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Records the wanderings of a wordsmith
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Thursday, August 28, 2003
Another story of poor, humble India showing the way for the world in technology adoption. When even the U.S is yet to fully embrace electronic voting, India is planning to hold the next general elections, due in 2004, fully electronically.
With 35 crore illiterate people that is some achievement.
The simple, but very user-friendly electronic voting machine designed by the Electronic Corporation of India Limited, was first used in 1998 in three state assembly elections and in the general elections the next year. The experiment was a great success.
Spurred by that, the Election Commission is procuring the final lot of 2.90 lakh units of the machine to enter the era of paperless ballot as far as central and state elections are concerned.
With this purchase, it will have 9 lakh units of the machine to be used in almost as many polling booths across the country.
In the next stage, local elections, for which the state chief electoral officers are in charge, will also be held electronically.
There might be some people who will sourly miss those "good old days" of ballot paper snatching and repeat voting. Isn't it a wonder that their opposition to new technology has been brushed aside by the society in favour of fair and efficient polling?
But then, India is changing.
posted by S. Srinivasan at 10:27 AM
Monday, August 25, 2003
Monsanto, the controversial seed company, must be licking its wounds in India. The company has been eager to locate new markets for its genetically modified crops outside the U.S and has faced stiff resistance from Europe, due to concerns of their impact on health.
India is potentially a big market for Monsanto, particularly its BT cotton, because the country's has the largest acreage in the world under this cash crop. However, it has faced stiff resistance here too.
Activists say BT cotton seeds are environmentally hazardous, could contaminate native varieties and take away farming from small farmers to big corporations. A losing proposition for countries like India.
And farmers seem to have taken this message, according to the company's own admission. Monsanto sites "hostile environment" in India as the reason for its failure to meet sales target, that too by a big margin, in this season.
The company's Indian partners sold only 230,000 packets of BT cotton seeds as against a target of 700,000 seeds.
This failure follows the rejection by the Indian government of the application from Monsanto and its partners to sell the seeds in North India.
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