INDIA’S democracy has been an important element of its new and self-confident image as an economic player of consequence in a globalised world. Democracy has given India politically the competitive edge that it lacks in the economic domain vis-à-vis its Chinese neighbour and commercial rival. The key role played by democracy in the global perception of India is also reflected in its new relationship with the United States whose leadership has, in recent times, frequently hailed India as a fellow-democracy. This contrasts sharply, of course, with the days of the Cold War when India’s democracy (albeit briefly blemished) went curiously unremarked. In general, western proselytisers of democracy, many of whom feel threatened by the towering economic presence of China, have of late been eagerly handing out testimonials to India’s democracy.

These processes have arguably driven the internal support for democracy among India’s middle and upper classes, not naturally predisposed towards it. Events such as the conference on democracy jointly hosted, in 2001, by the Confederation of Indian Industry and the National Endowment for Democracy (Washington, D.C.), were surely unthinkable a decade earlier. From very different perspectives, thus, the global and the local constituencies for Indian democracy have tended to converge.

By contrast, the cheerleaders of democracy within the Indian academy long predate the new converts of the corporate fraternity. This intelligentsia has celebrated Indian democracy even in times when this was a rather lonelier cause. Two moments of the democratic celebration particularly stand out, the first of these being in the mid-seventies, when the Emergency triggered the birth of a strong civil liberties movement that later went on to pioneer the cause of social and economic rights as well. The post-Emergency election of 1977 provided reassuring evidence of the resilience of Indian democracy and the maturity of even the unlettered voter.

The second watershed was the political mobilisation and assertion of the backward castes and dalits, processes that had been set in motion in the 1970s and 1980s, but which acquired an accelerated pace post-Mandal. The coming into being of parties like the Samajwadi Party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Bahujan Samaj Party, even though some of these were essentially fragments of the old Janata Party, gave an impetus to caste-based mobilisation that resulted in an increase in backward caste representation in both state legislatures and Parliament, and was therefore hailed as a qualitative departure from the polity of the past, a signifier of the deepening of democracy.

Collectively, the positive developments outlined above have accorded to Indian democracy the status of a shibboleth. None of its varied local constituencies are presently willing to ask or confront inconvenient questions about the substantive quality of Indian democracy, or indeed its possibilities and limits. It could be argued that such complacency about our democracy tends to inhibit thoughtful and self-critical analysis. This article identifies three dogmas of Indian democracy and suggests, in response to these, some reasons why Indian democracy-watchers need to be uneasy, or at least willing to entertain a sense of disquiet.

 

The first dogma, baldly stated, is that democracy is chiefly, if not exclusively, about representation; indeed, that the test of democracy is the extent to which it succeeds in representing various groups, especially those that have historically suffered from disadvantage and exclusion. The success or otherwise of democracy is adjudged by the extent to which political mobilisation and electoral processes generate a microcosmic representation of the diverse ascriptively-defined groups within Indian society. Pared to its essentials, this approach commands us to carve up society into its multiple ethnic, religious and caste groupings (and now sub-groupings), count the numbers and check these against their percentage representation in the institutions of governance, mainly the legislatures and the civil service, but also other public institutions such as the judiciary.

No democrat could ever dispute the proposition that exclusion is a denial of democracy, and that disadvantaged groups must be properly and effectively represented. But, equally, no democrat should be naïve enough to suspend disbelief once such representation has been achieved – whether through reserved quotas or party political mobilisation – and not ask the further question as to whether the interests of these disadvantaged and excluded groups are in fact being appropriately and robustly reflected in public policy.

Representation is a mechanism that can facilitate participation and hopefully trigger policy impact. But to treat representation as the sine qua non of democracy, its desired end-state, is to be insufficiently demanding of democracy. For there is danger in presuming that the tasks of democracy are complete once proper representation has been achieved, such that the vehicle simply goes into overdrive, and policies that reflect everyone’s preferences automatically flow from this. This fetishisation of representation serves only to detract attention from its limits in terms of both policy outcomes and the actual welfare of the groups in question.

 

That there is in India a frequent convergence between cultural and material inequalities is well known. This is an overlap between, on the one hand, the inherited symbolic or cultural disadvantages of caste or religious identity and, on the other, of economic disadvantage. Low caste status is often accompanied by deprivation, and traditional and historical forms of social inequality thus co-exist with, and are reinforced by, inequalities arising out of the sphere of production and economic activity. If we look at NCAER data regarding human development indicators and poverty amongst various social groups, we find that levels of deprivation are highest for the Scheduled Castes, followed by the Scheduled Tribes, with the Muslims being just slightly better off than the other two groups. The economic impoverishment of these groups clearly mirrors their social marginalisation. Of course, it is obviously not the case that all members of these groups are poor, or that there is no poverty among other groups, but only that there is a high degree of overlap between being poor and belonging to these groups.

 

Now, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes – unlike the Muslims – have had access to quotas guaranteeing their presence in public institutions. However, studies have shown that the entire panoply of institutional quotas has failed to generate policies that substantively address the disadvantages that mark the condition of the vast majority of these groups. The explanations offered for this gap range from accusations about elites within these groups cornering the benefits and reproducing them inter-generationally, to more radical arguments about the difficulty of dislodging entrenched social hierarchies that maintain the stranglehold of the upper castes and upper classes (and these are often the same) on Indian society.

Whatever the factors that explain this phenomenon, it is clear that representation is only a necessary, but by no means sufficient, condition of democracy. As such, the assumption that the project of democracy begins with seeking, and ends with achieving, representation is profoundly inadequate. It makes possible the absurd spectacle of imitative claims to reservation being made by a variety of rather unlikely candidates, such as the Jats and Brahmins of Rajasthan that have been busy trying to invent for themselves identities of disadvantage.

The second dogma, not unrelated to the first, is to be found in the conviction that the political mobilisation of the backward castes is adequate proof of the deepening of democracy, which started its career on Indian soil as an elite affair, but has now spread more widely. Even scholars who have most strenuously argued this point now acknowledge that this process has reached a plateau, with the virtual freezing of group identities and their political alignments. Of course, the results of the November 2005 assembly election in Bihar, in which the vote of the Most Backward Castes is said to have tilted the balance, suggest that there is – despite its having been flogged almost to the death – life in the old Manuvadi myth yet.

 

There is no question that the Fourteenth Lok Sabha is a much more representative body than the First Lok Sabha elected in 1952, in which the backward castes were represented to the tune of barely five per cent, as contrasted to twenty five per cent today. The jubilation about democracy having been deepened by the political and electoral processes that have brought about this transformation is, however, a trifle premature. To begin with, it fails to observe some disturbing elements of the Indian political process that can only be described as Schumpeterian.

Schumpeter’s ‘realist’ definition of democracy saw it not as a form of government designed to express the will of the sovereign people, but rather as a form of elite competition in which the seeking of the popular vote was only a means to acquire power. Scholars of Indian democracy have on the whole preferred to romanticise democracy, and ignore evidence of the resemblance between Schumpeterian realism and the way in which parties claiming to represent the most backward groups in Indian society are organised, their practice or otherwise of internal democracy, their functioning as family-owned firms, and so forth. The extent to which the project of deepening democracy has come to be infected, and indeed undermined, by Schumpeterian political behaviour, remains unremarked.

 

It is perhaps time we asked ourselves if the project of deepening democracy is compatible with parties created and run as personalised individual fiefdoms, with no accountability whatever; with outrageously corrupt leaderships that have amassed enormous wealth which is cheerfully justified by citing the long years of corruption and misrule by savarna political leaders; with symbols of social justice like commemorative statues and parks built at huge public cost cynically substituting for material improvements in the quality of people’s lives. Sometimes, even their representational claims are incoherent, as when dalit leaders sponsor candidates from among the Brahmins and other higher castes. Can and do these upper caste candidates represent the interests of the dalits?

It can be nobody’s case that the larger national parties, whose strategy is to broadbase their political appeal, are free from any of these perversions; if anything, they have shown the way in each of these respects. But it is infinitely more dispiriting to witness these phenomena in parties that claim to authentically represent groups that have long suffered deprivation and exclusion, and therefore surely deserve better. However, as the results of the recent election in Bihar show, it is perhaps the democratic process itself that eventually – though excruciatingly slowly and at possibly great cost to the quality of life of vast numbers of people – provides the necessary correctives for the multifarious abuses and appropriations of democracy. At times like these, the scholarly cheerleaders of ‘deepened democracy’ stand decisively snubbed by the electorate.

It is therefore time we asked ourselves what a substantive deepening of democracy might mean. Arguably, the more heartening accomplishments of our democracy include the now decade-old constitutional initiative in the sphere of local democracy and the very recent national legislation guaranteeing the right to information. The first has had its teething-troubles and obstructionists, and so undoubtedly will the second. But there is no doubt that the new panchayats have created public spaces where citizens – including and especially women, dalits and adivasis – can meet with those who have traditionally oppressed and exploited them, on relatively equal terms. Struggles to keep this public space free of hierarchy and inequality are even now being mounted every day across the country, and in the long run will probably spill over into other realms of social relationships in a way that parliamentary quotas have not.

 

Likewise, the achievement of the Right to Information is a measure of the success of Indian democracy in creating radical possibilities for civil society to make claims that transport us from a nineteenth-century colonial Official Secrets Act to a quite revolutionary legislation that will hopefully enable citizens to recover a core component of the democratic ideal, namely accountability. To the extent that the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act provides a right to livelihood, it is equally significant. From decentralisation to the right to information, from the right to education to the campaign for a right to food, it is these initiatives that are the more substantive ways of deepening democracy.

 

This brings us to the third dogma, that of treating democracy as a shibboleth, and as self-referential. In theory, of course, democracy has a fundamental intrinsic value, so that we value it because it is a good in itself, and not only because it is an instrument to some other good. The instrumental value of democracy lies in making possible – through the apparatus of rights and freedom – collective action for greater justice and even redistribution. However, the enabling conditions for such public action are not always present in a society. In situations like these, the attachment to democracy qua democracy can sometimes cloud our judgement, and prevent us from seeing that there may be problems in our society and polity to which democracy does not hold the magic key.

A common example of such a fallacy is the curious ways in which we are wont to think of the relationship between democracy and governance. One common argument in this genre is that which views democracy and governance as essentially antithetical projects. On this view, democracy is equated with populism, such that poor governance is blamed on ‘the excesses of democracy’, and governance is equated with the restoration of order and predictability. There is an assumption that the messiness and general unruliness of democracy contravenes the principles of orderliness and the integrity of the whole that are associated with governance. This view is clearly based on a distorted understanding of both democracy and governance.

A second argument recognises that democracy is an instrument of governance, but has a rather limited and even banal view of what governance might be. Take the example of electoral and popular political discourse in the Assembly elections of December 2003, which fuelled the myth that it was on the plank of providing good governance that the BJP had won power in three of the four states in which elections were held. Because its campaign platform had been overtly developmental; because development was defined as electricity, roads and water; and because the only state election the BJP lost at this time was in Delhi – where the Congress government was seen to have actually delivered on these fronts – governance became, for all major parties, a shorthand term for bijli, sadak and pani. For the BJP, indeed, governance became a residual category for all that was not-Hindutva in its political programme. It is surely a tragic commentary on our polity that the promised provision of these fairly basic public goods – even if to a rather limited section of mostly urban society – can set the benchmarks of governance.

 

In general, making democracy into a holy cow – ‘if it’s democratic, it must be fine’ – can be a sticky business. The grossest violations of public morality can be justified in its name. Just a couple of months ago, television channels relayed the amusing spectacle of a politician from a northern state, charged with a variety of crimes, remonstrating that he had been elected by a huge majority of the popular vote. The subtext of the plea was that a favourable verdict in the people’s court should far outweigh any trial or conviction in a court of law.

This fetishisation of elections is part of the democratic dogma. Both in scholarship as well as in the political analysis emanating from the salon and the television studio, elections tend to become state-of-the-democracy reports. In fact, the character of a democracy can only partially be inferred from its elections. That it is misleading to read the pulse of a polity purely by an analysis of its elections is easily illustrated by examining the various explanations offered for the electoral verdict of May 2004. The evidence for either of the popular hypotheses – that this was a verdict on economic reforms or a decisive rejection of Hindutva – is, as CSDS data have shown, rather thin. If, as has been widely argued, the outcome of the 2004 election was substantially determined by the strategic alliances successfully pursued by one political formation, surely the election result reveals little about the substantive character of Indian democracy.

As a state-of-the-democracy report, the electoral verdict by itself is not very helpful because it explicates the merits of rival electoral arithmetics and strategies rather than advancing our understanding of the subterranean as well as manifest political tendencies and processes at work. Elections are surely important moments in political life which, as they capture a slice of time when political temperatures are at their highest, are possibly the most striking in symbolic and ritualistic terms, but they are far from being either the exclusive or the most accurate barometer of a democracy.

 

This reduction of the democratic idea to elections is of course a global trend, as the evangelists of democracy have taken it upon themselves to spread sweetness, light and democracy across the world. It is quite another matter that the sweetness is that of anticipated consumerism, and the light that of the fires lit by aerial bombing. As for democracy, the world has witnessed many attempts – some well-meaning and others not – at creating or propping up or bankrolling political parties, at encouraging and organising ‘free and fair elections’, and so forth. Such elections, as we know, often become specially choreographed events for election observers coming in on missions of what have been called ‘electoral tourism’ – missions smelling strongly of a proselytising commitment – and it is worth asking the question, how meaningful is such democracy?

 

The project of democracy promotion is indeed deeply flawed, both morally and politically. Take the moral argument first. Surely it is profoundly undemocratic to swear by democracy and at the same time deny others – whether individuals or nations – the basic democratic right to determine for themselves the design of society and polity that they want. Can people be forced to be democratic any more than they could be forced, pace Rousseau, to be free? Ultimately, howsoever strongly and deeply we are convinced of the goodness and value of our way of life, we do not have the right to impose it on others.

The political argument about democracy promotion is about practicability and feasibility, about the conditions under which democracy can actually be introduced from the outside. Does democracy require what has been called a ‘cultural and civic infrastructure’? India, it was long assumed, lacked a cultural predisposition to democracy, on account of its hierarchical and inegalitarian social structure. But, today, democracy has a striking hold on the popular political imagination, and this is only partly the result of a process realized over time through participation and engagement in political activity. More substantially, it is the result of the mass mobilisation undertaken by Gandhi and other leaders of the national movement against colonial rule. Indeed, the commitment to popular democracy and universal adult suffrage also date back to that movement.

Such a culture may be central to the democratic way of life, but it is arguable that it must evolve and grow organically from within a society. Setting up the institutions – the architecture or infrastructure – of democracy may provide only a shell rather than the real thing. It may therefore be time to think afresh about democracy, not in a formulaic manner, but through exploring ways of pluralizing democratic conceptions. Must democracy necessarily be the same for all societies and all peoples?

 

As far as our own democracy is concerned, we have argued that a reflexive and uncritical view of it makes us complacent, as also susceptible to the danger of tumbling into the same trap as the global democracy-promoters. It certainly discourages us from reflecting on the limits of democracy or expanding our understanding of the conditions, both institutional and social, under which democracy could be made more robust.

A strong commitment to democratic principles should not restrain us from making more exacting demands on our democracy, which treating democracy as a shibboleth does. Likewise, the cause of inclusion and the representation of diversity are not well served by making a holy cow of representation while ignoring the importance of welfare and redistribution for the disadvantaged. Finally, a commitment to the goal of deepening democracy calls for setting more stringent criteria by which to judge this deepening, and for more substantive content to the idea of social justice than that encountered in contemporary political discourse.

 

* A version of this essay was presented as the First Pradeep Kumar Memorial Lecture at Punjab University, Chandigarh on 30 November 2005.