How Bihar’s ballot carries the weight of a 2,500

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At dawn on January 5, 1952, Bihar woke to a new future. “With the glow of dawn, the voters of Bihar … went to the polls today,” reported The Times of India . From Patna’s lanes to the coal belts of Dhanbad and the tribal plateaus of Ranchi, villagers queued under the winter sun for their first taste of democracy. Many had never seen a ballot box before; yet, as the paper noted, “uneducated village folk exceeded their urban compeers in eagerness to exercise their newly won adult franchise. ” That winter marked Bihar’s first general election under the Constitution, which had come into force barely two years earlier. Polling stretched over five weeks, from early January to mid-February 1952, part of the nationwide general election — the largest democratic exercise in history at th