Boats\, votes\, and monks: India\'s massive election\, by the numbers

It's the largest democratic election in the world.

Tens of millions of Indians started thronging to polling stations on Thursday (April 11), kicking off a mammoth, seven-stage election in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is seeking a second straight term.

So how do you go about electing one leader to represent 1.3 billion people?

Here are some of the numbers behind the process.

One million polling stations have gone up, catering for 900 million eligible voters.

To put that in perspective: that's nearly the population of Europe, plus Brazil.

Out of those, 432 million are women.

That ratio isn't reflected in the political line up.

Out of the candidates in the last election, a mere 8 percent were women.

The election will be held in seven phrases.

Round one will see over a thousand candidates contesting 91 constituencies.

To take part, more than 11 million government officials will hit the road - whether by foot, road, train, helicopter, boat, and sometimes by elephant.

The country is vast and no voter must ever be more than 2 km away from a polling station.

One will be set up in the Gir forest of western Gujarat state for just one voter: a Hindu monk.

So how much does all this cost?

While the exact figure for this year's election isn't known yet, in 2014 it cost 38.7 billion rupees - or $552 million - according to commission estimates.

The whole process will be accomplished over 39 days, making voting set to run until May 19.

Counting begins a few days later on May 23, all of that to be tallied up in a single day.