Politics in India

Structure, Process and Policy

Subrata K. Mitra

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138017986
• eBook ISBN: 9781317701132
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The second edition of this textbook brings together general political theory and the comparative method to interpret socio-political phenomena and issues that have occupied the Indian state and society since 1947. It considers the progress that India has made in some of the most challenging aspects of post-colonial politics such as governance, democracy, economic growth, welfare, and citizenship. Looking at the changed global role of India, its standing in the G-20 and BRICS, as well as the implications of the 2014 Indian general elections for state and society, this updated edition also includes sections on the changing socio-political status of women in India, corruption and terrorism. The author raises several key questions relevant to Indian politics, including:

• Why has India succeeded in making a relatively peaceful transition from colonial rule to a resilient, multi-party democracy in contrast to its South Asian neighbours?

• How has the interaction of modern politics and traditional society contributed to the resilience of post-colonial democracy?

• How did India's economy moribund—for several decades following Independence—make a breakthrough into rapid growth and can India sustain it?

• And finally, why have collective identity and nationhood emerged as the core issues for India in the twenty-first century and with what implications for Indian democracy?

The textbook goes beyond India by asking about the implications of the Indian case for the general and comparative theory of the post-colonial state. The factors which might have caused failures in democracy and governance are analysed and incorporated as variables into a model of democratic governance. In addition to pedagogical features such as text boxes, a set of further readings is provided to guide readers who wish to go beyond the remit of this text. The book will be essential reading for undergraduate students and researchers in South Asian and Asian studies, political science, development studies, sociology, comparative politics and political theory.

1 Introduction

Modern politics and traditional society in the making of Indian democracy

Men make their history upon the basis of prior conditions.

Hazel Barnes, paraphrasing Marx, Engels and Sartre, in Search for a Method (1963) translated by Hazel Barnes

(1968), p. xviii

Democracy breaks the chain and severs every link of it.

Alexis de Tocqueville, L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution (1856),

cited, in Dumont (1970), p. 1

Some puzzles of India’s politics

Politics in contemporary India can come across as baffling to those who are unfamiliar with its distinctive style. Its noisy, effective and resilient democracy is a puzzle. The co-existence of modernity and tradition is equally puzzling. A modern state with an emerging market, India still retains some features of a developing country. Modern politicians in ethnic garb, holy men and women democratically elected to high office, mass poverty, urban squalor, traditional rituals performed on state occasions and at the inauguration of cutting-edge technological projects, modern buildings containing enterprises based on state-of-the-art technology surrounded by fields with subsistence agriculture, using most primitive tools, mark the landscape of the vast country. With its continental dimensions, vibrant traditions, living religions, ethnic and linguistic diversity, expanding market, steady economic growth, ethnic and religious conflict, mass poverty, deprivation and gender violence, contemporary India is a bundle of contradictions. Even for visitors who come equipped with prior knowledge of the country, surprises abound.

A country that cherishes the non-violent legacies of Gautama Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi, India is nonetheless a proud possessor of nuclear weapons and long-range missile delivery capacity. The wrangling within India’s political establishment regarding the nuclear weapons, anti-nuclear movements and the ambiguity of India’s nuclear doctrine, however, lead to global perplexity about the real intentions that underpin India’s nuclear capacity. Other incongruities abound. India’s general elections, the largest in the world in scale, are generally free and fair, but they can take up to six weeks to be completed as armed troops, who need to be deployed for safe conduct of the polls, must be moved from one part of the country to another. Power changes hands peacefully through democratic elections, but an alarming number of legislators carry criminal records. Beyond politics, one comes across the same welter of images that are at once confusing and contradictory. Internet cafes, slums and beggars jostle for space in overcrowded cities; vicious inter-community riots and terrorist attacks come and go, and yet everyday life continues, apparently undisturbed. A deeper stability appears to underlie the discord that marks the political landscape on the surface. The combination of diversity and inequality, the bane of many developing societies, does not appear to disturb the stability of India’s political system.¹

India emerged from a century and a half of British colonial rule as an independent country in 1947, but with a truncated territory, a stagnant economy, and a fragmented society. In contrast, today, the country projects a picture of remarkable achievements across several fields stretching from trade, technology and the arts to social mobility, democracy and steady economic growth. Most of all, in contrast to most post-colonial states, India has achieved both democracy and development. Seen in cross-national comparison,² India belongs to the middle level of developing countries such as Mexico and Iran in terms of health, education and welfare. China, which has an edge over India in terms of quality of life, is a better point of comparison.³ However, India’s overall ability to sustain democratic governance and social change marks her out as exceptional in comparison both to the middle-level developing countries, and to China. This puzzle underpins the detailed empirical analysis of India’s state, society, economy and foreign policy undertaken in this book.

Emerging India, poised to become a major player in the global economy, and knocking at the door of the United Nations Security Council for a permanent seat, has generated a new interest in the country’s politics and economy, as one can see from the spate of new writing on India.⁴ The economy, torpid under long years of colonial rule, gathered momentum after independence, but grew only at a pace that many referred to derisively as the ‘Hindu rate of growth’.⁵ Growing at about one and a half percent net during the four decades following Independence, India’s economy was outpaced by the country’s competitors, big and small. The trend changed radically in the 1990s with the ‘liberalization’ of the economy in 1991.⁶ The dismantling of the legal and administrative barriers to free trade and industry has opened new avenues and global connectivity for India’s entrepreneurs. The past two decades have seen both a respectable rate of growth at about 6 percent and a significant reduction of mass poverty.⁷ Though, like the rest of the world, India’s economy was hit by the economic crisis of 2008–9, the impact has been less severe, signifying the underlying strength and resilience of India’s economy.⁸

Still, these shining stories of success are framed by a penumbra of a darker hue. Every violent clash between castes, classes, ethnic groups, religious groups, clashes between the police and demonstrators, makes one ask if the relative calm of India is merely a façade, superimposed on deep discontent, seething just under the surface. But, that said, in India, a country of apparent contradictions, the opposite argument is equally plausible. Raucous manifestations and unruly crowds often turn out to be in practice a part of political theatre—a quintessentially Indian form of political participation through strategic protest—where the characters are manipulated from behind the scenes by leaders who have themselves risen from the ranks of the discontented, and subsequently, have developed a taste for office and a deep stake in the system.⁹

These puzzling facts of Indian politics can be formulated in terms of five interrelated questions. First, why did India, in contrast to most post-colonial states, succeed in making a relatively peaceful transition from colonial rule to a resilient, multi-party democracy? Secondly, how did India, long a synonym for mass poverty and low growth, change into a fast-growing economy, with a burgeoning middle class, global networks and ambitions, without curtailing democratic institutions and rights? Thirdly, what is the impact of high growth and integration with the international market economy on mass poverty? Fourthly, how successful has India been in turning her hierarchic society into one of equal citizens, who have a moral and political stake in the system?¹⁰ Finally, regarding global ranking in terms of national security and power, is India still a country that is ‘constantly emerging but never quite emerging’?¹¹

BOX 1.1 ‘SALIENT FEATURES’/‘UNITY IN DIVERSITY’

• Population: 1.282 billion (2015)
• Population Growth rate: 1.29 percent (2015)
• Total Area (land & water): 3,287,263 square km¹²
• 29 Federal States
• 7 Union Territories
• Official languages:
  English, Hindi (primary tongue of 30 percent of the population), Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Odia, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, Sanskrit.
• Religion:
  Hindu (79.8 percent), Muslim (14.2 percent), Christian (2.3 percent), Sikh (1.7 percent), Buddhist (0.7 percent), Jain (0.4 percent), others (0.7 percent). (2011)
• Real GDP per capita, (current US$): 1581.6 (2015)
• Scheduled Castes: 16.6 percent of the population (2011)
• Scheduled Tribes: 8.6 percent of the population (2011)

Sources: Government of India, Ministry of Home Affairs, Census 2011, www.censusindia.gov.in; Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook, www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/in.html; World Bank, Database, http://data.worldbank.org/country/india; all accessed June 3rd, 2015.

These questions, important in the context of India,¹² are of general and comparative significance as well. The book responds to these queries by drawing on India’s complex and diverse cultures, economic heritage, political attitudes, the vitality of her social and political processes, the strategies and rhetoric of the political elites, particularly from the lower social classes, and the expanding democratic system that directly affects India’s 600,000 villages.¹³ The chapters undertake the analysis of India’s politics at three levels of the political system.¹⁴ The first, structure, refers to the main institutional arrangements of the state such as the federation (referred to as the Union in India’s constitution), the executive, legislative and judicial organs of the state and the separation of powers, the implementing and quasi-rule-making bodies such as the bureaucracy and national commissions, and the institutions responsible for articulating and aggregating political demands of the electorate such as political parties, interest groups and non-governmental organizations.¹⁵ The second level, process, refers to the two-way channels that connect the government and the people. These are defined by Powell et al. (2012. 568) as ‘interest articulation, interest aggregation, policymaking, and implementation and adjudication of policy’.¹⁶ The third dimension, public policy, broadly refers to what India’s federal, regional and local governments do in their day-to-day activities. Grouped under four headings by Mitra (2012),¹⁷ these functions have implications for the economy, security, social solidarity, identity and foreign affairs, broadly referring to India’s standing in the international arena.¹⁸

Popular democracy and elite agency: the ‘room to manoeuvre in the middle’

The search for answers to the five questions raised above points towards a variety of sources and methods. India has been a subject of fascination for visitors—from ancient Greece and China onwards—just as it continues to be, for authors of a wide range of modern travelogues.¹⁹ The reference list has been further enriched thanks to the vast post-war literature on democracy, development and modernization, where India features as an interesting, and deviant case in point.²⁰ The liberal, evolutionary, developmental approach that casts the Indian case as part of a general process of democratization is still the most popular among specialists.²¹ The opposite genre that focuses on the unique and exceptional character of India goes by the name of Orientalism.²² A third approach finds the best entry point to India in the caste system, which many see as a unique attribute of the country. One of its best-known exponents is Louis Dumont, whose homo hierarchicus presents Indian society in terms of the cohesive bond of caste—an inter-dependent social network based on complementary status and function—which, some argue, has held Indian society together through millennia despite foreign invasion and other forms of political dislocation.²³ At the other extreme are various shades of Marxist analysts who cast Indian society in terms of a state of disequilibrium, caused by the main contradiction between the owners of capital and land on the one hand, and the emerging classes of peasants and workers on the other.²⁴

The main approach to Indian politics in this book²⁵ combines elements of all these schools of thought. While retaining the structural-functional core of the liberal modernization approach, the analysis undertaken here brings on board conflict—, of classes, castes, ethnic groups, regions and religions—, as an integral part of India’s political process and not merely as its aberration. Culturally embedded categories of affinity, loyalty, kin solidarity, identity or religion are important phenomena and not necessarily as the sublimation of some deeper value, such as class or the Indian ‘way of life’. My approach puts the main burden of explanation on the role of the state as both neutral and partisan, depending on the context, and the capacity of the political elites—both those in power and their adversaries—dispersed over the political system, mobilizing supporters comprising men and women acting in their own interest or according to their own beliefs. These leaders—hinges of the state and society at the national, regional and local levels—and their followers, are rational actors. They consciously pursue their goals and combine all the resources—material, symbolic and moral—at their command to bring influence to bear on the decision process, hoping for an outcome favourable to them.²⁶

These leaders—netas in Hindi—are located at the crucial nodes of the political system such as the federal government, regional States, district headquarters and local government. A few of them are nominated, co-opted or are social notables, but increasingly, most are elected. They are ubiquitous, ensconced in public commissions, departments of the government and semi-official bodies, political parties, social movements and other arenas of public and sometimes private life. Socially, they are a heterogeneous body, comprising both men and women (though fewer women than men), representing all age groups and people from upper social classes just as many from the middle and lower castes. Some, particularly from the former untouchable castes and tribal people, come through the route of India’s quota system which goes by the name ‘reservation’. People from different religions and ethnic origins also get representation in bodies such as the national Minorities Commission that have been set up for their welfare.

What distinguishes India’s political system from many ‘transitional systems’ is that India’s leaders are not drawn from any particular social background, or ethnic group but cut across all social cleavages. The diversity of their social origin is the combined result of political competition through which they are recruited, a fair examination system based on merit and a quota system that seeks to make up for social disadvantages from which former untouchables, tribal people and women have suffered from time immemorial. Political majorities which propel leaders into positions of power are the result of short-term alliances. Political power thus comes not as an entitlement but as a valued resource that one must compete for and the holders of power are aware of its transience, and of the imperative of accountability, both horizontally to their peers, the judiciary, media and inquiry commissions and vertically, to the electorate. The capacity of India’s leaders to act as intermediaries between competing social groups, and to straddle between the traditional society and the modern state, without being exclusively identified with either modernity or tradition, and to innovate new institutional arrangements co-authored by both state and society explain the success of India’s democracy and governance.²⁷

The existence of the room to manoeuvre for national, regional and local political elites in the context of a transitional society, giving them enough spac...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of figures
• List of diagrams
• List of tables
• List of map
• List of boxes
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Glossary
• 1 Introduction: modern politics and traditional society in the making of Indian democracy
• 2 Pre-modern pasts of modern politics: the legacies of British colonial rule
• 3 Politics and social change: from homo hierarchicus to an egalitarian and plural society
• 4 Strength with democracy: separation and division of powers, and the imperative of leadership
• 5 The federal structure: balancing national unity and regional diversity
• 6 Elections, political parties, demand groups and political movements: multiple modes of representation, articulation and aggregation of interests
• 7 Economic development and social justice
• 8 Engaging the world: foreign policy and nation-building in India
• 9 Democracy and development in a post-colonial context: the Indian puzzle
• 10 Conclusion: emergent India
• 11 Notes on further reading
• Bibliography
• Index