Ramesh Ramanathan

Ramesh Ramanathan is cofounder, with Swati Ramanathan, of the Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy in Bangalore, Karnataka.

July 2017, Volume 28, Issue 3

India’s Democracy at 70: The Impact of Instant Universal Suffrage

When the authors of India’s Constitution took the extraordinarily bold step of establishing universal suffrage, thus giving the right to vote to all adult citizens, India became the world’s first large democracy to adopt universal adult suffrage from its very inception. We call India’s move “instant universal suffrage,” and distinguish it from the more common…