Why this chapter matters for UPSC: What a government is, the levels it works at, the laws it makes and enforces, and the difference between a democracy and a monarchy are the starting points of GS2 polity. The chapter's history of the vote (women's suffrage, Gandhiji's demand for universal adult franchise) is also the background to Article 326 and every question on elections. In the rationalised 2023-24 edition this is still Chapter 3, "What is Government?", with the same content.

Contemporary hook: Two Supreme Court rulings of 2024 tested how India's elections work. On 15 February 2024 a five-judge bench struck down the Electoral Bond Scheme because it hid political donors from voters; on 26 April 2024 a two-judge bench refused to order a return to paper ballots or a 100% count of VVPAT slips. Both are covered below.

🧠 First Principles — Read This First

Every country needs a government to make decisions and get things done: where to build roads and schools, how to bring down the price of onions when they get too expensive, how to increase the supply of electricity. NCERT lists what the government does: it runs services such as the post and the railways, protects the country's boundaries, keeps peaceful relations with other countries, tries to make sure all citizens have enough to eat and good health facilities, and organises relief after disasters such as the tsunami or an earthquake. Courts are also part of the government.

The government works at three levels: local (village, town or locality), state, and national. It makes laws and enforces them: anyone caught driving without a licence can be jailed or fined. People can also go to court when they think a law is not being followed.

Who gives the government the power to make and enforce decisions? In a democracy, the people do, by electing their representatives, and the government has to explain and defend its actions to them. In a monarchy, the king or queen decides and does not have to explain or defend those decisions. Modern democracies are representative democracies, and no government can call itself democratic unless it allows universal adult franchise: every adult can vote.

PART 1 — Quick Reference

Democracy and Monarchy (NCERT)

DemocracyMonarchy
Who gives the government its power?The people, through electionsThe monarch (king or queen)
Who decides?Elected representativesThe monarch, perhaps after consulting a small group
Must the rulers explain their actions?Yes: the government has to explain and defend its decisions to the peopleNo
Can people question decisions?YesNo

Levels of Government

LevelAreaNCERT examples from the chapter exercise
LocalVillage, town or localityLocating a common well in a village
StateA whole state, such as Haryana or AssamHaryana's decision on free electricity for farmers; West Bengal's decision on a Class 8 Board exam
Central (national)The whole countryPeaceful relations with Russia; a new currency note; new trains between Dibrugarh and Kanyakumari

NCERT's examples of institutions that are part of the government: the Supreme Court, the Indian Railways and Bharat Petroleum.

PART 2 — Concepts & Narrative

Laws and the Government

Key Term

Law: a rule made by the government that everyone living in the country has to follow. NCERT's point is that the power to decide is of little use without the power to enforce: the law says every driver of a motor vehicle must have a licence, and someone caught without one can be jailed or fined.

People can enforce laws too. If someone feels they were not hired for a job because of their religion or caste, they can approach the court and claim the law is not being followed; the court can then order what should be done.

Representative Democracy and Universal Adult Franchise

Explainer

Democracy is rule by the people: the basic idea is that people rule themselves by taking part in making the rules. In today's representative democracies, people do not take part directly; they choose representatives through elections, and those representatives make decisions for the whole population.

Universal adult franchise means all adults may vote. It was not always so. The earliest governments that held elections let only men who owned property and were educated vote; women, the poor, the property-less and the uneducated were left out.

In India before Independence only a small minority could vote. Gandhiji and others demanded the vote for all adults. Writing in Young India in 1931, he said he could not bear the idea that "a man who has got wealth should have the vote, but that a man who has got character but no wealth or literacy should have no vote" (quoted by NCERT).

The Constitution gave India universal adult suffrage from the start: Article 326 provides that elections to the Lok Sabha and the State Assemblies "shall be on the basis of adult suffrage". The voting age, originally 21, was lowered to 18 by the Constitution (Sixty-first Amendment) Act, 1988, in force from 28 March 1989 (Constitution of India, footnote to Art. 326).

The Women's Suffrage Movement

Explainer

NCERT's box: "Nowhere in the world have governments willingly shared power." Women and the poor in Europe and the USA had to fight for a say in government. The movement for women's right to vote is called the women's suffrage movement (suffrage means the right to vote).

  • It grew stronger during the First World War, when women did work earlier thought of as men's work, and people began to see women as equally capable of making decisions.
  • Suffragettes chained themselves to railings in public places; many were imprisoned, went on hunger strike and were force-fed.
  • American women got the vote in 1920; women in the UK got it on the same terms as men in 1928.

PART 3 — UPSC Integration

The chapter's three ideas run straight into the Constitution. Levels of government: India has a Union government, State governments and, since the 73rd and 74th Amendments (in force 24 April 1993 and 1 June 1993), constitutionally mandated Panchayats and Municipalities. Laws and enforcement: Parliament and the State Legislatures make laws within their Lists in the Seventh Schedule; courts enforce them and can strike down those that break the Constitution. Democracy: the Preamble calls India a "sovereign socialist secular democratic republic" ("socialist" and "secular" were added by the 42nd Amendment, 1976); Article 326 guarantees adult suffrage, and Article 324 vests the superintendence, direction and control of elections in the Election Commission of India, a constitutional body.

India is a republic because its head of state, the President, is elected rather than hereditary, and a parliamentary democracy because the executive is answerable to the elected Lok Sabha. A constitutional monarchy such as the UK is a democracy that is not a republic; a democracy can therefore have a monarch, which is a common Prelims trap.

[Additional] 3a. Electoral Bonds: the Scheme and the Supreme Court's 2024 Ruling

How elections are funded decides whose voice is loudest after them. In February 2024 the Supreme Court tested a funding scheme against the voter's right to know.

Key Term

Key Terms: Electoral Bonds

TermMeaning
Electoral bondA bearer instrument, bought from the State Bank of India and donated to a political party, that did not reveal the donor's name to the public
Electoral Bond Scheme, 2018Notified by the Ministry of Finance on 2 January 2018 under Section 31(3) of the RBI Act
Finance Act, 2017Amended five Acts to make the scheme possible: the Companies Act 2013, Income-tax Act 1961, RBI Act 1934, Representation of the People Act 1951 and the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act 2010
Electoral Trusts Scheme, 2013An earlier route (notified 31 January 2013, S.O. 309(E)): a trust registered as a company collects donations and must pass on 95% of what it receives in a year to registered parties
UPSC Connect

[Additional] Electoral Bonds: Scheme, Judgment and Disclosure (GS2: Elections, Fundamental Rights)

How the scheme worked (as set out in the Supreme Court's judgment):

FeatureDetail
DenominationsRs 1,000; 10,000; 1 lakh; 10 lakh; 1 crore
Validity15 days from issue; a party could not encash a bond after that
Sale windows10 days each in January, April, July and October; an additional 30 days in a Lok Sabha election year
BankSBI was the authorised bank (29 authorised branches in the 29th phase of sale, November 2023)
Who could receiveParties registered under Section 29A of the RP Act that won at least 1% of votes in the last Lok Sabha or Assembly election

The judgment. Association for Democratic Reforms v. Union of India (2024 INSC 113), decided 15 February 2024 by a five-judge Constitution Bench: Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and Justices Sanjiv Khanna, B.R. Gavai, J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra. The result was unanimous, in two opinions: the Chief Justice's, and a concurring opinion by Justice Khanna that reached the same conclusion by different reasoning.

HoldingConstitutional basis
The scheme, and the amendments that let parties keep donations by bond secret, are unconstitutionalArticle 19(1)(a): voters' right to information about political funding
Deleting the old limit on company donations (the proviso to Section 182(1) of the Companies Act, which capped them at 7.5% of average net profit) was struck downArticle 14: "permitting unlimited corporate contributions to political parties is arbitrary"

Directions: SBI was to stop issuing bonds and give the Election Commission details of bonds bought since the Court's interim order of 12 April 2019, by 6 March 2024; the ECI was to publish them within a week. SBI had asked for time until 30 June 2024; the Court refused, and its order of 11 March 2024 required SBI to disclose by the close of 12 March. Following that order and a further one of 18 March, the ECI reported on 21 March 2024 that SBI had supplied the data and that the ECI had uploaded it on its website "as received" (ECI Press Note 30/2024).

[Additional] 3b. EVMs and VVPAT

India's elections run on Electronic Voting Machines, and the paper trail added in 2013 lets a voter see the vote recorded. The Supreme Court examined both in April 2024.

Key Term

Key Terms: EVMs and VVPAT

TermMeaning
EVMA Ballot Unit and a Control Unit. Made by two public sector undertakings, Bharat Electronics Limited and Electronics Corporation of India Limited. The program is "burnt into a One Time Programmable microcontroller chip at the time of manufacturing" (Supreme Court, 2024); the units are standalone and cannot be connected to the internet
VVPATVoter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail: after a vote, a slip with the candidate's name, serial number and symbol is displayed behind glass for 7 seconds and then drops into a sealed box
Symbol Loading Unit (SLU)The device that loads candidates' symbols into the VVPATs before polling
UPSC Connect

[Additional] EVM and VVPAT Timeline, and the 2024 Judgment (GS2: Elections)

YearMilestone (ECI, Legal History of EVMs and VVPATs)
1982First use, on 19 May 1982, in 50 polling stations of the 70-Parur Assembly constituency, Kerala
1984A.C. Jose v. Sivan Pillai (5 March 1984): the Parur result was challenged in the Supreme Court; after the judgment the Commission asked the Government to give EVMs legal sanction
1988-89Parliament inserted Section 61A in the RP Act, 1951 (December 1988), in force from 15 March 1989
1998Used in 16 Assembly constituencies in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi
1999Used in 46 Lok Sabha constituencies
2004Used in all 543 Lok Sabha constituencies
2013Conduct of Election Rules amended on 14 August 2013 to introduce VVPAT; first used in the by-election to 51-Noksen Assembly constituency, Nagaland. In Subramanian Swamy v. ECI (8 October 2013) the Supreme Court held the paper trail to be an indispensable requirement of free and fair elections (as summarised by the ECI)
2019N. Chandrababu Naidu v. Union of India (8 April 2019): VVPAT slips of five EVMs per Assembly segment to be counted, up from one

Supreme Court, 26 April 2024 (Association for Democratic Reforms v. Election Commission of India, 2024 INSC 341; Justice Sanjiv Khanna, with a concurring opinion by Justice Dipankar Datta). The petitioners sought a return to paper ballots, or a 100% count of VVPAT slips; the Court did not grant these and disposed of the petitions with two directions:

  1. SLUs used from 1 May 2024 are to be sealed and stored with the EVMs for at least 45 days after results.
  2. A candidate who finishes second or third may, in writing within 7 days of the result and at their own cost, ask for the burnt memory or microcontroller of 5% of the EVMs in each Assembly constituency or segment to be checked by the manufacturers' engineers; the cost is refunded if tampering is found.

Other democracies. Germany's Federal Constitutional Court ruled on 3 March 2009 that the voting computers used in the 2005 Bundestag election were unconstitutional, because citizens could not check the essential steps of the vote and the count without specialist knowledge; it said the law permitting voting machines was not itself unconstitutional, and did not dissolve the Bundestag elected in 2005 (press release 19/2009). In the Netherlands, people voted electronically for the last time in 2007; the voting computers were abolished in 2008 and the red pencil returned in 2009 (Kiesraad).

Exam Strategy

Prelims traps:

  • Courts are part of the government (NCERT); so are the Indian Railways and Bharat Petroleum in NCERT's list of examples.
  • Women's vote: USA 1920; UK on equal terms with men 1928 (NCERT). India had adult suffrage from the start of the Constitution (Article 326).
  • Voting age 21 → 18: 61st Amendment Act, 1988, in force 28 March 1989. Do not confuse it with the 42nd (Preamble words) or 73rd (Panchayats).
  • Election Commission = Article 324 (constitutional body). The State Election Commission for Panchayats is Article 243K.
  • Electoral bonds: scheme notified 2 January 2018; struck down 15 February 2024 by five judges, unanimously, in two opinions; Article 19(1)(a) for the secrecy, Article 14 for unlimited company donations.
  • EVM-VVPAT case (26 April 2024): a two-judge bench, a different case from the five-judge electoral bonds bench. No order for paper ballots or 100% VVPAT counting.
  • VVPAT introduced by the rules amended on 14 August 2013; first used at Noksen, Nagaland.
  • A democracy can have a monarch (constitutional monarchy, e.g. the UK); a republic has an elected head of state.

Mains frameworks:

  • On universal adult franchise: NCERT's history of exclusion (property, education, sex) → Gandhiji's 1931 argument → Article 326 → 61st Amendment → today's issues (funding transparency, trust in EVMs).
  • On the electoral bonds judgment: right to information of voters vs donor privacy → the Court's finding that secrecy failed the test → what changed (no bonds; trusts and disclosed donations remain).

Practice Questions

Practice (UPSC-pattern, not past papers). Real UPSC questions on this chapter are listed in the PYQ box above.

Prelims:

  1. "Government of the people, by the people, for the people" is a phrase from:
    (a) Mahatma Gandhi's Young India article of 1931
    (b) The Preamble to the Constitution of India
    (c) Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address
    (d) John Locke's Two Treatises of Government

  2. The voting age in India was reduced from 21 to 18 years by which Constitutional Amendment?
    (a) 42nd Amendment
    (b) 44th Amendment
    (c) 61st Amendment
    (d) 73rd Amendment

  3. The superintendence, direction and control of elections to Parliament and the State Legislatures is vested in the Election Commission by:
    (a) Article 280
    (b) Article 315
    (c) Article 324
    (d) Article 243K

  4. In Association for Democratic Reforms v. Union of India (2024), the Supreme Court held the Electoral Bond Scheme unconstitutional mainly because it violated:
    (a) Article 21, the right to privacy of donors
    (b) Article 19(1)(a), the voter's right to information
    (c) Article 324, the powers of the Election Commission
    (d) Article 112, the procedure for the annual financial statement

  5. Consider the following about VVPAT:

    1. The Conduct of Election Rules were amended in 2013 to introduce it.
    2. The Supreme Court in April 2024 ordered 100% counting of VVPAT slips.
      Which is/are correct?
      (a) 1 only
      (b) 2 only
      (c) Both 1 and 2
      (d) Neither 1 nor 2

Mains:

  1. "Universal adult franchise was a leap of faith in 1950." Discuss with reference to how the vote was won elsewhere and the arguments made in India before Independence. (GS2, 10 marks)

  2. Examine how the Supreme Court balanced the voter's right to information against the donor's right to privacy in the electoral bonds case (2024). (GS2, 15 marks)

📦 Revision Capsule

Revision Capsule

Hard Facts

  • Government makes decisions, makes and enforces laws; courts are part of government
  • Levels: local, state, national
  • Democracy (people give power, rulers must explain) vs monarchy (monarch decides, need not explain)
  • Women's vote: USA 1920; UK 1928. Gandhiji, Young India, 1931 on the vote for all
  • Article 326 (adult suffrage); 61st Amendment (18 years, in force 28-Mar-1989); Article 324 (ECI)
  • Electoral bonds struck down 15-Feb-2024 (5 judges, unanimous); EVM-VVPAT ruling 26-Apr-2024 (2 judges)

Core Concepts

  • Power to decide needs power to enforce
  • Representative democracy + universal adult franchise
  • Nowhere did governments share power willingly: the vote was won

Confused Pairs

  • Democracy vs republic (UK: democracy, not a republic; India: both)
  • ECI (Art 324) vs State Election Commission (Art 243K)
  • Electoral bonds bench (5 judges, Feb 2024) vs EVM-VVPAT bench (2 judges, Apr 2024)

PYQ Pattern

  • Mains GS2 has asked about the trustworthiness of EVMs and the Election Commission's challenges (see the PYQ box). Electoral funding and universal adult franchise are standard GS2 themes.

Sources

Sources