The Crisis of Indian Democracy

A more serious limitation of Indian parliamentary democracy is seen in the cases of failure of representative Government, leading to authoritarian rule.

-          S.S.Tiwana (1994)

Introduction

Democracy is a political system where the subjects take part in law making for the country. This form of governance evolved in ancient Greece as early as 508 BCE. Democracy became a popular form of governance after French Revolution. In the 20^th century, most of the countries colonized by Europeans got freedom and preferred to adopt democratic from of political system.

The key elements of democracy are: involvement of the citizen in decision making, a system of representation, rule by law and equality freedom and liberty among citizens.  There may be variations in every country, but the key factors would be

India got its freedom in 1947 from British, but then it was fragmented into more than 500 smaller states ruled by kings. Along with the freedom movement, the freedom fighters also fed nationalism and unified the people of India. India was united into one country and the intellectuals in the freedom movement decided to have democratic form of governance.

Democracy in Pre-Independent India

Indian councils Act of 1861, involved select 3 Indians (two of them being Kings) in the process of law making. The Government of India Act of 1919 gave representation based religious community, property ownership, tax payment education. In 1928, Motilal Nehru advocated universal adult franchise. The Government of India Act of 1935 gave more representation to different categories and about 10% of the total population got franchise rights.

After independence, India gave full adult franchise rights to everyone of age above 21, and the age was reduced to 18 years later through 61^st constitution amendment Act, 1988.

Elections and Governments in Post-Independent India

Indians voted for Indian National Congress until euphoria of Indian Independence lastedtill the 1971 general elections. The Emergency imposed between 1975 and 1977, ended the majority rule and extended political plurality in the Indian political ecology. Table 1, shows the nature of governments ruled India and it can be seen that the single party dominance by the Indian National Congress slowly declined since 1977 elections. The sympathy wave caused by the death of Ms. Indira Gandhi swept the 1984 election in favor of the Indian National Congress. This election saw 49.16% of vote in favor of the government, the highest in all the general elections in India.

Sl. No.	General Election	Party Ruled	Nature of Government
1.	1951-52	Indian National Congress	Majority Rule
2.	1957	Indian National Congress	Majority Rule
3.	1962	Indian National Congress	Majority Rule
4.	1967	Indian National Congress	Majority Rule
5.	1971	Indian National Congress	Majority Rule
6.	1977	Janatha Party	Majority Rule
7.	1980	Indian National Congress	Majority Rule
8.	1984	Indian National Congress	Majority Rule
9.	1989	National Front coalition(led by Janata Dal)	Coalition Rule
10.	1991	Indian National Congress	Minority Rule
11.	1996	Bharatiya Janata Party with allies	Minority Rule
		United Front	Coalition Rule
12.	1998	Bharatiya Janata Party with allies	Minority Rule
13.	1999	National Democratic Alliance (led by Bharatiya Janata Party)	Coalition Rule
14.	2004	United Progressive Alliance led by Indian National Congress	Coalition Rule
15.	2009	United Progressive Alliance led by Indian National Congress	Coalition Rule
16.	2014	National Democratic Alliance led by Bharatiya Janata Party	Coalition Rule
17.	2019	National Democratic Alliance led by Bharatiya Janata Party	Coalition Rule

Table 1. General Elections and Governments in Independent India

In 1967, Tamilnadu saw the development of regionalism and the raise of Dravidian party. Slowly, this regionalism spread across different states in India. The national political parties had to react to this reality and were forced to align with regional parties. From majority rule, India accepted the change and adapted to coalition rule with common minimum program as the philosophy to rule the country. For a government to be successful, the rulers need to care the people by removing any social disparity and economic inequality and provide protection through a transparent legal system and transparency of their operations through all media.

Major Problems Caused by Democracy

Capitalism has always survived along with democracy, long before the period of Adam Smith. During early democracy, law making was influenced by rich families, capitalism widened economic inequality either by class or caste. With the current democracy, though the constitution assures social equality, the gap between the rich and poor and the elite and the underprivileged keeps widening.

Corruption is yet another problem that lives with democracy. The elected government and the officers of the government always have secret alliances which end up as suffering for the common people. The legal rights and human rights are forced to be purchased by bribing and those rights remain the rights of the privileged.

Declining Democratic Value in Twenty First Century India

As mentioned in Table 1, slowly the rule by a party by majority representation deteriorated and moved towards coalition form of government. The Economic Index compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), places India in 51^st position among the 167 countries surveyed for the year 2019; in the previous year India was in 41^st position. This survey calls India as “Flawed Democracy” for reasons such as suppression of political oppositions and public criticism, along with poor governance issues.

The flawed democracy in India is the root cause of several social issues, a glimpse of such social problems, both prevailing and emerging, are described in brief in the following passages. Unfortunately, these decaying of democracy began with the emergence of globalization of the economy after signing the agreement with WTO (World Trade Organization) in 1995. The early governments of 1990s destroyed the backbone India, Education by privatizing it. The later governments nourished fundamentalism and promotes fascism. By centralizing the power of governance, federalism and the regional flavor of the cultural diversity are being crushed beyond reorganization. Amidst several protest Article 370, which gave special status to Kashmir was revoked in August, 2019. And then the democratically elected government turned into an authoritarian government.

The Pandemic of 2020 Hitting Indian Democracy

India is always called as the world’s largest democracy during every general election. Due the plurality of culture, food, language and geographical divisions, India is had pride in “Unity in Diversity”. The NDA government took all efforts in destroying the diversity with its “One India” philosophy. And one day in 2020 WHO (World Health Organization) announced a pandemic and informed “Social Distance” as the order of the day. The present government social distanced with Indian democracy and opened the Pandora’s Box of social problems.The government advised people to be opportunistic and utilize maximum advantage of the pandemic, and it did it in passing as many as bills as possible to the advantage of the corporates. Sooner, common people will realize the social problems when the Acts are enforced as Law.

a.       Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) 2020: The law is passed to make way to industrialize India, welcoming both Indian and foreign investors. Times of India reported, “The main problem here is that there is no scope for public complaint meaning we the public cannot take actions”or protest against the damage to the environment or the plight of the people who are supposed to be relocated because of the proposed project.

The Wire report titled “EIA Legitimised Environmental Destruction. Now, Govt ‘Renovates’ it for the Worst”, and informed that “They have also given harmful and toxic industrial processes the license to ruin workers lives and contaminate entire landscapes. Even if these impacts are assessed through studies done as part of EIA procedures, once the projects start operations, these impacts are written off as the costs of economic growth.”

The effect would be irreversible collapse of the society with migration, poverty, curruption and social unrest.

b.      New Educational Policy (NEP) 2020: Ever since Liberalization, Privatization, and Globalization hit India, education is seen as Human Capital. The NEP chaired by Kasturirangan was engineered with the aims to transform India's education system by 2030.People’s Review reported that NEP was capitalistic plan “to tailor India’s education system according to the diktats of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO)” as “WTO wants commodification of [Indian] education” and end the public education. The rationale is simple, as more the customers more the profit. The report further states that, “NEP 2020 will not only deprive the students of marginalised classes and communities a right to education, as enshrined in the Indian constitution, it will also make education an exclusive right of the upper-caste elites and urban middle class.”

NEP 2020 focuses on Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). Deccan Herald reported that, “India has approximately 160 million children in poverty and experiencing adversity on a daily basis,” and advised that, “… our education system should be designed not just to prepare our children for the future but to first help them overcome the adverse impact of adversity.”

As part of “One India” philosophy of the present government, we cannot rule out the possibility of rewriting history with imaginations found in fictions of the Vedic past as history and science.

The impact of the implementation of NEP 2020 will leave education as a dream for majority of the population, which will again lead to social problems like widening economic inequality, social inequality and unemployment.  

Conclusion

Before concluding, among several other bills passed while “social distancing”, there are three farm bills (a. The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020; b. The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Prices Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020; and c. The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, 2020) and one labour bill (The Industrial Relations Code, 2020) that are intended to disadvantage and criminalize farmers and working  class and benefit the corporate.The intrusion of select corporate in the functioning of the government is a great social concern. Corporates are powerful to commoditize the voice of the representative in the parliamentary democracy, considering the cost involved in Indian election.

a.       The real problem is the representative democracy, where the representation is diluted in the vast population of the country. In 1951, one Member of Parliament represented 3.4 lakh voters, where as in 2014 the representation was diminished for 16 lakh voters in average. Under representation of people’s voice in the government definitely leads to authoritarian government, which suppresses the underprivileged people and converting them into commodity.

b.      India is too big and diverse to have direct democracy as in Switzerland; dreaming for a direct democracy is tremendously satisfying as if envisaging a utopian India. Sooner, with the help of technology if a digital democracy is evolved for a total participatory democracy at least on key issues, that will be a breather for the citizens; but corporates will soon become hackers.

c.       The only possible solution to save the only Earth that has life and save Mars from realtors like Elon Musk, is ending Capitalism; if Earth and Mars are not saved, at least India would be saved.

Swami Vivekananda said, “Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached!” 

John Milton said, “Awake, arise or be for ever fall'n.” 

Both statements are extremely relevant and stimulating in the time and place we live.

Endnote: This article is written for an assignment for class 10 Economics in a CBSE School