Still democratic in spite of itself

The attack on the Indian parliament in December has led to a new round of confrontation between India and Pakistan and has rekindled interest in the world's most populous democracy. But there is little comparative analysis of why democracy has survived in India amid very unfavourable social and economic conditions. Both these books address this question.

Atul Kohli in his introduction to The Success of India's Democracy assures us that the volume is not a celebration - a warning lost on some contributors - of "success" (why, one wonders, was the word chosen?). Rather, it is an effort at understanding how democracy has become institutionalised and procedurally embedded and has taken root among the masses. Kohli's key argument is that the secret of Indian democracy lies in how political power is distributed and renegotiated with reference to two key principles: a balance between the forces of centralisation and decentralisation, and a pluralist political system in which "the interests of the powerful in society have been served without fully excluding the weaker groups". These principles have created a delicate equipoise enabling democracy to consolidate and to extend beyond the elite to the masses.

Most of the essays substantiate Kohli's thesis. Several (Sumit Sarkar, Jyotirindra Dasgupta, James Manor and Subrata Mitra) are largely uninspiring efforts that represent the standard swansong of institutional and neo-institutional approaches. There is an eloquent duet (Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph) to India's constitutional design, which has allowed it to adapt to the transition from the Congress's command politics to post-economic liberalisation, coalition governments and more regionalisation. The most original contribution is by Mary Katzenstein, Smitu Kothari and Uday Mehta, who argue that the vibrancy of Indian democracy is to be found in social movements that increasingly articulate their interests within the state's judicial-administrative apparatus while the electoral process has become the realm of identity politics. It is in the social sphere that the real resilience of Indian democracy is found.

The main difficulty with this volume is that the distinction between the procedural consolidation of Indian democracy and the normative evaluation of its achievements seems untenable. The two aspects are interwoven in ways that define the character as well as the form of Indian democracy.

Procedurally, the principle of federalism works with the "mainstream" states but is of limited utility in explaining the politics of "peripheral" states, which has been characterised by closure, insurgency and violent control. Even within "mainstream" states, procedural compliance with democratic norms worked best in the Nehru era because it was achieved within a largely undemocratic society. As the democratic spirit has permeated a rigidly hierarchical society, India has faced a growing "crisis of governability". Pranab Bardhan, in an incisive contribution, cautions against an over-optimistic belief in democratic teleology. Equity politics, he warns, have created their own dangers of democratic "overload". Procedural democracy might, as Kohli claims, be desirable, but if it co-exists with 350 million people on a dollar a day, social scientists are right to ask what kind of democracy it is. The volume circumvents this question and leaves us with the nagging thought that Indian democracy functions in spite of, rather than because of, benign elite design.

For P. N. Dhar, the former head of Indira Gandhi's secretariat and one of her closest advisers in the 1970s, the question is not so much why Indian democracy has endured but the need to understand its inability to generate authority and respect for government. Although the book is billed as a Richard Crossman-style expose of the Indira Gandhi years, there is little of substance. Few are likely to be convinced by the suggestion that Indians were outwitted by the rustic Pakistanis at the Simla conference in 1972 or that the notorious Emergency (1975-77) can be explained away by "systemic failure".

What do enliven this account are the author's observations on the frustrations of the democratic experiment in India. Dhar regales us with the decline in the rule of law and respect for government; the capture of the state by vested interests; the retreat of the state from the ability to undertake social reform; the "spectre of chaos (that) haunts the country"; electoral politics that emphasise primordial ties; and the absences of a firmly rooted "democratic culture".

He quotes Mill's warning that in the absence of a "liberal political culture" and appropriate education, democracy is likely to breed demagogy and oppression. The tyranny of the illiterate masses is all too much for Dhar, who is pessimistic about the prospects for democratic reform.

It is a pity that Dhar makes no reference to Kohli's Democracy and Discontent : India's Growing Crisis of Governability (1990), published at the height of the deep tensions in the political system that led to the rise of the Hindu right, economic liberalisation and wholesale affirmative action - when the country appeared ungovernable. Had he done so, he could have saved himself unnecessary effort in depicting the darker side of Indian democracy. But then a decade is a long time in comparative and Indian politics, and nothing succeeds like success.

Gurharpal Singh is professor of politics, University of Hull.