Reports on the Indian General Elections 1951-52

The Indian general elections of 1951-52 were the first to be held on the basis of adult franchise in this country. To students of political science they offered a unique opportunity to observe the working of the electoral process and the inter play of political forces which were involved. The setting of the elections was characterised at once by the illiteracy of most of the 173 million voters and the inexperience of the administration in handling the electoral machinery over the vast area of a subcontinent. The multitude of facts, opinions, attitudes and aspirations brought to the surface by the elec tions needed to be observed, analysed, interpreted and, where possible, evaluated objectively.

It was with this aim in view that a tentative scheme of a survey of the electoral process to be undertaken by political scientists in the different states of India was drawn up and a note setting out the various facets of the study was circulated by the then General Secretary of the Indian Political Science Association. In this he was assisted and encouraged by an American political scientist then working in India, and by senior members of the above Association and particularly by one who was already devising an intensive study of the elec tion process in the city of Bombay.