India is a democracy. This achievement is the result of a long and eventful struggle of the Indian people. There are other places in the world where people have also struggled to have democracies. You now know that the main feature of a democracy is that the people have the power to elect their leaders. So in a sense democracy is ruled by the people. Let us learn about the democratic government in India.

The basic idea is that people rule themselves by participating in the making of these rules. Democratic government in our times is usually referred to as representative democracies.

Universal Adult Franchise

In representative democracies, people do not participate directly but, instead, their representatives through an election process. These representatives meet and make decisions for the entire population. These days a government cannot call itself democratic unless it allows what is known as a universal adult franchise.

This means that all adults in the country are allowed to vote. But it was not always like this. Can you believe that there was a time when governments did not allow women and the poor to participate in elections? In their earliest forms governments allowed only men who owned property and were educated, to vote.

This meant that women, the poor, the property less, and the uneducated were not allowed to vote. The country was governed by the rules and regulations that these few men made!

In India, before Independence, only a small minority was allowed to vote and they, therefore, came together to determine the fate of the majority. Several people including Gandhiji were shocked at the unfairness of this practice and demanded that all adults have the right to vote. This is known as the universal adult franchise.

Writing in the journal Young India in 1931, Gandhiji said, "I cannot possibly bear the idea that a man who has got wealth should get the vote but a man who has got character but no wealth or literacy should have no vote, or that a man who honestly works by the sweat of his brow day in and day out should not have the vote for the crime of being a poor man.

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