What’s at stake as India prepares to vote in the Lok Sabha elections

As India begins its gigantic parliamentary voting exercise, it has the distinction of having conducted the world’s largest elections since starting the process in 1951-1952.

As an independent nation-state, India granted universal adult suffrage immediately after independence from Britain in 1947. It took the United States 144 years and the United Kingdom nearly a century to grant women the right to vote, something India did immediately.

Barely four years later, the country conducted its general election between October 25, 1951, and February 21, 1952, during which there were over 170 million eligible voters.

Every election in the last 72 years has been progressively bigger. An estimated 969 million are eligible to vote in 2024, with 215.8 million of them under the age of 30.

The number of under-30 voters in India is bigger than any other country, based on the electorate size of several nations. With over 215.8 million eligible voters in that demographic – 197.4 million in the age group 20-29 and 18.4 million in the age group 18-19 – that segment of the Indian electorate tops Indonesia, the third largest democracy in the world.

India’s total electorate is larger than the next seven large democracies combined, 858 million: Indonesia, the United States, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia, Mexico, and South...

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