What happened
As India heads to the polls for Assembly elections in Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, and Puducherry, the Election Commission has been running what amounts to a parallel economy cleanup operation. Since activating the Electronic Seizure Management System on February 26, agencies have intercepted ₹651.51 crore in voter inducements: ₹53.2 crore in cash, ₹79.3 crore in liquor, ₹230 crore in drugs, ₹58 crore in precious metals, and ₹231 crore in miscellaneous freebies. West Bengal leads with ₹319 crore seized — roughly half the national total — followed by Tamil Nadu at ₹170 crore, Assam at ₹97 crore, Kerala at ₹58 crore, and Puducherry at a modest ₹7 crore (presumably because there's only so much you can smuggle into a Union Territory the size of a large parking lot). The EC has deployed 5,173 flying squads with a targeted response time of 100 minutes and 5,200 static surveillance teams at checkpoints. The truly wonderful detail is the ₹230 crore in drugs — suggesting that for a significant portion of India's political class, 'getting voters high on democracy' is not a metaphor but a procurement line item.