How did a full electoral democracy based on universal adult franchise begin in India? Contrary to a common understanding, which has tended to see it as an inheritance of the British Raj, new archival materials reveal a different, and hitherto unknown story. The origin of India’s edifice of elections, through the preparation of the first electoral roll, was an ingeniously Indian enterprise. The turning of all adults into voters, even before they were citizens, was a staggering democratic state-building operation of inclusion and scale, which surpassed any previous experience in democratic world history. This work was undertaken by Indian bureaucrats from August 1947, in the midst of the partition, and in anticipation of the constitution. It entailed numerous interactions between administrators and people, even from the margins, who took a keen interest, and participated in the endeavour. This process resulted in innovations that secured electoral democracy in India for the decades to come.
This is a summary of the key concepts and highlights from the session “Voters Before Citizens” by Prof. Ornit Shani.
The talk has been organized as part of the project examining the introduction of technology and particularly blockchain as part of the electoral process in India.
Prof. Shani built her talk around the preparation of the first electoral rolls on the basis of adult franchise (in readiness for the first election) and how in doing so a commitment to the principle of inclusivity enabled taking bold decisions and a way of shared learning. A fascinating aspect of this process is how the decision around complete adult franchise was agreed upon and steps were taken to implement it even before the electorate became citizens of India. The preparatory work for this started even before the enactment of the constitution. Shani discusssed what we could learn from that process about the steps taken to build a robust electoral system.
An electoral roll forming the basis of universal franchise, prepared and maintained accurately, was the plinth upon which the institution of electoral democracy would rest. The history of this process would help understanding the values that underpin democracy and the electoral system. And while often some of those fundamental values are taken for granted, any discussion around them is needed to frame a critique of changes being introduced in the name of more effective democracy.
Prof. Shani has extensively documented in her book, How India Became Democratic, the work on the preparation of the first draft of electoral rolls. The bureaucrats at the Secretariat of the Constituent Assembly were engaged in this activity against the backdrop of the Partition and when more than 18 million refugees were present in the country. This process of turning all adult Indians into voters is however not a legacy of colonial rule. This, as Prof Shani mentions, is a singularly ingenious and indigenous set of decisions undertaken with immense care and an expansive imagination. The scale of this effort included enrolling more than 173 million people on the first electoral rolls. By the time the Constitution of India came into force in January 1950, the abstract notion of universal franchise and the principles and practices of electoral democracy (procedural equality for the purpose of authorising government) were already in place. In effect, Indians became voters before they were citizens.
The concept of instituting universal adult franchise required creating very practical methods which used uniform qualification criteria by which adults will be placed on the rolls. And while for a moment the topic of using the Census activity to create such a roll was discussed, it was decided against as it was clearly understood that these are two different processes and thus would not lead to the outcome desired. Electoral rolls would require creating ways to count the population that makes a break from the established colonial practices of enumeration. The notion that the entire adult population would be considered equal in terms of exercising their voting rights also meant the creation of a framework which set up an all India administrative exercise including the princely states. The model adopted at the time in the State of Travancore provided insights into how to design instructions for the preparation of the rolls. This model included house-to-house visits and registration and thus this continues to be a model that is in place today.
The preparation of the rolls through this process also shows another key aspect of participative democracy - the ability to raise grievances and concerns and seek redress or reforms. Especially in the context of the registration of partition refugees concerns were raised from various places in India to the Constituent Assembly Secretariat. These ranged from exclusionary practices being adopted at the ground level to the more practical problem of the residential requirements being a discriminatory factor against refugees. The process also highlighted the gendered issues with women often being unable to make it within deadlines to register themselves as the officials and state machinery often did not approach this favorably.
As the Secretariat began to respond swiftly and justly to the issues as they come up, there also surfaced topics around migrant labor or adults with no permanent address. As each of these issues received responses and solutions - often far-reaching ones which will have consequences in the years to come - the engagement of the people was exhibited in the passion around the right to vote. Indians took active interest in the processes, and started to relate to the listing of a name on the electoral roll not just as a right but as ‘a title deed to democracy’.
The origin of the single and Central Election Commission has an interesting story. The draft Constitution of February 1948 provided for one election commission for the elections to the central legislature and for separate election commissions for each of the states of the union. However, when Dr Ambedkar presented the article to the House on 15 June 1949 he mentioned that fundamental changes have been brought about wherein the election machinery for all elections to Parliament and the legislatures for every State would be vested in a single Central Election Commission. This change was informed by the experience of attempts at disenfranchisement by local officials on the ground during the preparations of the rolls.
The emergence of the electoral rolls have been made possible through the values and trust elicited by the Secretariat - in the willingness to extensively engage, seek guidance and by ensuring that attempts to disenfranchise groups were resisted and countered. By the end of this process procedural equality for the purpose of voting was bureaucratised. The building of trust among the electorate and the administrators was a precondition for the success of electoral democracy, driven by equality, inclusivity, transparancy and accountability.
