India’s Poll Workers Overcome Obstacles to Reach Voters

choi

Biman Mukherji and Shefali Anand, To Reach India’s Voters, They Brave Hungry Crocodiles and Capsizing; In world’s biggest democracy, elections trigger world’s biggest obstacle course. Wall Street Journal, Apr 24, 2014 (front page)
online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB20001424052702303626804579505710305318136
(“Election rules [in India] say there must be a polling station within two kilometers of every residential community”)

My comment:
(a) Sooner or later China will become a full-fledged democracy. This report is about how India brings blank ballots to potential voters.
(b) Mayabunder
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayabunder

(c) “Nearly six million poll workers, many of them teachers like Mr [Biswajit ] Roy or other government employees, are protected by 11 million police and soldiers as they fan out across the country. Their routes take them through the soaring Himalayan mountains of Ladakh in the north and the tiny Lakshadweep islands in the Arabian Sea to the south. Poll workers travel with camel caravans to reach settlements in the deserts of Rajasthan. In Meghalaya in the northeast, election officials recently had to contend with a herd of wild elephants that blocked the way to two polling stations. Eventually, forest rangers came to the rescue.”
(i) Ladakh
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladakh
(a region of India in the state of Jammu and Kashmir)
(ii) Lakshadweep
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakshadweep
(iii) Rajasthan
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajasthan
(iv) Meghalaya
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meghalaya
(a state)

(c) “Election officials don't take the risks lightly. Equipped with rescue boats and other fallbacks, they prepare for all kinds of mishaps, including earthquakes and tsunamis.”

fallback (n): “something on which one can fall back”
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fallback
(d) “Once they reached Hanspuri, a village of thatched-roof houses and palm trees inhabited largely by migrants from the impoverished eastern state of Jharkhand, the election workers collapsed.”

Jharkhand
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jharkhand