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IS the audacious South Asian experiment of instituting democracy in a region marked by extreme and widespread poverty and inequality, a bewildering diversity of ethnicities and community identities, and low levels of literacy – each conventionally seen as an essential precondition for successful democracy – hitting a roadblock? Sri Lanka once again seems to be slipping into the quagmire of an ethnic civil war. The extreme levels of distrust between the two major political parties in Bangladesh have broken the fragile consensus over the institutional arrangements for the conduct of ‘free and fair’ elections. And in Pakistan, the General turned President in uniform, remains firm in his resolve to keep the ‘leaders’ of the two main political parties out of the electoral process.

Fortunately, Nepal seems to be emerging out of its long nightmare; the Maoist insurgent forces seem committed to a ‘peaceful’ parliamentary path and in conjunction with the Seven Party Alliance have ‘successfully’ de-fanged an obdurate and dictatorial monarch. Hopefully, in 2007, instead of killing each other they will be engaged with the ‘usual give-and-take’ of electoral politics. On the other hand, India, despite its sixty year tryst with democracy, is experiencing unprecedented strains between different wings of its constitutional arrangements. And if this is not enough, facing militant and insurgent groups over large swathes of its territory – groups which currently ‘reject’ its modes of governance. So is the dream fading?

Not if the lessons from the first-ever survey of the State of Democracy in South Asia carry credence. This large-scale study of attitudes of over 19,000 respondents from five countries provides convincing evidence of a widespread support of the idea of democracy, though the support for the institutional form of democracy remains shallow. Equally, even as South Asian cultures of democracy provide greater room for struggles for equality, well-being and dignity for all citizens, they offer less space for rules or institutions to guard against majoritarian excesses.

It is worrying that though constitutional designs offer equal political citizenship, they stop well short of embodying the substantive promise of democracy found in popular commonsense. More challenging is the finding that the entire set of formal institutions – electoral, non-electoral and governance related – suffer from both erosion of autonomy and low levels of popular trust. If the electoral-representative institutions remain marked by both an efficacy and representation deficit (legislatures/parties), non-electoral institutions (judiciary/election commission), though more trusted, are seen as veering towards elite interests as also in tension with representative institutions.

Yet, and this may come as a surprise to many, political parties have taken root in South Asian soil and generate a high level of popular participation and identification, despite their relative inability to offer meaningful choices to the electorate and the electoral process itself remaining vitiated by a range of infirmities. Similarly, while each of the countries of the region have a vibrant civil society and a non-party political sphere, these formations, despite adding to democratic space in terms of issues articulated and constituencies mobilized, too remain constrained by limited efficacy and are themselves insufficiently transparent or democratic.

The major challenge to South Asian democracies, however, remains the ever-present danger of majoritarianism. As against the construction of a common citizenship, social and political life for our citizens continue in substantial measure to be defined by community identification. With democracy commonly understood as majority rule, and institutions insufficiently robust, the likelihood of a politically awakened populace supporting majoritarian excesses cannot be ruled out.

Such tendencies are becoming even more pronounced as the outcomes of democracy – freedom from want and fear – are unevenly shared across the social and spatial terrain, in part because a range of key decisions, particularly economic, are slipping out of the control of national state institutions. We thus face the paradoxical situation of increasing expectations from and demands on the formal institutions of governance to deliver and the institutional system pleading helplessness. Little surprise that marginal groups, communities and regions feel left out.

If, nevertheless, the SDSA report veers towards cautious optimism, it is because the peoples of our region remain not just committed to but actively engaged in working through democracy to expand their choices and improve their life chances. Whatever our infirmities, and there are many, it is this indomitable spirit that safeguards our democratic future.

Harsh Sethi