Paragraph (2) is very important and we have almost decided that the next elections or the future elections shall be on the basis of adult suffrage. It means that every citizen who is not otherwise disqualified under the statute and is 21 years of age or more shall be entitled to be a voter, and will elect members to the Union Parliament or the State Assemblies. This is a great aspiration, but we know our people. They are simple, they are good. But they are not as clever or as intelligent as the diplomats or the members that will be coming to represent them in the many Houses. While granting adult suffrage we must save it and shape it by making such an arrangement that every adult who is entitled to be a voter will be in a position to choose his representative intelligently and correctly. Not only that; having chosen his representative intelligently and correctly, he will be in a position every moment to assess what his representative does in the many Houses, either at the Centre or in the States. You will see from the Draft Constitution that for every 750,000 persons we will have one representative in the Union Parliament. I beg to submit that that is too big a number, and unless we do not mean what we say, it will be difficult for one member to educate those 750,000 people, to do them any good, to serve them, to know their mind, and having known their mind to come to the House and represent their grievances and do whatever is possible for them. I therefore submit that adult suffrage should be indirect–indirect in the sense that having decided the constituencies which, let us say, will be a region consisting of about 750,000 voters, we will divide that constituency into local self-governing units and these units will be required to elect their primary members. Suppose we have 750,000 people. Granting that every village or self-governing unit has about 1,000 voters, we will have about 750 units. Suppose every unit has a panchayat whose number might be three or five, we will have 750 x 5, that is, about 3,750 primary members. And those 3,750 primary members will be required to elect their representative either to the Union Parliament or to the State Assembly. If that happens it will be quite good because those 750,000 people will be electing their primary members to a strength of 3,750, and those 3,750 members will use their discretion and they will know the man they will be selecting as their representative. That will be a healthy and real process of election. If that is not going to be done, we all know what happens and therefore will happen in elections. We may raise a dust; we may make a hue and cry; raise slogans and mesmerise. In a day or two in course of one month in five years we will be lecturing, speaking and raising the emotions of people and asking them for party devotion. The result will be that only for a month in five years people will be in terrifying touch with the political busy-bodies. We would be giving them hopes and those hopes will dash down and evaporate as soon as the elections are over. That will not be a desirable real thing. If we really mean that adult suffrage will be educating the people and elections will be an instructive process, we can have no other way of achieving our object than by dividing the constituencies into local self-governing units–manageable units. Those units will be in close touch with the representatives and the representatives will be in touch with the units, and there will result real process of instruction, advice and guidance. I beg to submit that it has been a great shame that democracy works in the name of the people, but the people are nowhere in the picture. For men are little and their capacity cannot transcend their limited experience or grow except by continuous building upon their historic and traditional past. They can control great affairs only by acting together in the country and controlling small affairs and finding through experience men whom they can entrust with larger decisions. This is how they can talk rationally for themselves. Democracy can work only if each state is made up of a host of little democracies and rests, not on isolated individuals however great, but on groups small enough to express the spirit of neighbourhood and personal acquaintance. I hope I need not speak much about that. This great House, this learned House, this responsible House knows and can picture the state of things that will happen when there will be adult suffrage. It is a vast thing without yet any plan or arrangement. By that we may get some party strength, but we cannot educate the people and give them the strength and the authority that they really possess ought to possess.
