The Indian election is about the 714 million electorate, the many thousands who play the electoral field and the virtual army of people working behind the scenes.

But it is also about a pintsized contraption - the electronic voting machine (EVM) - that has become the leitmotif of the world’s largest democratic

exercise and gets smarter with each avatar.

It not only does the obvious - records the vote - but also notes the exact time it is cast. The new and improved machines also give hourly updates of

balloting, besides of course aiding in the counting of votes.

Forget about counting chads, the inconvenient little slips that had tripped the US presidential election in 2000, the EVMs have ensured that the

counting of the many million votes is done in a matter of hours. Results of the general election, or an assembly election in one of the states, are

declared a short while after the counting start.

In Election 2009 held in April and May, an estimated 1.36 million EVMs were used in 828,000 polling booths across this vast country.

According to Amol Newaskar, general manager of Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) in India’s IT city of Bangalore, the machines supplied for the

elections conducted over five phases have improvised on the older version.

BEL, which is one of the two public sector companies manufacturing EVMs for the Election Commission, has supplied 65,000 EVMs since 2000.

“However, the ones manufactured from 2007 onwards have improvised features like in-built clocks which record the exact time a ballot is cast,” Newaskar

said.

“Not just that, the EVM also records the exact time when the whole balloting process starts and when the last vote is cast. It gives an hourly update of

the number of votes cast, and if there is any unusual trend in the process, it can be easily detected. Thus, the whole process becomes tamper-proof,” he

added.

For instance, if there is a heavy rush in polling at a particular hour, the officials can be on alert or if a voter thinks that his vote is being

tampered with, the exact time when he cast his vote can be retrieved.

The Election Commission, according to Newaskar, placed an order for 102,000 EVMs to BEL for the 2009 general election - all of which were supplied by

January.

The other company authorised by the Election Commission to manufacture EVMs is the Hyderabad-based Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) that

has supplied 78,000 machines with the improvised features.

For the benefit of the visually impaired, the EVMs also have Braille markings on them.

Costing 9,800 rupees (about $195), it is no wonder that EVMs are a mega hit on the global stage as well.

Bhutan got 4,140 of them for its elections last year and Nepal has acquired them too. And inquiries for the Indian-made election tool have come in from

all over. The Namibian government has placed orders for 2,000 voting machines, while Ghana, South Africa and Nigeria have evinced interest as

have neighbours Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Malaysia, said Newaskar, had also shown interest. According to K.S. Rajasekhara Rao, chairman of ECIL, which supplied the EVMs

in the Bhutan elections: “Many others countries like Sri Lanka, Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria and Bangladesh have expressed a keen interest in acquiring

these machines too.”

Although the new EVMs have improvised features, most countries want the machines with further modifications.

The basic unit, easy to carry and no bigger than a briefcase, comes in two interconnected parts - the ballot unit, accessed by the voter who punches

her vote, and the control unit that registers all related data like the total votes cast.

Most voters find it easy to use.

Vani Mittal, a second year graduation student of Delhi University, did not find using the EVM difficult at all when she voted for the first time in the

assembly elections last year.

“The EVM is quite user-friendly. You have the name of the candidate and the party symbol clearly stated; so there is no question of any confusion,”

Mittal said.

“As a child, whenever my father used to go to vote I used to accompany him.

So I knew how tedious the earlier process was. After deciding whom you want to vote for, you have to fold the ballot paper in a particular manner and

drop it in the box. The EVMs have made the process so much easier,” she added.

Even so, to attract voters in the general election, the election office in the capital New Delhi has uploaded a video on using EVMs on YouTube.

“Sometimes people are confused and unaware of how to use EVMs. So, in order to spread more awareness, we have uploaded a training video on usage of EVMs on popular video sharing website YouTube,” said Delhi’s chief electoral officer Satbir Silas Bedi.

There is no need for that, said Majid, a security guard from Bihar who works in the capital. “It is easy. Even somebody who can’t read and write can

operate the