ABSTRACT
Democracy had come a long way in Karnataka during the fi rst two decades after India’s Constitution came into force in 1950. On four occasions, free and fair elections to the Indian Parliament and the state’s own legislative assembly within this federal system had occurred, with high turnouts by international standards. A political awakening had occurred throughout society, so that low-status groups no longer allowed land-owning castes, who dominated village society in this predominantly rural state, to infl uence their votes, as they had done in earlier elections. The same could be said of elections to local bodies: city and town councils in urban centres, and village councils or panchayats in rural areas. (Indeed, the fi rst election in India based on mass franchise had occurred in the Bangalore municipality in 1951, several months before the fi rst general election in 1952.) Politicians in this state had also established their preeminence over civil servants, had become acutely aware of the need to respond to important interest groups, and had become quite sophisticated in the art of doing so.
