Bihar's poor technology penetration poses new challenges for election amid Covid-19: Report

The upcoming Bihar elections will be the first statewide elections to be conducted following the Covid-19 outbreak in India with strict coronavirus norms in place, including social distancing. This, for the state's political parties, means a new challenge in election campaigning.

Bihar's low telephone connections, low internet penetration and lack of mass media exposure pose a new conundrum for the campaign hit by the pandemic. Most of the communication with voters will now have to be indirect, i.e. via digital tools.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, election concerns involved rallies, advertisement and the old-fashioned door-to-door campaign.

However, corpnavirus has changed the face of campaigning, as the state knows it.

According Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) data, Tele-density, which is the number of telephone connections per hundred people, is the lowest in Bihar, at 59 in 2019. The national average, however, is 89, the Hindustan Times reported.

Internet penetration in Bihar, according to the HT report citing TRAI data, by the end of 2019 was 32 subscribers per hundred people, which is much lower than the national average of 54. About 89 per cent of Bihar resides in rural areas, where there are only 22 internet subscribers per 100 people.

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National Family Health Survey (NFHS) conducted in 2015-16 shows the state's 61 per cent of women and 36 per cent of men have no access to mass media. Bihar also has the highest number of women lacking access to mass media in India and in terms of men, the state is only behind Jharkhand, the report cited.

BJP spokesman Nikhil Anand said that the elections were happening under strict social distancing norms and called it the new normal. “However, party has its chain of digitally enabled workers, who in turn arrange the digital output system through local cooperation to reach out to maximum people through virtual rallies,” he told the publication.

Rajiv Ranjan Prasad, a spokesperson for the BJP’s ally, the Janata Dal (United), told the publication that the state was grappling with low tele-density for a long time and claimed that the pandemic will result in increased mobile phone users. “There is limitations of each type of technology," he added.

The lead opposition party in Bihar, RJD, is going ahead with the elections in an old-fashioned way. “We had pointed out the issue to the Election commission of India and urged it to allow a level playing ground to all parties. Our party is not that resourceful and neither are its voters. RJD leaders have already started holding meetings in small groups at panchayat levels,” said RJD spokesman Mrityunjay Tiwari.

State Congress chief Madan Mohan Jha said that the party’s digital drive to enroll fresh members would be easier with better technology penetration in the state.

Under these conditions, if Bihar goes to the polls, the mandate is most likely to be skewed and inauthentic.