Politics and Governance in Contemporary India: The Paradox of Democratic Deepening

Abstract

On 15 August 1997, India celebrated fifty years as an independent nation. Except, for a brief eighteen months between 1975-1977, India has remained a democracy. What explains the resilience of democracy in India in the face of a low-income economy, widespread poverty, illiteracy and immense religious and ethnic diversity? How have democratic governance shaped political and socioeconomic change? What is the future of Indian democracy? This paper examines these intriguing questions. It argues that the deepening of democracy has tended to exacerbate the problems of governance. Specifically, the progressive empowerment of popular sectors has created new sets of problems. India"s civil society and associational life, divided along narrow caste, ethnic, regional and religious divisions lacks social capital and civicness necessary for the articulation and aggregation of interests, effective political collaboration and good governance. Compounding these problems, the high levels of political mobilization in the absence of strong and responsive state institutions and political parties has served to fragment rather than unite society. Thus, instead of responding to the demands of an increasingly mobilized population, the country"s weak and over-burdened political institutions have reinforced, if not, exacerbated socioeconomic and political cleavages. Not surprisingly, despite Indias resilient democratic institutions and relatively long experience with constitutionalism, effective governance remains a major challenge. Given these challenges, what India needs is the resuscitation of its public institutions and the renegotiation of state-society relations. This paper concludes by illustrating that India"s democracy is potentially self-correcting along these lines.