(a) How first general elections of 1952 became a major landmark in the history of democracy all over the world?

Question

Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:

The first general election was the first big test of democracy in a poor & illiterate country. Till then democracy had existed only in the prosperous countries, mainly in Europe and North America, where nearly everyone was literate. By that time, many countries in Europe had not given voting rights to all women. In this context India’s experiment with universal adult franchise appeared to be very bold and risky. An Indian editor called it “the biggest gamble in history”. Organiser, a magazine wrote that JawaharLal Nehru “would live to confess the failure of universal adult franchise in India”…but when the general elections were held it was admired equally by the observers outside India also. The Indian experiment had proved the critics wrong. Itin fact became a landmark in the history of democracy all over the world. 

(a) How first general elections of 1952 became a major landmark in the history of democracy all over the world? 

(b) What problems did election commission confront while holding the first general elections in the country? 

Answer 1

(a) The first general election was also the first big test of democracy in a poor and illiterate country. Till then democracy had existed only in the prosperous countries, mainly Europe and America. It was now proved that democratic elections on the basis of Universal adult franchise can be held in the condition of lack of education or conditions of poverty. 

(b) The problems that the Election commission confront while holding the first general elections were: 

• Holding an election required delimitation or drawing the boundaries of the electoral constituencies. This task took lot of time. 

• It also required to prepare the electoral rolls. When the first draft of the rolls was published, names of nearly 40 lakh women were not recorded in the list. So it had to be prepared again. 

• At the time of first general elections, there were 17 crore eligible voters, who had to elect about 32000 MLAs and 489 members of Lok Sabha. Only 15 percent of these eligible voters were literate. The EC therefore had to think about some special method of voting.