As Republican nominee Donald Trump won the presidential election on Wednesday, the US once again missed a chance to create history - of electing its first woman President in its 240 years of independence. By that standard, India, the world's largest democracy, is way ahead of the world's oldest democracy by several years. The people of India elected Indira Gandhi as their Prime Minister 50 years ago in 1966.

Apart from its women in power, India is also ahead the US in use of technology for conducting elections. While India moved to electronic voting machines (EVMs) for elections, even at the level of district panchayats, Americans still use paper ballots to elect their president. This is despite the fact that they have been debating taking up EVMs for over 15 years.

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While the Americans are still stuck in paper ballots, India will move a step ahead from EVMs. It plans to use paper audit trail machines in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections throughout the country. The paper audit trail machine or Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) was first introduced by the Election Commission in 2013 to bring about greater transparency in elections and boost voters' confidence that their vote goes without error to their desired candidate. Once a vote is cast, the VVPAT-linked EVM immediately takes a printout which is kept safely for use to tally in case there is a dispute in the final result.

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Secondly, though Indians are litigant-friendly, the election of President and Prime Minister has never been mired in controversy. But the US Presidential elections of 2000 have gone down in history for the intervention of its Supreme Court to decide the winning candidate. The final outcome was one of the closest presidential elections in the nation's history. The Court's 5-4 decision in George W Bush versus Al Gore ended the stalemate.

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Despite being one of the most technologically advanced countries, the US still uses paper ballots because its citizens feel safer in its use as compared to EVMs.

As far as women politicians are concerned, India elected Indira Gandhi as Prime Minister in 1966, which was within two decades of attaining independence. Moreover, she was just the third Prime Minister of India.

In contrast, America has failed to elect a woman despite Donald Trump being the 45th President in 240 years of the country's independence since July 4, 1776.

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Besides becoming Prime Minister, women in India have also risen to the posts of President, chief minister and Speaker of the Lok Sabha. In fact, 16 women have served as the chief minister of an Indian state. Currently, four are in office - Jayalalithaa (Tamil Nadu), Vasundhara Raje (Rajasthan), Mamata Banerjee (Bengal) and Mehbooba Mufti (Jammu and Kashmir).

America made history by electing a black president in Barack Obama for the first time eight years ago. But it has yet to accord equal respect to women. It missed the bus twice - once when Obama was chosen over Clinton in 2008 as the Democrat's Presidential candidate and now when Donald Trump defeated her at the hustings. It is not known for how long will the Americans have to wait to elect its first woman President.

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