Abstract
The overwhelming image of India is of a country stricken with poverty, consumed by religious hatred, burdened by an excessive population that shows no signs of diminishing, and divided by distinctions of class, caste, ethnicity, and language. Few people, particularly in the West, thought that India would outlive the assassination of Indira Gandhi, and at the death of Rajiv Gandhi there was talk once again of the disintegration of India. Now it is widely recognized that India, which has been holding elections on the basis of a universal adult franchise regularly since 1951, has assumed something of a democratic stability unusual for the times, more unusual still in a 'Third World' country, and that its electorate has a sophistication and maturity that is purportedly to be found only in the older democracies of the West.
