Bruhaha over hacking EVM

Recently an interesting claim was made by a hacker that India's EVMs are hackable and they have been hacked frequently by pretty much all political parties to change the results. Unfortunately, the event was advertised as an event where the hacker will demonstrate hacking of the machine. The event itself was a complete letdown. There was no demonstration of hacking and a bunch of claims was made by Syed Shuja.

1. Back in 2013, he claimed, he had the assignment to study a PCB of an EVM. As per his claim, his assignment was to find if the EVMs are hackable. He claimed the EVM uses a very old chipset that has an FSK/ASK modulator/demodulator. The kernel has to be bypassed to load the enable this. Also, an antenna has to be installed on the PCB.
2. He claimed that this assignment was not to find faults but to find methods to make a better EVM. 
3. He claimed that there are multiple EVMs made which enable this communication by installing the antenna.
4. Then the hacker went into theories about multiple murders and attacks that happened in order to silence people who knew about all this.
5. He also claimed that his identity has been erased from Indian system and there is no proof that he existed.

Now, keeping the conspiracy theories aside, I think this can be quickly put to rest by ECI by enabling hardware audit of a set of randomly chosen EVMs from all the manufacturers. Any electronics engineer worth its salt can figure out whether the claims made by the hacker are tenable or not.

Unfortunately, I don't see that happening. So it is just going to be claims and counterclaims. Hacker will say we can hack EVMs, ECI and government will say it can't be hacked.

The question is not to ban EVMs and bring paper ballot back. But the question is to find out if the current EVMs in circulation have hardware and software that deviates from reference architecture as approved by TEC. Also a higher percentage of matching of VVPAT slips have to be mandated.

UP Alliance, the numbers

Now that SP and BSP have announced their pre-poll alliance for Lok Sabha 2019 election, let's look at the numbers. Let's look at constituencies where BJP won but SP + BPS got a larger vote share. So with this unlikely assumption that all the vote is transferrable, what would be the impact of these parties coming together. Following is the list of constituencies where SP + BSP scored more than BJP in the last election.

No.	Constituency	BJP	BSP + SP
1	Allahabad	313772	413836
2	Ambedkar Nagar	432104	527142
3	Amroha	528880	533649
4	Aonla	409907	461678
5	Bahraich	432392	433651
6	Ballia	359758	362008
7	Banda	342066	416008
8	Basti	357680	607865
9	Bhadohi	403695	484266
10	Bijnor	486913	511263
11	Chandauli	414135	461524
12	Dhaurahra	360357	468714
13	Domariyaganj	298845	370035
14	Etawah	439646	459504
15	Fatehpur Sikri	426589	466880
16	Ghazipur	306929	516122
17	Ghosi	379797	399669
18	Hardoi	360501	555701
19	Jaunpur	367149	400842
20	Jhansi	575889	599214
21	Kaiserganj	381500	450008
22	Kaushambi	331724	490146
23	Kheri	398578	448416
24	Lalganj	324016	494901
25	Machhlishahr	438210	457442
26	Misrikh	412575	519971
27	Mohanlalganj	455274	552224
28	Moradabad	485224	558665
29	Nagina	367825	521120
30	Rampur	358616	416187
31	Sambhal	360242	607708
32	Sant Kabir Nagar	348892	491083
33	Shahjahanpur	525132	532516
34	Shrawasti	345964	454941
35	Sitapur	417546	522689
36	Sultanpur	410348	459590

So, there are 36 constituencies where SP + BSP had polled more vote than BJP in last election. Since we are doing this hypothetical exercise, let's how the situation changes if we throw INC also in the mix.

No.	Constituency	BJP	BSP+SP+INC
1	Aligarh	514622	516844
2	Allahabad	313772	516289
3	Ambedkar Nagar	432104	549917
4	Amroha	528880	533649
5	Aonla	409907	555539
6	Bahraich	432392	458072
7	Ballia	359758	362008
8	Banda	342066	452658
9	Barabanki	454214	568770
10	Basti	357680	635538
11	Bhadohi	403695	484266
12	Bijnor	486913	511263
13	Chandauli	414135	488718
14	Dhaurahra	360357	639708
15	Domariyaganj	298845	370035
16	Etawah	439646	472901
17	Farrukhabad	406195	465757
18	Fatehpur	485994	525100
19	Fatehpur Sikri	426589	474327
20	Ghazipur	306929	516122
21	Ghosi	379797	399669
22	Gonda	359639	417659
23	Hardoi	360501	578999
24	Jaunpur	367149	400842
25	Jhansi	575889	683303
26	Kaiserganj	381500	507409
27	Kaushambi	331724	522051
28	Kheri	398578	632356
29	Kushi Nagar	370051	528648
30	Lalganj	324016	516733
31	Machhlishahr	438210	493717
32	Maharajganj	471542	502251
33	Meerut	532981	555325
34	Mirzapur	436536	478982
35	Misrikh	412575	553046
36	Mohanlalganj	455274	604822
37	Moradabad	485224	558665
38	Nagina	367825	521120
39	Pratapgarh	375789	466294
40	Rampur	358616	572653
41	Robertsganj	378211	409926
42	Sambhal	360242	607708
43	Sant Kabir Nagar	348892	491083
44	Shahjahanpur	525132	559527
45	Shrawasti	345964	454941
46	Sitapur	417546	551793
47	Sultanpur	410348	501573
48	Unnao	518834	605935

So, if we take BSP+SP+INC together, we see that they polled more votes than BJP in last election in 48 constituencies.

Why I think reservation for poor upper castes is not an effective solution

In my view, the whole point of the reservation is to force decision makers to hire people from a specific grouping. Let's look at OBC or SC/ST reservation. It is widely believed, probably rightly so, that even if qualified candidates were available they will be discriminated again at every level starting from school, college and finally job interviews.
It is not impossible to believe that a brilliant candidate from SC/ST or OBC, when appears in an interview before an interview panel mostly consisting of upper caste individual, they will find some way to not hire him. In my mind, this is the basis of the reservation of these three grouping in jobs.
For upper caste individuals, it can not be believed that discrimination is likely. Also, the limits in income that are placed are high enough (Rs. 8,00,000 pa by some estimates) that most deserving candidates will not be able to compete against other individuals who are well off.
In my view, what is required is to eliminate the imbalance in the opportunity that exists for poor candidates. For example, there is a multitude of coaching institutes that are available for candidates but the fees are so high that the poor can not participate in them. This is what needs to be balanced. Either the examination patterns need to be changed so that coaching institutes become ineffective or government needs to subsidize those people who are in need of these facilities.
When I studied, way back in the eighties, the education was not expensive. My complete engineering education was completed with less than Rs. 1000. Today it costs lakhs of rupees. We need to see education as a means to build human resources and not make it a money-making scheme.