"You have got the best talent in the world. Why don''t you use that?"

NULL

2846 NULL

2847 NULL

2848 NULL

2849 NULL

2891 NULL

2892 NULL

2893 NULL

2894 NULL

2895 NULL

2896 NULL

2897 NULL

2898 NULL

2899 NULL

21846

Elections

are becoming a re- curring feature for India but for the Election

Commission (EC) it has been a case of successful experiments,

learning experiments and more experiments. In the past two

years, the EC has already handled the general elections and

the assembly elections in four states in 1998 and the Goa

assembly election in June-1999. However, this time around

the whole exercise is characterized by one key issue-scaling.

Consider the facts-the EC expects to handle anything between

60,000 and 100,000 packets of data as compared to about 5,000-7,000

packets for the previous general elections, held in March

1998. Even the deployment of electronic voting machines (EVMs)

sharply increased from 12,000-15,000 units in the assembly

election of November 1998 to about two lakh units. In terms

of counting centers, the EC has to manage data from 1,500-odd

computerized counting centers, up from the 100 centers in

the last assembly election. This is also the first time that

the EC is going to process data electronically from both the

parliamentary and assembly elections, together.

Past

history

Going

by our election history, it has been very common that at the

end of the elections, the various political parties file a

number of representations as they feel something has gone

wrong during the counting. One of the key reasons for this

has been that they felt a little wary of the counting process

at the central level. To get over this problem, the EC decided

to have some kind of real-time monitoring system in place

during the 1998 general elections and started taking its IT

initiatives. As Subas Pani, Deputy Election Commissioner,

EC, says "The whole idea of using IT was to bring an element

of real-time monitoring and make it a process of technology

osmosis down to the level of the sub district." The first

major IT and real-time monitoring initiative took place during

the 1998 general elections. During these elections, the key

infrastructure at the EC headquarters at Nirvachan Sadan included

one Alpha server, about eight P-II dual processor 266Mhz servers,

100 Pentium nodes and 50 fax machines to receive the flood

of data. On the communication side was a 2Mbps-radio link

with VSNL, 64Kbps leaded lines and PSTN lines. The data was

received by fax and would be punched in at the EC office in

the special software developed by the EC and CMC. During the

assembly elections in 1998 held in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh,

Mizoram and Delhi, nothing much changed on the hardware side.

However, it was decided that it would be best to capture data

at the place where it has been generated-the counting centers-rather

than punch it at the EC's office. Accordingly, faxes were

to be made redundant and the 100-odd counting centers were

equipped with the necessary computers and communication facility.

Data was punched at the counting centers and transmitted by

dial-up to the Chief Election Office (CEO) of the respective

state, and the EC. The entire exercise went on with clockwise

precision and the EC was successful in experimenting with

ISDN, standardizing the election software, product deployment

and other tricky issues. The success of the assembly elections

held in 1998 gave a boost to the EC and it was decided that

the counting centers across the country would be equipped

with the necessary computers and communication facility. As

S Mendiratta, Director (Information Systems), EC, puts it,

"Ideally our plans were to phase the IT infrastructure across

the country by the next two years." In the first phase, the

endeavor was to link about 600-odd counting centers in the

six states going for election in 1999 and in the next phase

the balance counting centers could be connected. However,

time has not been a luxury that the EC could enjoy. With the

general elections announced much ahead of their expectation,

the EC had the option of either reverting back to the older

system of faxes or go ahead and accelerate the whole process

of computerization. The EC chose the latter and the 1,500

counting centers were connected to the respective state CEO

and the Nirvachan Sadan.

Failsafe

mechanisms

The EC

has geared up to handle data both from parliamentary and assembly

elections for five states, unlike in 1998 when it handled

only parliamentary data and earlier this year, when it handled

only assembly data. Since the commission has decided to go

the whole hog and equip its counting centers with the necessary

computers and communication facilities, it also implies that

all the computers have standard election software and the

officers are trained to handle them. Instructors, hired to

train officers, were made familiar with the protocols, software

and other procedures of the EC through workshop sessions,

which totaled seven. They in turn had sessions within their

states to train the officers at the counting centers. After

the installation of software at the counting centers, there

was an elaborate procedure of testing the whole process. The

testing has been done in two phases. In the first phase, the

software was set up in each district, in about 600 locations,

then transmission to the Nirvachan Sadan was tested. Stage

two involved setting up the software in each counting center

and checking transmission to the Nirvachan Sadan and the state

CEOs. As the counting centers will only be activated a few

days before the actual counting, the EC has planned full-scale

dress rehearsals, from September 25 to October 6.

Connecting

backbone

To meet

the requirement for the huge data inflow-estimated at about

one million bits of data-the EC is equipped with the necessary

hardware. It has about 100 P-II computers and about 25 servers,

including an NT cluster. To make it failsafe and have appropriate

load-balancing mechanism, the EC has also gone in for three

Compaq NT clusters with fiber channels. It has also ensured

that the systems are always up and running. Other components

include five Cisco routers, six 100Mbps Cisco switches and

eight ISDN lines. Of course, the 2Mbps radio link with VSNL

for internet still exists along with a 128Kbps copper line

backup for the same. The CEO premises of all the 16 major

states/UTs (Union Territories) are connected to the EC via

dedicated 64Kbps leased lines. However, in smaller states/UTs,

the connection to the EC is by the regular PSTN network. The

back-up measure is the Ernet backbone. In Lucknow and Patna,

the CEO have VSATs linking to the Ernet backbone while the

Trivandrum CEO is using the STPI backbone as a back-up measure.

Moreover,

the EC has asked the 16 major states/UTs to have 16 or 20-line

RAS in the CEO premises. These states/UTs account for 514

of the 543 parliamentary constituencies in the country. In

other smaller states/UTs, the CEO would have software for

RAS installed. However, the North Eastern states would be

an exception. Due to the geographical spread of the region,

all the states, except Sikkim, will be connected to Guwahati

where the RAS is also set up and use it as a relay center

for transmitting data to the EC. On the software side, apart

from the Digital Alpha running on Unix, the platform standardized

across the EC is Windows NT. The EC is deploying the Oracle

engine for database management, and the Netscape Enterprise

Server for internet management. The GIS part is handled by

ESRI's Arc/Info package.

The

data deluge

A deluge

of data is expected to come in. As per EC records, India has

an electorate of around 614 million people. To cut down and

streamline handling of this data, the first step has been

introduction of EVMs. Though the manual system will be used

this time too, the EVMs covering the number of parliamentary

constituencies has increased to about 2 lakh units-up from

a couple of thousands in a few urban areas during the assembly

elections of 1998. Data from EVMs is available only after

counting is over. But for the EC, the data handling part is

activated much before the counting starts. Before the counting

there are three or four sets of data required by the commission

from the states. There is a summary statement of nominations

and withdrawals, a detailed statement of contesting candidates,

the electorate statement, polling station details and counting

center details. These pre-counting data are collected by the

returning officers, consolidated by the CEO and transmitted

to the EC. Another set of data is the voters' turnout on the

day of polls and finally comes the counting data.

The counting

data comes from the counting centers and the CEO while the

other data is only from the CEO. The EC is taking no chances

with the poll data. This is evident from the whole mechanism

of receiving the data. As counting reaches a crucial period-between

October 6 and 10-the data comes to the Nirvachan Sadan via

three ways and obliterates any chances of data corruption

or non-receipt of data. Firstly the counting centers relay

the data to the Nirvachan Sadan and the state CEO via dial-up.

This is built in the software. As the results emerge from

the counting center, these are punched in the election software

and uploaded using file transfer protocol-one to the EC and

other to the respective state CEO. Of course, if there is

any disruption in the infrastructure at the counting centers,

officials there have been advised to activate the fax machine

and transmit data to their respective CEO, which would have

the data punched in and transmitted to the EC. As and when

the systems get restored, the counting centers could continue

with the normal procedures.

This is

the first level of data transmission to the EC. To make the

system fail-safe and to ensure that the counting centers always

get the EC number, the EC has upgraded its earlier 16-line

Cisco RAS to a 150-line Nortel RAS. Once the CEO receives

the data, it is transmitted to the EC through the 64Kbps leased

line and the Ernet backbone. So a minimum of three sets of

the same data is sent to the EC by the counting centers and

the CEOs. Once it reaches the EC, the data is dumped on to

the RDBMS server after authentication, a data integrity check

and a duplication check. The Oracle engines manage the data,

analyze the information for available trends and post it on

the NT-based proxy server before transferring it to the Alpha

web server. As the user, you would be getting web pages on

live data. Also activated during the same time is the GIS

server which plugs into the Oracle engine, refreshes the map

and converts it into a web page.

This helps

in creating dynamic maps on the web giving the latest pictorial

trend about the elections. Also, the websites (www.eci.gov.in,

www.election-india.com and www.india-election.com) can be

viewed in Hindi after downloading the required fonts. To ensure

a smooth run of the web site, nearly 1,500 pages are refreshed

every five minutes. Information dissemination on the website

is just an offshoot of the EC's IT venture. As Subas Pani

says, "The website isn't the objective, it's just a means

to ensure fair counting and transparency." Also, as on the

date of writing, the EC was evaluating putting up mirror sites

on VSNL and MTNL to avoid congestion during peak hours on

the counting days. During the previous elections, the Alpha

server with a 512MB RAM-since upgraded to 1GB-and 40GB hard

disk stood up well to take on the 1.2 million hits during

the peak period. The EC is confident that irrespective of

the traffic during the counting days the server can withstand

the heat. The huge project is expected to flow in clockwork

precision, thanks to the dress rehearsal. As Pani puts it,

"From October 6 to 10, our network will be the biggest WAN

in India."

The

final countdown

The EC

is confident that it will handle the data deluge in the peak

cycle during the counting period. Past experiences and experiments

have been successful and the EC is confident of the success

of this one too. Until 1997, the EC was flooded with a host

of representations about counting; however after 1998, when

IT was brought in full scale, these have virtually disappeared.

So, irrespective of which party wins, the EC is assured of

success-of a majority support for its endeavor.

YOGRAJ

VARMA in New Delhi