People in India often despair of their democracy
They should look at the big picture
IN THE spring of 1947 the leaders of India’s independence movement reached a fateful decision. The right to vote in the soon-to-be-born Indian republic, they agreed, would no longer be restricted as under the British Raj, but open to every adult citizen. The move created the world’s largest democracy, and also burdened it with a colossal challenge. As Ornit Shani, an Israeli historian, deftly explains in a new book, the logistics alone were daunting. With more than 170m eligible voters to register—some 85% of them illiterate back then—it took tens of thousands of workers two full years just to compile the rolls for India’s first general election, conducted in 1951. At the time Rajendra Prasad, a politician who was to become the country’s first president, made a back-of-envelope calculation. Bound in one volume, he reckoned, the voter lists would be 200 metres thick.
This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “Not cricket”
More from Asia
Can Donald Trump maintain Joe Biden’s network of Asian alliances?
Discipline and creativity will help, but so will China’s actions
What North Korea gains by sending troops to fight for Russia
Resources, technology, experience and a blood-soaked IOU
Is Arkadag the world’s greatest football team?
What could possibly explain the success of a club founded by Turkmenistan’s dictator
After the president’s arrest, what next for South Korea?
Some 3,000 police breached his compound. The country is dangerously divided
India’s Faustian pact with Russia is strengthening
The gamble behind $17bn of fresh deals with the Kremlin on oil and arms
AUKUS enters its fifth year. How is the pact faring?
It has weathered two big political changes. What about Donald Trump’s return?