VOTING RIGHTS AND THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM OF DEMOCRACY

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THE CONTEXT: One of the most critical ways that individuals can influence governmental decision-making is through voting. Voting is a formal expression of preference for a candidate for office or for a proposed resolution of an issue. Voting generally takes place in the context of a large-scale national or regional election, however, local and small-scale community elections can be just as critical to individual participation in government. In the following article, we would analyse the relationship between voting rights, political outcomes, and forms of government like Democracy.

DEVELOPMENT OF VOTING RIGHTS AND THE INDIAN DEMOCRACY

EVOLUTION OF VOTING RIGHTS IN INDIA

• The 1935 Government of India Act: Act from the colonial period, which significantly lowered property ownership requirements for voting. Prior to this reform, only 2.5% of the population had the right to vote. This fraction increased to 11.9% as a result of this reform.
• 1950 Constitution of post-independence India: Extension of the universal adult franchise to all citizens above the age of 21. After this reform, 49% of the entire population had the right to vote.
• The 61st Amendment Act, 1988:  Amendment of Article 326, lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 years. Voting in India is a legal right, given by the Representation of People Act, 1950

ANALYSING THE RELATION BETWEEN VOTING RIGHTS, DEMOCRACY, AND GROWTH

• Historical debates: Many historic commentaries on democracy from Aristotle’s Essays on Politics to Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and Sen’s Democracy as a Universal Value have debated whether democracy matters for development. Recent empirical evidence strongly suggests that democracies have better economic development outcomes over the longer run.
• Democratic success: One can easily claim that the likes of India, the USA, South Korea (All democracies) are performing better in terms of indicators like rights and freedom of citizens, economic growth, and global cooperation than nations like North Korea or China.
• Question of Rights: Democracy is a very broad concept, and it is not clear whether giving citizens the right to vote, which happens to be an essential component of democracy, is enough to ensure an effective degree of political participation or political competition that some observers have argued is needed to control corruption or promote growth.
• Disguised Democracy: In fact, one-third of all countries in the world were classified as autocracies despite having universal adult suffrage, due to, among other factors, a lack of political competition.
• Development and Democracy: Many presently advanced nations of the world took many years to give voting rights to all their citizens. For example, Switzerland denied the right to vote to women till 1973. Women’s legal right to vote was established in the United States over the course of more than half a century, first in various states and localities, sometimes on a limited basis, and then nationally in 1920.

THE INDIAN EXAMPLE OF UNIVERSAL ADULT SUFFRAGE

• From November 1947 India embarked on the preparation of the first draft electoral roll on the basis of universal adult franchise. A handful of bureaucrats at the Secretariat of the Constituent Assembly initiated the undertaking.
• This process was carried out in the midst of the partition of India and Pakistan that was tearing the territory and the people apart, and while 552 sovereign princely states had yet to be integrated into India.
• Turning all adult Indians into voters over the next two years against many odds, and before they became citizens with the commencement of the constitution, required an immense power of imagination.
• By late 1949 India pushed through the frontiers of the world’s democratic imagination and gave birth to its largest democracy.
• The adoption of universal adult suffrage, which was agreed on at the beginning of the constitutional debates in April 1947, was a significant departure from colonial practice.
• All citizens, regardless of their race, colour, or previous condition of subjugation have the right to vote under the Citizenship Act which grants them protection under the 15th Amendment.

STUDY OF INDIA’S POLITICAL BEHAVIOUR AND ROLE OF VOTING RIGHTS

Pre-Independence: 

• The Government of India Act of 1919, following the Montagu-Chelmsford report of 1918, introduced direct elections for members of the central and provincial legislatures.
• The Act mandated that at least 70% of members in provincial councils were to be elected members, but limited suffrage to those above a certain level of income or property.
• Following a decade where the independence movement grew in size and influence, the Government of India Act of 1935 provided greater legislative and policy powers to the elected legislatures and also dramatically reduced the property thresholds required to obtain the right to vote.
• Suffrage was also extended in some provinces to educated persons (including literate women), and to wives or widows of qualified male voters (with higher property thresholds than required for voting by males)
• Rather than defining voters exclusively as individuals, the law defined them as members of communities and groups.

OUTCOME: Districts where enfranchisement increased a lot actually show a proportionally smaller increase in voter turnout, compared to areas where enfranchisement did not increase as much. The number of candidates per 1,000 registered voters showed a significantly smaller increase in the more enfranchised areas after the 1935 reform.

Post-Independence:

• Partition led to a mass displacement of an estimated 18 million people and the killing of approximately one million people.
• Moreover, the creation of democracy had to be achieved in the face of myriad social divisions, widespread poverty, and low literacy levels, factors that have long been thought by scholars of democracy to be at odds with the supposedly requisite conditions for successful democratic nationhood.
• Despite the smaller increases in citizen participation, the increased number of voters did not result in statistically significant increases in the extent of political competition faced by candidates. This is evident from the prolonged ‘One-Party Democracy’ in India after independence.
• However, with time as democracy gets more mature, we can see strong results of voting rights and political developments. For example, the voter turnout for the just-concluded Lok Sabha polls (2019) was the highest ever, at a tentative 67.11% across 542 constituencies.

OUTCOME: The 1950 reform also shows a relative proportional decline in candidate participation, but the latter is not statistically significant. These results strongly suggest that newly enfranchised voters are not as politically engaged. Presently in the 21^st century, in India, voting rights have huge impacts on political outcomes. Thus, we can see concepts like ‘vote bank politics, etc.

Districts that increased enfranchisement by 10 percentage points also obtained 5% higher education spending per capita after the 1935 reform. This is consistent with the cross-country evidence of democracy resulting in better economic growth and education attainment.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, recognizes the integral role that transparent and open elections play in ensuring the fundamental right to participatory government.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Article 21 states:

• Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his/her country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
• Everyone has the right to equal access to public service in his country.
• The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret ballot or by equivalent free voting procedures.

THE CONCLUSION: Overall, results suggest that conferring the right to vote does not result in a proportional increase in political participation. However, even this less-than-proportional increase in political participation does seem to be sufficient to lead to increased political competition and changes in policies. This means that while other complementary reforms, such as improving voter awareness, may be needed to reap the full benefits of democracy to ensure government accountability, political enfranchisement in itself does seem to lead to tangible changes in relation to those who are elected and the policies that are implemented. The preparation of a joint electoral roll on the basis of universal franchise in anticipation of the constitution played a key role in making the Indian union. It contributed to forging a sense of national unity and national feeling, turning the notion of people’s belonging into something tangible.