Hello there, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC.

This week, as India prepares for its first day of election voting,

we're hearing from the people paid to cheer at party rallies.

They might pay us a dollar to come.

Nobody wants to come to these rallies, but we have no choice.

Yes, political parties spend millions on getting the voters out in India, much of it plain bribery.

How corrupt is India's election process?

The political parties have to raise all of this money.

Most of the stuff they raise has to be raised illegally.

And the only place that you can raise that is from tycoons

who work in slightly shady industries like liquor or gambling or property.

That's all coming up in Business Daily from the BBC.

Call it, poll, poll it, poll.

Yes, it is election time in India.

If you didn't already know, the first round of voting starts tomorrow.

And the main candidates like Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who you're hearing now, are already hard at it. Chris crossing the country, organising whopping great rallies, just like this one,

to rouse public support. Some noisy Modi supporters there. Other parties, notably Congress,

are also putting up a strong challenge this

year, it seems. But what's really caught our attention here on Business Daily, indeed,

surprised us about this process is what the world's largest democratic process appears to be costing.

James Crabtree is a politics professor and author of a recent book on India, The Billionaire Raj.

So India is in a head-to-head race with the United States for the title of the world's most expensive democracy.

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