So, if we are to believe loud political rhetoric and even louder news television programmes, some people, including ‘foreigners’, armed with ‘sophisticated digital technology’ have subverted and/or will subvert India ’s democracy.Rubbish. The big data/subverted elections claim is as fundamentally flawed as Congress ’ and other Opposition parties’ claim on rigged electronic voting machines (EVMs). Let’s rescue some key facts from the blizzard of political and media sound bites.First, the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica (CA) controversy is about user privacy and dodgy ways of collecting personal data. That’s a matter of policy regulation, not electoral process. Whether tech giants that depend on advertising revenue generated by loose privacy controls can find another business model, if regulation makes data hoovering tough, is a crucial question. But that’s not related directly to elections.Second, if firms such as CA are, indeed, willing to provide cash and other equally attractive inducements to subvert elections in various countries, that’s not a matter of big data, but old-fashioned election corruption. Outfits that don’t use data analytics are also guilty of such practices.Third, fake news riding on social media networks owned by tech companies that want news-driven advertising but don’t want editorial responsibility is also a problem, a big one. But that, again, isn’t directly and solely an election process problem. It is another, larger regulation issue for tech giants to face up to.Fourth, and related to third: are we seriously going to argue that before social media, election campaigns didn’t see dodgy, dangerous untruths being peddled as facts? And that voters are so gullible that rubbish circulating on Facebook and WhatsApp groups will mostly determine voting decisions? Now, with these facts rescued from fake views, one major question remains: is micro-targeting and voter profiling through data analytics wrong, in the sense that it delegitimises voterdecision-making? Answer: absolutely not. Here’s why.First, ours is an electoral democracy where caste, religion, regional and linguistic identity, and urban-rural divide have always been key inputs for campaign strategy. So, the difference between mohalla speeches that target a small subset of voters and targeted messages created by data analytics is a matter of different tools, not morality.What’s the difference between reaching out to Rajputs through Whats-App or a small jansabha? The former is, possibly, more efficient as a messaging tool.Second, that modern data tools can help isolate voters or individuals for very specific messages matters much less than critics will have you believe. US critics of data analytics have given examples of how social media campaigns helped political parties or lobby groups tailor messages for voters in small areas, or decide which venue in a locality would be better for a campaign rally.Examples have been cited where social media preferences can be analysedto predict a voter’s political leaning and ethnicity. Much hand-wringing has also happened over the fact that in social media, users can’t see views contrary to their own once the platform learns enough and starts providing tailored content. All this, apparently, is subverting voter choice.That’s an extraordinary claim to make. It assumes that the voter in any modern democracy is a helpless wretch who can’t access any other source of information other than what he gets from tailored content in social media.If you spend 50 minutes a day on a social media platform, you apparently are unable to remember that there are multiple information sources, many offering views different from your own, you can access. Or, if you look at campaign messages targeted at you while posting vacation photos, you apparently are robbed of basic powers of thought. This silly assumption is at the heart of the big dataelections scare.And it’s worse than a silly assumption when you consider the most basic fact of elections: no party wins a poll solely, or mostly, on the basis of the technological efficiency of its messaging. So, our third and last argument is that big data by itself can never swing a verdict and, therefore, it can’t subvert voter choice.Why did BJP win in 2014 general elections? Because in Narendra Modi voters saw a viable alternative to Congress’ apparent governance drift. But we in the mainstream media were also guilty of making heroes out of data managers. We were taken in by their novelty.However, those data managers and tech and management grads working in war rooms were simply spreading a message. Data analytics didn’t create the Modi wave. Political circumstances did. The medium was not the message. The message was the message.BJP subsequently lost Delhi and Bihar and swept in UP. BJP’s data use proficiency didn’t dip when fighting Delhi and Bihar assembly elections . And the once much-talked about data manager who worked for BJP in 2014 and for JD(U) in Bihar was plying his trade for Congress in UP.What does this mean? Minus Modi and Amit Shah , two formidable politicians who have transformed the party’s election-fighting ethos, BJP wouldn’t have won so many elections. Without a clever alliance between Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav, two veteran and wily Bihar leaders, JD(U)-RJD wouldn’t have defeated BJP in the state.So, big data can’t subvert elections. Because the role of neta is far, far more important than the role of data.