Universal Adult Suffrage

In 1950, an eighteen-year-old Indian farmhand with no land, no schooling and no money got exactly the same one vote as the wealthiest, most educated person in the country. That was not always how it worked anywhere in the world, and India adopting it from day one of the Republic, for a population as large as its own, was itself a remarkable political decision.

In two minutes

Universal adult suffrage is the principle that every adult citizen of a State has the right to vote, regardless of property, income, education, sex, caste or religion, subject only to a minimum age and other narrow, non-discriminatory conditions.

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