How that Other Democracy (India) Differs

As America goes to vote on a largely bi-polar election, it would be of interest to try to understand how that other democracy, India, differs.

I attended a small gathering a few days ago, held to try and explain this to a select group of visiting businessmen. My contribution to this meeting was to try to explain to them how mobility of people and products within India actually took place, how it evolved over the past few decades along with telecom, and its importance towards ensuring what could best be called "assimilation by democracy". And progress. But for the most, I listened.

Around the same time, I also read a book presented to me. "A Time of Coalitions; Divided we Stand", by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Shankar Raghuraman.

This very readable book (400+ pages for 350.oo rupees by Sage Publications, Delhi, Thousand Oaks/CA and London/UK) measures the path taken by Indian politics from British Rule through single party Congress dominance to the present day and age of coalition Governments. In doing this, the authors (both of whom are senior and eminent journalists who have, more importantly, excelled in non-media fields also) go about very systematically destroying the commonly held perception that elections in India are a choice between a secular Congress and a right-wing Hindu BJP.

To bring the conclusion into perspective first, " . . . the authors take the view that coalition governments are better equipped to deal with the tensions of a divided society while single-party governments tend to both centralise and homogenise."

Anybody who claims to be interested in Indian politics is well advised to read this book if they want to get into the depth of many of the widely held perceptions about Indian politics. The first is about the simplistic view that the BJP and the Congress represent two opposite poles. The next one has to do with how either or both of the Congress and the BJP are fairly ir-relevant in a large number of States. The third one is that it is the smaller parties that woo the larger ones. Another one is that the rise of the Congress is at the cost of the BJP or vice-versa.

The authors then go on to show that the "process of fragmentation of the Indian polity is not yet over". And also set out why coalition governments in India do not spell disaster, as is widely feared and propagated.

For readers at The Chowk, of topical interest may be a special reference to the Jammu & Kashmir issue, with the role of the National Conference therein. One of the lesser known facts about J&K is that it was amongst the earliest states in India to actually go through with land reforms, way back in 1950, thus making landowners out of tenants and peasants.That this upsets a large number of the Muslim feudals in POK, who view this as a land-grab, could probably explain much of the angst about trying to "save Kashmir" that keeps emanating from across the border. This also explains, partially, the fact that the National Conference repeatedly came back to power, defying the Pakistani perception of a two-nation theory of Hindus and Muslims, even with corruption at a high level, while voting percentages in J&K have traditionally been in the 50 percentile and above.

"Divided we Stand" brings out, very evocatively, how India would probably benefit from a multi-dimensional political system, with self-correctives born out of practical compulsions and traditions rather than untested and shallow ideologies. Especially suggested reading for all those who themselves do not know, support or appreciate democracy, but continue accusing India of being a Hindu Nation, where approximately one out of every three actual voters is not a Hindu.

After all, the big difference in Indian democracy, as compared to democracy in the developed countries, is that in India it is the votes from the poorer people that count.