Democracy & India

(From annals of forgotten posts)

Ravi recently wrote couple of posts on democracy, whose premises I am not sure I completely agree with.

Let's take the later post first.

According to Ravi democracy is better for the ruling class because it reduces the possibility of a violent change in the regimen. I don't know really, but I doubt that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Allende or any number of democratically elected leaders who met their maker in violent takeover by one or other faction will agree with that, in fact they might have strongly disagreed with the argument, if not for the fact that they are dead.

"Now, now", I hear you objecting, "The manner in which the above became departed was hardly democratic. If the manner were democratic, they would still be on this earth waging long war against Hindu India/Imperialist America".

Which, exactly, happens to be my objection, a system of governance can only be tested by its results and not how it is supposed to work in theory, if democratically elected leaders are overthrown in violent coups, it means the existing power dynamics made democracy unsuitable to begin with.

Which brings me to the more important point. People mistake effect for cause and over stress the importance of democracy. Historically it was not that establishment of democracy was the beginning of the great social transformation such as greater freedom or individuhalism but that democracy, along with freedom, was the end result of accrual of incremental changes gradually brought over by interaction and conflict between existing social forces in presence of technological advances.

This is not to say that democracy doesn't have any effect, but in general, like any social or technological event the change has a feedback effect, and to proposing a simplistic model of democracy as a sufficient cause for peace, or prosperity is simply erroneous.

Now coming to the former post, again I suspect that the post confuses specific structure of state with  underlying social dynamics. Democracy is a particular form of governance whose existence is subjected to social dynamics.

Now any detailed analysis of the dynamics for the specific case will be too lengthy for this post, but briefly democracy can exist when a) The various competing groups (based on differing identities) are matching in the power and b) There should exist at minimum tradition of co-operation to not only participate in democratic process, but also for democratic state to govern, this requires consensus on, in other words common assumptions about, certain issues where the whole take precedence, at least politically, over the constituent (and competing) groups.

Now India fulfills the first condition, however second condition is tricky, while historically we Indians share same cultural and civilizational space, we have not yet been able to form a political identity. As long as Nehru-Gandhi family was focal point of Indian politics, it was possible for Indian democracy to function.

However, having spent their political capital over years, the erstwhile first family is reduced in its influence.
As result that we find, with the beginning of coalition era, our democratic system in chaos and disorder.

Whether Indian democracy can survive, or even Indian republic will exist will depend on the ability of Indians to forge political unity.