THE MYTH OF BANGLADESHI IN ASSAM

Statistics expose one lie and nail another
India is not just the world's largest democracy, it is also the world's most enthusiastic. In fact, so enthusiastic that last year voters outnumbered the voting-age population by 25 million. Obviously, that is a result of elector-registration fraud. On Thursday, this newspaper reported how in 1999 registered voters outnumbered the voting population by more than 7 percent, a figure that fell to about 4 percent during last year's Lok Sabha election. Obviously, this is an administrative problem. A state-by-state analysis of numbers shows that the infestation of ghost voters is the highest in India's worst-run states, less in better-administered ones. Unsurprisingly, Uttar Pradesh, where governance has nearly collapsed, has more than 15 million spook voters, a staggering 16 percent more than the voting population. Bihar has about four million false voters, Madhya Pradesh about 2.4 million and Rajasthan more than 1.5 million. States like Kerala and Maharashtra, which are governed better, actually have no spooks: the number of registered voters is less than the voting age population, which is as things should be. The exceptions to this rule are Haryana, traditionally assumed to be lawless, which has no ghost voters. On the other hand, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, assumed to be well-run, have plenty of them. Indians are justifiably proud of their democracy, so it would be a shame to see its copybook blotted by elector-registration fraud. The government and the Election Commission should step in with accurate and more frequent monitoring of voter registration to check this malpractice. A look at state-level numbers helps to bust a myth, propounded by communal outfits like the BJP, about politicians from India's eastern states allowing illegal Muslim migrants to pour in from Bangladesh to build a loyal vote bank of grateful immigrants. If this were true, states like Bengal, Assam and Tripura would have huge numbers of ghost voters: illegal migrants wouldn't be listed as part of the population, but would figure in voters' lists. In fact, none of these states has ghost voters. In Assam, the number of voters is 12.3 percent less than the voting age population, in Bengal 9 percent less and in Tripura about 5 percent below the population of electors. If there are illegal migrants, they're not showing up to vote. Sometimes, statistics help to nail lies