India. Elections in the world’s largest democracy
Queue to cast a vote in the elections,
Agartala, India
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Interview
Who will win the next elections and what will this mean for India? We talked with Mr. Christophe Jaffrelot about the upcoming elections and Indian democracy. Mr. Jaffrelot is a Global Scholar at Princeton University and Research Director at the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique). He has served as the Director (2000–2008) of CERI and has taught South Asian politics in France, the UK and the US.
Interview
India likes to call itself the world’s largest democracy and its democratic culture is probably what Indians are most proud of. The country has had a democratic political system since its independence in 1947 and is thus practically the only developing country that has been truly democratic for so long. In April/May 2014, roughly 725 million Indians will have the opportunity to elect a new parliament and thus a new government and prime minister. With such a large electorate, elections are an enormous organizational challenge that must place in several phases. These polls are a crucial moment in Indian politics and the outcome will most likely have a strong effect on the future of the country. India has a multiparty system with a large number of different national and regional parties. However, currently there are two major parties [1].
Who will win the next elections and what will this mean for India? We talked with Mr. Christophe Jaffrelot about the upcoming elections and Indian democracy. Mr. Jaffrelot is a Global Scholar at Princeton University and Research Director at the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique). He has served as the Director (2000–2008) of CERI and has taught South Asian politics in France (Sciences Po Paris), the UK (King’s College, London) and the United States (Columbia, Princeton, John Hopkins, and Yale). He is the author of numerous books and articles on various topics, including theories of nationalism and democracy, the mobilization of the lower castes and untouchables in India, the Hindu nationalist movement and ethnic conflicts in Pakistan.
The 16th parliamentary elections are taking place soon. What are your own electoral predictions?
It is very early to say. In India, you cannot make any predictions until you know the alliances and the coalitions. Most likely, the BJP [2] will be in a leading position, but it is difficult to say how far their vote total will be from achieving clear-cut majority.
According to several polls, the current government appears quite unpopular. What have been its main mistakes?
The government has not done much in the last five years, partly because the opposition has been obstructing its work. The BJP has had an especially strong antiparliamentary attitude. First of all, the UPA [3] government has not tried to do much either. I think there has been a fatigue with holding power and Mr. Manmohan Singh does possess have the necessary energy anymore.
Secondly, there have been many corruption cases. The whole term has been blackened by corruption affairs, such as the 2G [4], the Coalgate scams [5] and many others which involved very serious companies and the top leaders. This was one of the reasons for popular protests. Anna Hazare [6], a Gandhian veteran, mobilized thousands of people on the streets.
Thirdly, the economy has not done well in its last term, even though this is not necessarily the government’s fault. The Indian economy has been affected by the international situation, and the government has not been very good at responding to challenges; inflation has surged, the rupee has lost 20% of its value.
Last but not least, the Congress party has a leadership problem. It just does not know how to restore the line of command. The Nehru-Gandhi lineage is not up to the task. Sonia is not as active as she used to be. Rahul is not someone who has it in him, he is not a leader. At least he has not yet matured into a leader. At the grassroots level, you can feel the impact of all this. The Congress is selecting its candidates at the last minute, there are faction fights, and the party is not in the right order. So the organization is also a bit in disarray.
Why does India’s oldest political party appear unable to succeed without the Gandhi dynasty?
They need the family because without the dynasty factions within, the partywillbe at loggerheads. It is a necessary evil for the Congress party. There is no other way.
But isn’t this “monarchial” kind of dependency on one family a threat to Indian democracy as a whole?
The democracy is not badly affected by this dependency - the Congress Party is. The Nehru-Gandhi family has always organized free and fair elections (except during the Emergency period [7]) which they have sometimes lost as well. They are democrats. The Indian democracy might suffer much more if Narendra Modi becomes Prime Minister.
Indeed, there are a lot of controversies surrounding Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist anti-Muslim background. But Gujarat, the state he has governed for the last 12 years is economically so successful that journalists often call it the Gujarat miracle. Could a government change towards the BJP lift the Indian economy?
That is what the corporate sector is thinking. But first of all you have to look at today’s achievements in Gujarat in perspective. Narendra Modi has not made such a big difference, as Gujarat has always been a very successful state in economic terms. Actually it was even much more successful in the 1990s. Second, Gujarat is not doing as well as other states. It ranks, for instance, only fifth in terms of FDI attraction.Third, it is a business-friendly state rather than a market friendly state. There is traditionally much corruption and collusion between the corporate sector and the political elite - which makesthe system work and the economy grow. Modi claims that he wants to repeat at the national level what he has done in Gujarat, but the question arises: how can this business-friendly model be replicated? There are many states where the corporate sector will not invest because there is no infrastructure, no power supply, etc. Gujarat is very specific; the businessmen have always run the show there.
Indian society is hierarchical, especially with regards to the caste system that traditionally restricts (political) power to only certain groups. How has India overcome this problem? And what role do castes play in Indian politics today?
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The reservation system has played an important role for inventing a kind of social upward mobility process. So this is one of the solutions that has been used, of course, in favor of the Dalits and later of the OBCs [8]. Other important mechanisms have been the free market economy and open Indian society, making it possible for those who have some capital to invest and flourish. Consequently todaythere are some (not many, but still a non-negligibly number of) small-scale industries in the hands of low caste people. And thirdly, we must acknowledge the Green Revolution [9]: the opportunities that have been given to small farmers to invest in new seeds, in new fertilizers, and new irrigation systems. This was a very important moment. When Russia was using kolkhoz and sovkhoz to make the country grow, India was playing upon the entrepreneurship of the peasant. And this was a great equalizer as it gave rights to the middle class of peasants, i.e. the landholding peasantry.
When India became a full-fledged democracy, it was one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world and to present day it continues to experience many developmental challenges. In Russia, it is often considered that a strong leadership and a limited, “managed” democracy are needed to bring economic prosperity and stability before more democracy can be allowed. Do you think that Russia could learn something from India?
Definitely! There are no prerequisites for democracy. The idea that a country can only be a democracy when its population is rich does not hold. You have rich countries which are not democratic, such as Singapore, Qatar or Dubai. And you have poor countries that have a long tradition of democratic practices – including India. The people in these countries know how to vote. The correlation between the standard of living and the democratic procedure is usually just an excuse for retaining power. And what is even much moreimportant is the respect for diversity and dissent – that is what I think Russia is missing, as another, much more autocratic tradition, is imposed there.
Interviewed by Lina Ghosh, Master student at Sciences Po Paris.
1. On the one hand there is the oldest Indian party, the Indian National Congress whichplayed a crucial role in the Indian independence movement and has ruled India for 53 out of 66 years. Over this last term, the Congress is more unpopular than it has been in a long time. So far the Congress has refused to name a candidate for the next elections, but there are rumors that it is probably going to be her son Rahul Gandhi; he has been actively prepared as a crown prince by his mother and her party in the last years. But despite its democratic system, India has been ruled by one family, the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. Jawaharlal Nehru was India’s first Prime Minister who was followed with some interruptions by his daughter Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi. In 2004, his wife and leader of the Congress party Sonia Gandhi refused to become Prime Minister and selected Manmohan Singh for this post, but unofficially she remained the most powerful person in the government.
On the other hand, there is the right-winged Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that ruled India between 1996 and 2004. Its candidate Narendra Modi is one of India’s most controversial political figures. He has been the Chief Minister of the Indian state of Gujarat since October 2001, where he has been elected in three consecutive elections. He and his government are accused of deliberately not having taken sufficient actions to stop or even initiated/condoned the 2002 Gujarat violence that caused about 1000-2000 deaths. Nevertheless Gujarat is also one of the economically strongest states in India and many people including important economists like Jagdish Bhagwati are impressed by Gujarat’s economic progress.
2. BharatiyaJanata Party, a right-winged, Hindu nationalist and major opposition party.
3. United Progressive Alliance: a coalition of rather left-oriented parties that was formed after the election in 2004 and since has ruled the country. Its major member is the Indian National Congress whose president is Sonia Gandhi.
4. Indian government officials are accused of having undercharged nine mobile telephone companies when issuing scarce airwaves and licences for second generation (2G) mobile phone services in 2008. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India criticized the arbitrary allocation of the licences and estimated a loss of US$27 billion of public money. http://cag.gov.in/html/reports/civil/2010-11_19PA/Telecommunication%20Report.pdf
5. Between 2004 and 2009, the Indian government allocated the country’s coal deposits to different public and private companies without a competitive bidding process. According to the Comptroller and Auditor General, this has cost the country about US$50 billion.
6. Since 2011, there has been a strong anti-corruption movement in India called “India against Corruption” or “Team Anna” under the leadership of Anna Hazare. They are demanding more transparency and increased punishment of corrupt government officials as well as the establishment of an ombudsman institution that would be able to prosecute public functionaries for corruption.
7. Between 26 June 1975 and 21 March 1977, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency which allowed her to suspend elections, to suppress civil liberties and to rule by decree. This was the most controversial and dangerous moment in Indian democracy, but after almost two years of autocratic rule, Indira Gandhi decided to release all political prisoners and to call for democratic, free elections that the opposition won overwhelmingly. Therefore, according to Mr. Jaffrelot, the Emergency even strengthened Indian democracy as it showed the strong democratic culture.
8. Traditionally the Indian society has been split up into many different castes according to their societal functions. Castes are inherited and cannot be changed. The lowest and most discriminated caste in this system are the so-called untouchables or Dalits. In order to support them and to protect them from social injustice a certain percentage of governmental jobs (today 15%) have been reserved for them since the pre-independence era. In the 1980s, quotas were also introduced for Other Backward Castes (OBC), that are caste groups identified by the government to be socially and economically more backward than the higher castes. They represent about 50% of the Indian population.
9. The term Green Revolutionrefers to the rapid modernization of Indian agriculture in the 1970s that significantly increased agricultural yields.
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