Miracle of Aggregation

The just concluded general elections in India was one of my happiest moments in the recent past.
First of all, this massive exercise covering such a big country over a period of a month itself is something that we can feel proud of. Administration of a volatile democratic event like this in such a big scale is terrific and to announce the results in just a few hours, isn't this astounding?

Now, to the results. The right wing hindu religion-oriented party's roller-coaster ride seemed to be making head-way and everyone thought that they are going to form the next government. Or worse, all the predictions were for a hung-parliament, without any party having a clear majority. The scenario which everyone predicted in the last few days (the worst outcome in my view) was that a group of small parties led by Left will form the government, supported unwillingly by congress from outside. Fortunately, all these predictions were proved wrong and the UPA alliance won a majority on its own. I was quite happy with the outcome, though I am personally not a big fan of congress culture! Possibly, the best outcome that could have been.

As usual, TV channels and 'experts' started announcing their wisdom on the election results. Why this happened, why that did not happen, statewise calculations, castewise arithmetic and all that. The final conclusion everyone is pronouncing in the last one month is like this : "People have voted for good governance. They are not for mixing religion and politics. They are not for fringe parties pressurising the national parties like Congress. State parties should take a back seat is the view of the people. Performance of the Government will be rewarded" etc. etc.

I was quite amused with all these analysis, because the same people were predicting a hung parliament a couple of days ago. Didn't they know this psychology of the voter then? If so, they could have predicted the outcome properly? In fact, the entire media was complaining that money power is rampant; people are being offered sops; voters are going to vote whoever gives money; freebies are the deciding factor and what not!

And, the most bewildering issue for me was : Out of the 600 million or so of voters, each voter is just one individual. And, how can we interpret his or her choice to a particular candidate in a local village and relate it to the final mandate which is on a national scale; parties coming together to form government etc.

But, just a few days ago, came across an article which analyses this issue a bit. It seems it is called 'miracle of aggregation'. Quite interesting.

Any doubt on the collective wisdom of the Indian voter has been put to rest in the current elections. Indian democracy is in safe hands - the Indian voter!

The 'Miracle of Aggregation' - an idea formalised in a mathematical demonstration by the social theorist Marquis de Condorcet - seems to work in Indian democracy. He showed that a group trying to reach a decision by a majority vote (and in which each individual is making an independent judgement) is very likely to reach a correct decision even if each individual is only slightly more likely to reach the correct conclusion than he would simply by flipping a coin. Applied to electorate, Condorcet's logis suggests that the electorate as a whole may be much wiser than any individual voter.

Do you agree with it?

Anyway, the new government is making all the right kind of noises till now - with its '100 days plan' and all that. Let us hope that it continues.