The Presidential elections in the US are over and it reminded the general elections in the India. Confusions, irregularities, divisions and passion can be used to describe the elections.

There are some factors, which no one can effectively relate to the results of the elections. The winning faction will make efforts to project their victory as the result of the work during incumbency, effective campaigning and focus on current issues, which may or may not be true. The loosing faction will graciously accept the defeat without understanding the core of its defeat.

Know about Indian Elections

There have been striking similarities in the two elections in these two democracies. Both the countries were equally divided and anyone could have been the winner till the results were declared. The most important conclusion that can be derived from the results of the elections in India and the US is the relationship between Governance & Electability, the GE theory.

As can been seen electability is inversely proportional to governance.

No matter how well the incumbent Government (read BJP) has performed in office, it will not get elected. No matter how badly the incumbent Government (read Republican and the Congress in Maharashtra) has performed in the office, it will get elected.

Historically there has always been some relationship between good governance and electability. Even the experts are unable to convincingly explain this reversal in relationship.

There may be some factors that may help us better understand this relationship. We can see that the GE formula comes into play especially when the country is equally divided.

India was equally divided and no one got clear majority. Not even Congress, which has been saying ever since that they were clear winners.

This is simply not true; see the actual result, as numbers do not lie (BJP - 138, Congress - 145 both well short of 272). A 51% for Bush and 49% for Kerry is a clear case of division with divided mandate. Although enough to form Government but not enough to run it effectively because the "healing process" does not take place when the country is divided.

When emotive issues take precedence over good governance we see an inversely proportional relationship between governance and electability. Kids of Gandhi and the daughter-in-law of nation played an effective campaign in India. In some parts of India the emotional cord struck and the good-governance was kept on back burner.

The "India Shining" campaign was not very effective even when India was actually shining. In US, some of the key words like character, integrity, faith and moral values worked for Bush and the visuals of 'coffins' coming home did not work for Kerry.

Religion has played a very important role in these US elections proving the GE theory. The evangelicals turned out in record numbers and turned the whole elections around.

They did not care about the US going to Iraq for wrong reasons or the economy was in a very bad shape or the approval of Bush was low. The only intention of this group of religious people was to go out and vote for Bush in the name of religion.

Some of the socially important factors like same-sex marriage or stem cell research or abortion did not find any place among the Conservatives. The church actually issued whip saying that voting for Kerry is evil. The "compassionate conservatives" took these issues very seriously and did not want the liberals to even come close to power.

Religion, as ever, won again. In India, we also work very much on the same line as far as religion is concerned. The culturally conservatives (read Hindutva) or the pseudo-secularists (read minority-appeasing) are making noises which sound much like the compassionate conservatives of the US.

The Hindutva conservatives also have an extra nationalist component, which is not wrong, but Congress would like to think otherwise. However, one thing is very clear. No party, whether it is BJP or Congress, can defy religion and come into power. Experts say that BJP lost their religious effect and was voted out of power.

In this US election there were irregularities wildest to anyone's imagination. With different voting mechanism such as optical scan, touch screen, paper ballot, punch card etc in use across the whole country there are bound to be issues. Adding to this are the special effects from absentee ballot and provisional ballot.

The heterogeneity of the electoral process, in which every state has its own voting and contingency procedure, is the devil on its own. There has been an honest talk about the electoral reform. In India though you will find very little instances of the failure of election mechanism because we always adopted uniform voting procedure, first paper ballot and now electronic voting machines.

The instance of voter intimidation or voter harassment is existent in both the countries and Bihar in India and many States in US would be winners. The process of voter registration can be a cause of concern for both India and the US.

Re-counting in US is difficult, re-polling in India is almost always done with Bihar again a winner. The Americans give Indians a lot of marks for carrying elections so smoothly because the Indian electoral process, run by the neutral Election Commission of India, is so shock and breakdown proof. These irregularities, as the Democrats say, were used effectively by the Republicans to their advantage proving once again that governance and electability may be inversely proportional.

One British tabloid called the Bush voters as 'dumb'. Other Swiss paper called the outcome as a threat to European integrity. The media worldwide was shocked to hear the NDA (National Democratic Alliance) Government voted out. The media now is shocked to see Bush back in action. No matter who wins or looses the elections and by what margin we have to respect the hoi polloi verdict. Well only if the elections were free and fair.

About the Author: Thakur Shashi Prakash Singh was an international observer of the 2004 US Presidential Elections.