Reborn In 17th century India with Black Technology

6th January 1661@@novelbin@@

The chaos of the Bharatiya Empire has just begun to calm down with the identification documents being issued to over half of the Bharatiya Empire's population. Most of the people of the empire now own an Aadhar card, and a vast majority of them have the ration card and the voter ID, with the remaining people receiving them slowly as soon as they are printed by the monetary press of Bharat and approved by the Bharatiya citizenship database.

The general sentiment in the Bharatiya Empire right now is very neutral since the issuance of the identity cards caused a lot of trouble and inconvenience for the people, giving them a bad impression of the policy. But, this negative emotion was neutralized by the festive atmosphere surrounding the month of December, as it was the time of the festival of light, Deepavali, so all the dissatisfaction that stemmed from only inconvenience was quickly forgotten by the happiness brought by the festival, not to mention the workers and labourers from the northern part of the empire who got a chance to go back to their hometown were actually very thankful.

Taking this opportunity of not too much dissatisfaction from the people while a major policy of national identification has come to a successful end, politicians all over the empire started to campaign for votes. The "one empire, one election" policy had already been passed in the parliament, and the election of the prime minister would be done on the same day as the election of the chief ministers.

Given that the people qualified to vote in the elections were only the educated people of the empire, the benefits promised were very targeted to these educated people. If it was in the future, this would have been a disaster where the politicians would only cater to a small number of votes. But fortunately, the Bharatiya Empire is in the process of building its foundation, and the elites of the Bharatiya society could be called first-generation elites. So, even if the educated people of the Bharatiya Empire are the only ones allowed to vote, the educated people cannot really detach themselves from the rest of the society, especially because the vast majority of educated people come from middle-class or aspirational-class backgrounds.

They are from families of farmers, cattle herders, craftsmen, and other self-employed or salary-earning individuals. So, the government promising benefits only for the elites and not for the middle class and aspirational class, instead of centralizing the Votes and concentrating them on certain politicians, would actually most likely backfire and make the person lose the elections.

The current ruling politicians are naturally not so narrow-minded. They all came from humble family backgrounds, where they climbed up one step at a time with their own skills and determination. They are not some second-generation ancestors from a political family who are only knowledgeable about the people of the empire in the books and not by actual experience. So, almost all cabinet ministers, their supporters, and even Prime Minister Vinod had started to campaign in the name of more job opportunities for the aspirational and middle classes, more development in rural areas, and, most importantly, the expansion of industrialization in the northern part of the empire.

Only the half-learned politicians who feel like they have discovered a loophole in the election system promised benefits like increasing the amount of land that can be purchased through loans, increasing the loan limits to educated individuals without showing any proof, reducing the taxes on private companies, maintaining the lower wage standards, reducing the "harsh maximum" eight-hour working standards of industrial companies and making it ten hours, and the like.

Unsurprisingly, before their campaign promises and slogans could even be published in the newspaper, they were forced to quit by the same voters they were trying to impress. Factory owners even cursed such politicians openly in the newspaper for having no conscience and being bloodsuckers. Naturally, this was not because the business owners had a conscience—maybe they had, maybe they did not—but the main reason for them to be so against the politicians putting forth these conditions was that the Bharatiya Empire is in such a position where talents have a lot of power, and the same goes for educated employees of various companies. With there not being too many human resources of such high quality, offending these employees as a whole is no different from saying goodbye to the business and getting ready to go bankrupt. If their employees caught wind that their bosses were supporting such despicable politicians, they would simply terminate their contracts, pay the compensation, and leave the company. There are a lot of companies waiting to recruit educated people anyway, not to mention the government has very favourable policies for freshers joining companies, with their salary contract time frozen at one year and the termination conditions being very relaxed.

Now, the promises made by the Prime Minister and his group might seem too little, but in reality, the promises are very big because, in the Bharatiya Empire, the claims are held accountable by the Constitution. So, if the politician makes the claims and does not even try to fulfil them, the police force, the army, and the army controlled by the ENEC (Election Nobility and Examination Commission) have the power to remove the minister from his position in case he has won the election and bar him from the election for the next decade.

Vijay was looking at the file named "Report on Voter ID Certification Examination 1661" from the Election Nobility and Examination Commission with interest while Kishore Balabadra sat right in front of him with a serious expression on his face.

"How many applicants were there this year, and how many of them passed?" Vijay closed the document and leaned forward as he wanted to hear data from The Observer of the Empire himself.

Kishore Balabadra was not surprised since everyone knew that His Majesty had a habit of making you report the details yourself, rather than reading it himself. So, people who go to submit reports to him usually come prepared, and Kishore was no exception.

"With God's grace, we had the largest voter applicants this year in the empire, Your Majesty, with over 36 million people, out of which 34 million people passed their assessments. Additionally, the 2 million will be writing it once again in their re-examination in a few weeks."

Vijay smiled with satisfaction. Thirty-four million was already more than the number of all the people who had already qualified to vote before, and he knew that the sudden enthusiasm was mainly because of the liberalization of universities, which made the people understand how important education is going to get in the empire and how hard it would be to get a job without an education. For now, there are still plenty of jobs even for people without any literacy, but in the future, it may not be so easy. Not to mention, regularly, the newspapers mentioned and brought up how important education is to society and how, without it, a human is not yet a human. Although the newspaper is not consumed by the literate, the word of mouth and public influence newspapers have is massive.

Ever since multiple newspapers had been established, this effect only got bigger with people understanding the world around them way more.

So, no wonder this year the number of voters absolutely dwarfed the sum of all existing voters from the previous years.

"Then, what does it make it? Fifty million, the total number of voters?"

"To be exact, fifty-four million five hundred and twenty-five voters, Your Majesty. That is about 28.68% of the entire population, among which 70% of all the eligible voters are from this southern part of the Empire." Stay tuned to My Virtual Library Empire

Vijay was a little taken aback that 30% of all the voters this time around came from the northern part of the empire—not because it was too small, but because it was too large. For the last few elections, the number of voters in the northern part of the empire only accounted for about ten to twelve percent of the entire voter base, but this time it had directly more than doubled. Not to mention, the number of passing voters was 34 million, meaning for this election nearly 10.2 million voters had been added in the northern part of the empire.

'Opening up of the universities is one thing, but there has to be something else that made the people in the northern part of the empire so eager to participate in the election.'

"Kishore, why do you think the people from the north are so excited to participate in the election this year? So many of them showed up."

"Um," Kishore fell into a brief silence. He carefully considered his words in his mind and replied, "I cannot be too sure, Your Majesty, but what I can say is, from my various inspections of examination centres throughout the northern part of the empire, the people in the northern part are very eager for growth and development. I feel like they are envious of the prospects in the southern part of the empire. They have understood that the reason why the South is developing so quickly, apart from the reason of good governance, is that of education. Hence, I believe there is much more excitement in education, with which comes the knowledge of the importance of a vote."

Knowing the reason, Vijay smiled happily. It was finally happening. If wealth disparity existed for too long, it was a disaster waiting to happen. It would be very easy for the people of the northern part of the empire and the people of the southern part of the empire to view themselves differently from the other. Maybe the Southerners would think of Northerners as backward farmers and lowly people, and maybe the Northerners would think of the Southerners as rich, greedy landlords who are draining their blood. Then, it would be no different from two countries forcefully joined together through military power. Then, it would no longer be a country but two different nations being kept together with hopes and dreams.

'It's good that the patching work is going on,' he said to himself with satisfaction.

"By the way, how are the preparations for the elections?"

"They are progressing at a very good pace, Your Majesty. Thanks to your help, five whole regiments are tasked to stand guard to protect against any malicious practice or to act as deterrence against any schemers in the empire."

"Good!"