Foreign secretary Sujatha Singh happily showed her marked finger to her Chinese hosts when they asked for it during her three-day visit here over the past weekend.
After all, Singh was visiting Beijing, meeting few top officials, a number of South Asian experts and Chinese businessmen for the annual strategic dialogue during a time India is under scrutiny from nearly the world over – during the biggest election anywhere.
And naturally, many among the Chinese diplomats and officials were keen to see that one symbol of democracy that every proud Indian voter can flourish after casting their vote – the mark of the indelible ink on the left hand’s forefinger, at least for most.
Even the other senior Indian diplomats who had travelled with her to China were often asked about the mark and the ink used to put it.
The Chinese government is evidently closely following the elections in India.
For one, it must be surprising to many among them that India, a nation far behind theirs in development and infrastructure, in per capita income, riddled with and often ruled by religious divide and caste-related prejudices, poverty and more, is able to complete this massive exercise freely, fairly and largely without major incidents of violence.
(Till now, the most serious incident of violence during the election was carried out by the Maoists, who apparently are fueled by the ideology of Mao Zedong, under whose leadership the Republic was founded.)
The numbers involved in the Indian elections – even by the standards of China, the most populous nation in the world – are huge. Beijing realises that.
China has no process remotely comparable. And even though the leaders of the Communist Party of China (CPC) talk about “grassroots democracy” and “people’s representations” etc during their grand gatherings at the Great Hall of the People annually, they know in their minds that the process of ascension to leadership in China is as transparent as the waters of a certain area of the southern Indian Ocean.
Chinese diplomats and India watchers might be following the elections in India but the interest among the people in general doesn’t seem to be that high.
Even Chinese experts I spoke to about the Indian elections – who themselves were very well informed about the elections, the main candidates and the issues involved – admitted that Chinese citizens were not too interested in it.
In fact, many more Chinese citizens were interested in the US elections probably because of President Barack Obama’s individual popularity. Surprisingly, the Chinese government had then allowed the US embassy here to set up a mock voting poll centre for Chinese citizens to cast their vote in favour of either of the two Presidential candidates.
“I am not sure about that (interest here about Indian elections). I could only say that the elites and especially the international politics students could pay some attention to your election. Generally, they have some more interests in the US election than any other elections. The coverage of your election in Chinese media is also very limited, comparing with the coverage of the US elections,” Hu Shisheng, a leading south Asian expert at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told me.
He added: “Generally speaking, those who follow your elections are also not that positive about your election and your elected governance system. It looks too noisy, chaotic, and resource-wasting. Frankly speaking your democratic system has very few followers in China.”
The government media, for sure, is covering the election from India. But it’s mostly restricted to their English versions. The vast majority of Chinese who follow the local language media are probably not getting to read about the Indian democratic process.
I don’t know whether it is a deliberate policy of the Chinese government not to allow much publicity of the Indian democracy or its electoral process in China. India might just be too close for comfort.