RACE BEGINS

The first phase of Elections '09 for the Fifteenth Lok Sabha begins today. The statistics of this massive exercise is mind boggling and a logistical nightmare.
124 of the 543 seats spread across 17 States and Union Territories will be up for grabs today. Incidentally, phase one of two simultaneous Assembly Elections involving 154 of the 297 seats of Andhra Pardesh and 70 of the 147 seats of Orissa assemblies will also be conducted.
It is interesting to know that Indian Elections are the largest democratic activity conducted any where in the world to form a government.
Hats off to the Election Commission to be able to undertake this massive task with a fairly independent and strict monitoring using the electronics voting machine which in itself is another world record!!
The back end of our democracy is convincing and worth being proud of. We now need to put the front end of this process in order to remove the corruption that is all pervading amongst majority of the politicians who slip through to form the government.
Hopefully this election appears to have made a tentative beginning towards a clean up operation considering awareness campaigns and new levels of involvement from citizens who were considered to be full of apathy towards the election process.