India, general elections in the most populous country in the world

The voting is divided into seven phases, among which the 28 Indian states are divided, and each of them begins on Friday of each week, but they have different durations: there are states that vote on one day, but on others, such as Uttar Pradesh, (which concentrates 200 million inhabitants), the polls are open for 7 days. This very atypical configuration is intended to allow each and every Indian who wishes to exercise their right: the Electoral Commission must ensure that there is a voting booth within 2 km of each potential voter. However, in the first and second phases, participation was around 60%, something that may have been influenced by the extreme heat wave that the country is suffering.

In total, Indians will elect 543 parliamentary representatives. He BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party, Indian People's Party) of Narendra Modi, who has governed since 2019, hopes to win around 400 seats. Critics of Modi, whose policies are marked by strong Hindu nationalism, point out that Indian secularism has been under attack since he began his rule.

On the economic front, Modi has managed to position India as the fastest-growing economy among the largest economies, with growth rates in the range of 6%-7% annually; It is currently the fifth largest economy in the world, but it is expected to become the third largest (overtaking Germany and Japan) in the next five years. In the last decade it has experienced a great expansion of its infrastructure (100.000 km of roads have been built and the number of airports has doubled to 149) and extreme poverty has been reduced to 5% of the population. This development, added to the strong personality of his leader, has allowed him to gain diplomatic weight at the international level, becoming an important geopolitical actor.

Source: CESCE