two political approach use of nationalist mobilization
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The reflections in this book1 on trends, tendencies and various features of the Indian political landscape do not lend themselves easily to delivering a coherent rating of Indian democracy. The contributions provide differing illustrations, examples and specimens of what Indian democracy stands for, what it has achieved and what it still has to live up to. What is common to all the contributions is that the phenomena that are analysed affect Indian democracy in one way or the other. In this chapter, therefore, I wish to hold up a kind of mirror to India’s democracy. What challenges do we see if we discuss the influence of Indian democracy on itself?
A question that is often asked is whether India has the ‘right’ qualities for a democratic regime to function effectively. After brief reflection on the way the question is posed, one detects an unexpressed suspicion that India ought not to survive at all, either as a nation or as a democracy.2 Against the background of some of the challenges described in this book, the following questions are reasonable: Is Indian democracy sustainable? Does the country have enough middle class, literate, female and low-caste people in politics, a high enough average income and so on, to give liberal values buoyancy? Sometimes researchers and debaters turn the question around and wonder whether India’s democracy creates the ‘right’ conditions in the country for long-term development. When can India create some kind of basic welfare for all its citizens? Can democracy bring justice, economic growth and political stability at the same time? In discussing these questions, the issue automatically arises: Is Indian democracy itself creating the preconditions for its own long-term survival?
On the one hand, India is a country that has disproved many common conceptions of what constitutes good conditions for a democratic form of government. Despite innumerable administrative failings, low literacy and poverty, the country has succeeded unusually well in mobilizing its voters. There is in India today a strong popular adherence to the view that the citizens have the right to choose their own leaders. One manifestation of this is the high electoral turnout of around 60 per cent since the 1960s. Only for a period of twenty-one months in the 1970s did a political elite3 succeed in totally blocking the democratic process at the national level (discussed in greater detail later). From this point of view, democracy has succeeded extremely well, if India is compared to other countries that were colonized and have long been burdened by poverty.
A question that is often asked is whether India has the ‘right’ qualities for a democratic regime to function effectively. After brief reflection on the way the question is posed, one detects an unexpressed suspicion that India ought not to survive at all, either as a nation or as a democracy.2 Against the background of some of the challenges described in this book, the following questions are reasonable: Is Indian democracy sustainable? Does the country have enough middle class, literate, female and low-caste people in politics, a high enough average income and so on, to give liberal values buoyancy? Sometimes researchers and debaters turn the question around and wonder whether India’s democracy creates the ‘right’ conditions in the country for long-term development. When can India create some kind of basic welfare for all its citizens? Can democracy bring justice, economic growth and political stability at the same time? In discussing these questions, the issue automatically arises: Is Indian democracy itself creating the preconditions for its own long-term survival?
On the one hand, India is a country that has disproved many common conceptions of what constitutes good conditions for a democratic form of government. Despite innumerable administrative failings, low literacy and poverty, the country has succeeded unusually well in mobilizing its voters. There is in India today a strong popular adherence to the view that the citizens have the right to choose their own leaders. One manifestation of this is the high electoral turnout of around 60 per cent since the 1960s. Only for a period of twenty-one months in the 1970s did a political elite3 succeed in totally blocking the democratic process at the national level (discussed in greater detail later). From this point of view, democracy has succeeded extremely well, if India is compared to other countries that were colonized and have long been burdened by poverty.
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