as we all know follows the "secret ballot" code. Computer program can be written such that no one can find out the identity of a voter without authorisation and now the notified Data Protection Act will (hopefully) curb mala fide authorisation to any agent of the government. In the voting application program, it is necessary to ensure that at the time of voting, the voter's biometrics be authenticated to prevent proxy voting i.e. it is necessary to ensure that a person in wrongful possession of a Voter card (Voter ID credentials) is not voting. In this application VIRTUAL ID (VID) for authentication cannot serve the purpose. VID is issued by UIDAI and it is meant to prevent profiling - i.e. pulling data from different applications databases in which Aadhaar is seeded. Since we want to deduplicate individuals having multiple Voter cards and authenticate a voter every time, it is necessary to link Aadhaar. Read about VID here.


HOW WILL THE PROPOSED ONLINE VOTING SYSTEM WORK

 

Online (INTERENT) voting can enable citizens to vote from anywhere in the country. One of the reasons for "low voter turnout" is migrant population - huge number of people are not available in their constituency on the day of voting. At the time of doing online voting, as already mentioned, the voter would be asked to submit biometric authentication - this ensures the eligible person is voting - multiple time voting can be allowed in the time window announced for voting - only the last vote will count. Those who do not have biometrics submission device will need to visit any ECI authorised mobile services centre or any bank branch to vote - for a small fee of Rs. 2 - 10 (which would be reimbursed to the agency by ECI online - citizen will not pay for the first time). There will be no need to set up booths and requisition millions of teachers for election duty at the time of voting. (See linked notes below - current cost to ECI is above Rs.100 per vote cast).

The above arrangement will drop the election costs drastically (by over 90%) - logistics will be highly simplified. Migrant workers, estimated to be between 10% to 20% of total voters, who are not present in their constituency on the days of voting, will be able to exercise their franchise. In 2019 LS Elections, ONLY 67% of the eligible voters actually voted - in Bombay the voting turnout was only 55% - with online anytime-anywhere voting facilities, the polling percentage would have been higher. Areas without Internet access, are already being served by satellite linked (through VSATs) CSCs (Common Services Centres); despite this, if there are pockets not served by CSCs then ECI will have to improvise suitable "CSCs".

 

BENEFITS OF ONLINE VOTING

 

With successful introduction of online voting, India will not only save enormous cost and time, it could derive many other benefits. Voting participation will improve SIGNIFICANTLY as all of the migrant workers will be able to vote from wherever they happen to be on the dates of polling; the sheer convenience will pull many more voters. 

 

OTHER MAJOR REFORMS THAT WILL BECOME FEASIBLE DUE TO ONLINE VOTING:

 

O1.     Two-round system (TRS) of voting in place of the FPTP (First-Past-The-Post) currently followed: If TRS is adopted, in the first round if the top candidate fails to secure 50%+ votes, a run-off election round will get triggered. In a modified TRS, in the run-off round, only the top two candidates (instead of all candidates having polled above x% votes) will be allowed to participate. With online voting, the cost of conducting the TRS elections will NOT be a barrier and democratic representation will become stronger as we will ensure that the winner has 50%+ votes. TRS will overcome a lot of maladies. A major defect in the FPTP system due to which opposition parties with similar ideologies, but one which is opposite of the winning party's ideology, lose out as their votes get split and the "majority" party wins despite obtaining fewer votes (i.e. less than the combined votes of the opposition parties). In FPTP system, the winning party can win disproportionate number of seats compared to its share of votes. For e.g. in 2019 LS Elections, BJP won 303 or 55.8% seats (=303/543) even though the party obtained only 37.36% of the polled votes. [The NDA alliance, which included BJP, won 353 seats with 45% of votes]. Net effect of FPTP system is that a Government can be formed by a party formation with an ideology that is rejected by the majority -this is the case at present. With TRS, this situation would not arise even if parties with opposing but similar ideologies (with respect to the dominant party's ideology) are not united in a prepoll alliance - because in the second round, the split votes will tend to coalesce in support of the only candidate remaining in the contest! [Unlike in USA and UK, where there are two dominant parties, in India for most seats, the contest is among multiple parties, therefore, the votes get split much more and the winning candidate often has a vote share well below 50%. FPTP thus has serious pernicious effects of "unrepresentative democracy" in countries where the elections are fought with many parties in the fray. Ref: Note on TRS vs FPTP for India.

O2.     Referendums can be introduced. Based on legislatures listing worthy issues for referendums, either quarterly or half-yearly or yearly referendums could be held at all levels of Government- National, State or Local Urban or Rural Governments. Referendums will make the Governments more responsive as people will get a greater voice. Legislators will tend to be more accountable.

Gradually the country can refine the election processes and graduate to having issue-based referendums, annually or half-yearly, like Switzerland and other Western democracies have. 

 

THE URGENT REFORM OF ELECTION (POLITICAL) FUNDING, EXPENSE AND TRANSPARENCY 

The five specific issues we should debate are categorised under two groups; there are three issues related to money and two related to transparency and accountability.

1. FUNDING AND EXPENSES RELATED

F1.1 Candidate expenses: The per candidate election expense cap must go - especially as there is no cap on the Political Party expenses. For MLAs and MPs - at present the limit is Rs. 28 lacs to 95 lacs only. This preposterous rule places independent candidates (poor or billionaires - doesn't matter) or candidates of newbie and not-so-rich parties, at a tremendous disadvantage. The expense cap is only for candidates - there is no limit on expenses a party may incur in the candidate's constituency - in many constituencies, experts have calculated the expenses range between Rs.10 to Rs.70 crores (in MLA or MP contests). At present, parties disclose election expenses to match their income which is estimated to be less than 10% of their real expenses. This means 90% of expenses are off the books. So, the rules need to be modified in a way that candidates and parties can mobilise funds and spend legally. Present system forces both spending and mobilising to be done illegally - and it compels virtually every candidate to lie on oath about the real expenses incurred. And in this process honest and successful individuals who have no black money to fight elections, either don't enter politics or if they do, they likely lose elections to those who outspend them (illegally) - one example easy to cite is that of Nandan Nilekani (a technocrat billionaire) who contested for a MP's seat, on a Congress ticket and lost to a BJP opponent, in Bangalore - a city considered to be the IT Capital of India! No reform of any kind seems more important than the amendment of existing political (election) funding and expense limit rules that clearly diminish the chances of good, honest and successful people from getting into elected positions. When honest and smart people get into positions of power, one can expect to see reforms and policies that actually favour building a vibrant democracy - one that provides more voice to its citizens and also drives the future progress of India.

 

F1.2 Political funding: NO DONATION to a political party or a candidate should be hidden - there ought to be 100% transparency; anonymous political bonds must be abolished; the bonds tend to go to the ruling party (and it is not hidden from the ruling party, rather it is hidden from the opposition parties and the public). There should be a high cap (order of 50 or 100 crore rupees) on individual or corporate donations, including "permitted" foreign entity's donations. However, above a certain amount of donation, say Rs.5 lacs, there should be an obligation for a complete and detailed disclosure of donor's involvement in ANY government project which is ongoing or which is likely to start; also, of any action that Government has taken against the donor or the donor's brush with law. All donations must be listed on a website mandated by the ECI.

F1.3 State funding and resources support: Each party and candidate must publish their statement of objectives - and be asked to debate; these moderated debates should be on State-paid TV time and on all State-owned platforms which may syndicate the debate feeds to private channels - it is a big flaw in our system that today, candidates are not asked questions - related to new promises, public issues or old promises they may have made! The expensive rallies and physical meetings which involve extravagant preparations and costs will automatically decline if State-sponsored air time is made available - and, more importantly, candidates without monetary resources will be able to communicate with the electorate and give responses to researched questions of expert moderators. The televised debates could be recorded and catalogued on the ECI portal so that voters can access the same anytime (with translated scripts in different languages). Candidate accountability and a more informed electorate are very important in any democracy!

 

2. TRANSPARENCY RELATED

 

T2.1 Candidate disclosures: Candidate's disclosures of his/her qualifications, assets, liability, income criminal cases faced or ongoing and business transactions with Government departments or public enterprises in the form of an affidavit should be published on the ECI website (this is not being done for items mentioned in italics) AND number of complaints or challenges received by the ECI against claims in the candidate's affidavit, and those ECI has verified, along with the details should also be published.(this is not being done today - in fact complaints to ECI are ignored - it verifies nothing). ECI says it has no resources to investigate nor refer such cases to State agencies - this deficiency in the transparency system needs to be fixed by requiring and enabling ECI to settle complaints & challenges and regularly publish the status of its findings. 

T2.2 Party functioning transparency: Political Parties, particularly the "National Political Parties" so recognised by ECI, should be subjected to three rules -
i) they must be brought under the purview of RTI Act,
ii) they must publish their manifesto before each election AND
iii) they must publish their inner party constitutional framework and the audit report of its framework by ECI - it doesn't matter if the framework is "democratic" or "autocratic" or "dynastic"; ECI's audit stamp will merely confirm that the party is following the published framework. This is like the public disclosure a company makes before a public issue - ECI's stamp of audit merely confirms that the party practices are found to be in conformity with its stated constitutional framework - it is not an endorsement of any claims of the party being meritorious - which is a matter of voter's (informed) judgment.. 

 

CONCLUSION

 

To sum up, two sets of reforms are discussed above.
The set of urgent reforms related to money and transparency are capable of being implemented before the next General Election in 2024 - this could happen provided there is sufficient public pressure and / or a political will. These easy-to-do electoral reforms will help in putting honest and smart people in positions of power (as legislators).
The other high-tech reforms for making voting online anytime-anywhere and conducting referendums could be attempted by the legislators elected in the next General Elections (hopefully smarter and more honest), in five years: in 2024-2029. The high-tech reforms will make our democracy far more responsive than it is today; besides, the reforms will also save huge amounts of money (official and unofficial, private or public) and time we spend on electing MPs, MLAs, Corporators and Panchs! We can forget 1N1P and talk about the above reforms instead.

 

Epilogue:

 1. Public pressure is also required to have the Election Commission of India (ECI) conduct free and fair elections; ECI must respond to queries and complaints, manage and act against MCC violations. Serious violations and anomalies have been reported by Citizens Commission on Elections (CCE).  If we cannot make the archaic EVMs, and fraud-prone post-poll processes, safe with the required tweaks, we ought to revert to paper ballots to save our democracy (the tweaks are simple, read my Nov'24 blog)

2. After having been in information systems-designing-developing-deploying business for many decades, and having seen India's Digital Public Infrastructure, I have no doubt that we in India have the capacity and readiness to implement the online voting system described above. See below the transaction volumes we have crossed with two systems (UPI and Aadhaar, no other big country has equivalent systems); no country is close to achieving these volumes, forget beating these performances, USA, China and EU included:

 

We also have millions of Web cameras deployed with online monitoring in hundreds of applications. Each ECI authorised agent, e.g. bank branch, post-office, CSCs (5.21 lac of which 4.13 lac in rural India), TSP offices etc. during the voting time window could have surveillance webcams linked to ECI monitoring stations in which representatives of political parties could remain present so that voters who visit agents to vote could be watched - each transaction of vote would be time stamped (to correlate with recorded video, in case audit is required). This is one example of the future "voting booth" configuration; ultimately, after everyone becomes tech-savvy, even these "booths" could be eliminated.

No voter list, no booths, anytime anywhere voting at one tenth the cost AND more INCLUSIVE

The prefixes O (Online), F (Financial) and T (Transparency) in the numbered items above, are for referencing in Google Form.

Express your opinion (10 minutes to fill-up a form)

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1- Footnote
The Indian Government structure envisages Central Government, State Government and Local Government. In the top two levels of the government there are nominated representatives otherwise representatives are directly elected by the citizens of India. The elections are not in sync so, the country seems to be perpetually in election mode.

At the top level, in the Indian parliament 543 seats of MPs are contested by close to 10K candidates! (Before 2020, two additional MPs were appointed by the President on the advice of the Government).

At the middle tier, in the Legislative Assemblies of the States, for about 4K MLA seats. tens of thousands candidates contest.

At the Panchayat or Municipal level local governments, for about 300K seats there may be over million contestants.

There were 968.8 million registered voters in the 2024 Parliamentary Elections of India.

Ref: http://www.elections.in/government/

Election expenses by candidates and parties Rs.50K to 80K crores: 

Government's expenses in conducting 2019 LS - also called General Elections - Rs.9,000 crores. Assuming there were 900 million eligible voters, the ECI expesne per voter = Rs.100

2- Footnote
Voting will be done with two factor authentication just like it is done with banking or credit card transactions; either with OTP or biometric authentication - voter's finger print or iris scan or facial recognition in future (VID cannot be used instead of Aadhaar).

RELEVANT REFERENCES:

State of ICT and internet voting worldwide: There are only two countries - Estonia and UAE which have implemented online voting for internal as well as external resident citizens - several other countries have more restricted usage of Internet voting.

FPTP versus Two Round or Run-off Elections System

Problems and issues with the existing system:

Electoral Democracy - Book Launch (24-Jun-22)

REPORT OF THECITIZENS’ COMMISSION ON ELECTIONS VOLUME I (Jan'21)

Few relevant articles and notes

EVM - VVPAT anomalies and complaints

Vishwakarma University Law Journal - Paper on election reforms issues and challenges

About 1N1P:

Simultaneous Elections strike at the roots of Parliamentary Democracy 

Umpire cannot be subservient to the team Captain

Jagdeep Chokkar disses the ONOE idea - he says it will remain just a talking point and its purpose BJP sees, is lilely to distract people talking about substantive issues country faces under Modi regime. Video

About role (abuse) of money power:

Role of money in elections - Biggest mobiliser of election money in the world

Indian democracy for whom? Cringeworthy governance!

Knowledge:

Different Election Systems