Routledge Handbook of Indian Politics

Atul Kohli, Prerna Singh, Atul Kohli, Prerna Singh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138314948
• eBook ISBN: 9781135122744
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

India's growing economic and socio-political importance on the global stage has triggered an increased interest in the country. This Handbook is a reference guide, which surveys the current state of Indian politics and provides a basic understanding of the ways in which the world's largest democracy functions.

The Handbook is structured around four main topics: political change, political economy, the diversity of regional development, and the changing role of India in the world. Chapters examine how and why democracy in India put down firm roots, but also why the quality of governance offered by India's democracy continues to be low. The acceleration of economic growth since the mid-1980s is discussed, and the Handbook goes on to look at the political and economic changes in selected states, and how progress across Indian states continues to be uneven. It concludes by touching on the issue of India's international relations, both in South Asia and the wider world.

The Handbook offers an invigorating initiation into the seemingly daunting and complex terrain of Indian politics. It is an invaluable resource for academics, researchers, policy analysts, graduate and undergraduate students studying Indian politics.

1

INTRODUCTION

Politics in India—an overview

Atul Kohli and Prerna Singh

The study of Indian politics constitutes an exciting area of scholarship. This collection brings together some of the leading and emerging scholars of Indian politics to reflect on their respective areas of specialization. Each contribution is a self-sufficient essay that introduces readers—be they specialists or new to the subject—to a specific topic and provides references to facilitate further pursuit of the subject. These contributions ‘speak’ in the voice of the authors. Many of the essays here are not only distillations of prior scholarship, but also point to new directions of thinking and research. We (the editors of the volume) are responsible for inviting the contributors, but since this is a Handbook, we have not tried to impose any artificial unity; the contributions represent a variety of normative and theoretical standpoints. The minimal unity of the volume comes from the organization of the subject matter. In this introductory chapter we provide an overview of the subject—politics in India—and point to where and how individual essays of the collection fit within the broader scheme.

The collection is organized around four major themes: three themes in Indian politics, namely political change, political economy, and the diversity of regional developments, as well as the theme of the changing role of India in the world. We discuss each of these issues in a highly abbreviated fashion below. Among the political changes on which we focus are: how and why democracy in India put down firm roots on the one hand, but why, on the other hand, the quality of governance offered by India’s democracy continues to be low, especially below the national level. The interrelated political economy themes that we discuss concern the acceleration of economic growth since the mid-1980s, worsening inequalities, the persistence of poverty, and the growing power of business groups. A discussion of political and economic changes in select states provides an inkling of why progress across Indian states continues to be uneven. Finally, we touch on the issue of India’s international relations, both in its neighborhood and vis-à-vis global powers.

Political change

Democracy has put down firm roots in India but the quality of government that India’s democracy provides continues to be quite poor. Brief schematic comments on both these trends—democratic consolidation but poor governance—may be helpful at the outset for introducing the subject, as well as for situating specific essays in this volume within the broader study of political change in India.

First, how does one best understand consolidation of democracy in India? It is clear that India’s democracy has succeeded against considerable odds: a low-income economy, widespread poverty and illiteracy, and immense ethnic diversity. How did India do it? It is our suggestion that Indian democracy is best understood by focusing not mainly on its socioeconomic determinants, but on how power distribution in that society is negotiated and renegotiated.¹ A concern with the process of power negotiation, in turn, leads one to analyze leadership strategies, the design of political institutions, and the political role of diverse social groups, or, in short, the interaction of the state and society.

More specifically, India’s democratic record suggests that two related sets of political processes have guided the management of power conflicts in that society. First, a delicate balance has been struck, and struck again, between forces of centralization and decentralization. Second, the interests of the powerful in society have been served without fully excluding the weaker groups. The record on both of these fronts is far from perfect; the failures, in fact, have actually put a great strain on Indian democracy. Nevertheless, accommodation of those who mount powerful challenges by granting them greater autonomy and/or a share of resources has been central to the strengthening of democracy.

As federal democracies go, India is a relatively centralized state. While many critics have made this observation, the fact is that demands for decentralization only make sense within the context of centralized authority; authority and power, like wealth, have to exist before they can be distributed. Over the years, as democracy has spread, numerous mobilized groups in India have demanded further redistribution of power. These demands were often resisted, sometimes wisely, but at other times unwisely and at a great cost. Overall, however, enough concessions were made so that the Indian political system by now possesses significant decentralized traits. Notable features of these are to be found in the practice of federalism, the considerable and growing power of state governments, the changing character of local governments, and in the evolving constitutional design.

No electoral democracy can long survive without protecting the interests of the powerful, whether these are propertied groups, groups with high status, or groups with effective political organization. Long-term exclusion of weaker groups is also not healthy for a democracy. How has this balance been managed in India? While the rhetoric of the Indian state has often been redistributive—emphasizing socialism, abolition of traditional privileges, reform of the caste system, and populism—political practice has been considerably more conservative, eschewing any decisive redistribution. The Indian state has thus been criticized both for its excessive socialist commitments and for its failure at substantial redistribution. However, the political impact of these twin tendencies—radical in tone, conservative in practice—may well have been benign, strengthening democracy: the powerful in society feel well served by the system but weaker groups do not feel totally excluded or hopeless, at least not so far.

A brief chronological sketch of several phases of political change in India may now help further clarify how strategies of power management in India have evolved. India’s transition to democracy in the 1940s is understudied. Historians have often left such issues to political scientists and the latter often do not focus on the ‘past.’ Based on limited study, one argument in the relevant literature suggests that India’s democracy is mainly a legacy of British colonialism; the British in India did introduce elections and leave behind a well functioning civil service.² This argument immediately runs into the problem of why democracy did not fare as well as in Pakistan, which after all shared a similar inheritance. Maya Tudor in the opening essay in the volume provides one possible answer to this puzzle: social origins of regime founders in India and Pakistan were distinct, leading to variable political outcomes. The origins of Indian democracy, by this account, owe much to the urban and middle-class origins of Indian nationalists.

Political changes following Independence can be usefully conceptualized in three phases. Institutions and practices of democracy found considerable acceptance during the first phase, which was dominated by Nehru and which lasted from, say, about 1950 to the mid-to-late 1960s. Aside from Nehru’s own commitment to democracy, India benefited in this phase from the presence of two very important institutions: a well-functioning civil service and a popular ruling party, the Indian National Congress (or Congress).³ The civil service constituted the heart of the state that India inherited from the colonial period, and India’s ‘new’ civil service was essentially built on this colonial base. This civil service contributed to effective government and imparted political stability.

The Congress, by contrast, had spearheaded a successful national movement and, as a result, enjoyed considerable popularity and legitimacy. These new rulers of India, especially Nehru, utilized the inherited political capital wisely, accommodating rival elites within the larger political umbrella that was Congress. Moreover, while Nehru and others employed the rhetoric of socialism, political practice was considerably more conservative. The Congress Party, for example, built its political networks on the back of the powerful members of society—often the landowning, upper castes—exchanging state patronage for electoral mobilization. This strategy enabled the Congress Party to succeed for a while, at least long enough for practices of democracy to take root.

Indian democracy was also helped by the fact that Indian political society in this early phase was not all that mobilized, certainly far less than in the subsequent decades. Political conflict mainly took the form of claims and counterclaims by rival elites, especially regional elites demanding a greater share of power and resources vis-à-vis the central government. These conflicts could have proven difficult but were successfully accommodated by creating a federal system that recognized linguistic communities as legitimate political components. Elite versus mass conflict in India in these decades was, however, minimal. What class conflict existed was limited to a few regions. Given India’s political heterogeneity, such conflicts seldom spread from one region to another. Mobilization of lower castes was also in its infancy and limited to a few southern states. Most of India’s poor were lower-caste, landless peasants. These groups were generally dependent for their livelihood on those above them, the landowning, upper-caste elites. These vertical ties of patronage and dependency, in turn, constrained the political behavior of poor, illiterate Indians.

Democracy has often had undemocratic roots. India’s case has been no different, as least not on this score. An effective civil service and relatively low levels of political mobilization meant that, unlike numerous other postcolonial experiments, Indian democracy was not seriously debilitated at the outset by poor governance and multiple political conflicts. The Congress Party further provided the key governing institution that not only transformed nationalist legitimacy into a ruling force, but also incorporated rival elites into a loosely knit organization, and promised future incorporation to India’s unkempt masses. While the Congress repeatedly won elections during this first phase and dominated India’s political landscape, a broader political change was also underway: institutions and practices of democracy took root.

Several essays in this collection shed further light on this early phase of Indian democracy. The chapter by the two Rudolphs focuses on Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, whose contribution to India’s struggle for Independence from the British is well known. Their piece, however, moves away from a conventional understanding of the Mahatma as a nationalist to instead focus on Gandhi’s decisive role in the creation of an Indian identity—according to them ‘his most important contribution is what he did for Indian character, capacities and political culture,’ as well as Gandhi’s significance as a world historical figure. Jivanta Schoettli’s chapter, in turn, focuses on Jawaharlal Nehru. Schoettli analyzes Nehru’s considerable achievements as prime minister and politician in both the domestic and international realm, and discusses Nehru’s legacy. The chapter by Paul Staniland opens with a brief discussion of center-state relations in India. Gurpreet Mahajan’s chapter discusses the ways in which the drafters of the Indian constitution as well as subsequent leaders have sought to promote social and economic equality through reservations for previously marginalized communities. In Part II, John Harriss’s chapter on ‘politics and redistribution’ in India focuses on the contradiction that independent India has faced from the very beginning, between socialist rhetoric and the persistence of steep and ingrained social hierarchies. In Part III, the chapters by Sudha Pai and Jeffrey Witsoe describe the pattern of Congress dominance through coalitions with powerful sections of society in the modal ‘Hindi heartland’ states of Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Bihar, respectively.

The second major phase during the 1970s and 1980s was dominated by Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi. Indian politics during this phase became considerably more turbulent, even temporarily threatening democracy. As the memory of anti-colonial nationalism declined, numerous new elites entered the political arena, challenging Congress’s hold on power. A rapidly growing population also produced a new generation of potentially mobilizable citizens. The spread of commerce and democracy started undermining the vertical ties of clientelism that had constrained the political choices of the lower strata in the past. India’s economic development was also relatively sluggish and elitist, leaving a majority without any significant improvement in living conditions. The political situation was by now ripe for dramatic changes.⁴

After Congress’s popularity declined in the second half of the 1960s, Indira Gandhi recreated the Congress during the 1970s and the 1980s as a much more populist and personalistic organ. The old Congress Party, with its modest organizational base, was destroyed in this transformation, creating a significant institutional vacuum in the Indian polity. Indira Gandhi instead promised ‘alleviation of poverty’ to India’s poor masses, generating considerable popular support. She used this popularity to concentrate power in her person, further undermining existing institutional constraints on the use of power. Indira Gandhi appointed loyal minions to significant political offices across the country, squeezed whosoever challenged her, and when the opposition itself became strident—as it did in the mid-1970s—imposed a ‘national emergency’ for two years (1975–77), limiting democratic practices and bringing India’s democracy to the brink.

Indira Gandhi’s personalistic and populist politics definitely weakened some of India’s democratic institutions. The old Congress Party was transformed into a personal tool that went into a slow but steady decline following her death. The civil service was politicized. Centralization of power also weakened the federal system, evoking strong opposition in some regions that did not readily accept loss of autonomy. As in many other democracies, personalistic power simultaneously created a viable political center but weakened institutional politics.

The balance sheet of political developments during this phase, however, was not only towards the weakening of Indian democracy. Contrary trends also deserve to be underlined. First, elections were held regularly throughout the period, and political power remained a function of securing popular majority support. Even Indira Gandhi’s personal power was a function of her widespread electoral appeal to India’s poor masses. It was a need to reconfirm this legitimacy that pressured her to call elections after a brief authoritarian interlude (1975–77). The fact that she was voted out of power following the Emergency only confirmed the efficacy of Indian democracy: those who tamper with the basic system will lose popular support. Second, and related to the first point, following the Emergency a number of India’s political groups—for example, some of India’s communists, who had hitherto held an ambivalent attitude towards democracy—realized how much there was to lose without liberal political freedoms, and became recommitted to democracy. Finally, Indira Gandhi sharply politicized the issue of widespread poverty in India. Even while she failed to deliver on her promises to the poor, Indira Gandhi broadened the scope of Indian democracy towards greater inclusion of the lower strata.

More about this phase of Indian politics during which Indira Gandhi dominated can be learnt from a number of contribut...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• 1 Introduction: Politics in India-an overview
• PART I Political change
• PART II Political economy: Economic and social development
• PART III Diversity of regional developments
• PART IV India and the world
• Index