India – Reaping the Democratic Dividend

India – Reaping the Democratic Dividend - By Ramesh Ramanathan

I have been an entrepreneur all my life. At 22, I quit college to start a small steel trading firm so that I could get married. My subsequent working career was as a professional entrepreneur in a large multinational, pushing my organisation to take new risks. The last ten years of my life have been spent as a social entrepreneur, undertaking grassroots work as well as advocacy with government at all levels.

The journey has had several learnings on “twin” dimensions – leadership and institutions, public change and personal values, ethics and ambition, politics and activism, to name a few. Importantly, I have learned that the relationship between State, Market and Society (SMS) is not across silos, but more of a fluid continuum. The Mobius Strip is a mathematical concept that blurs the boundaries between surfaces. My column will be about this boundary-less-ness in our SMS continuum.

I want to start with Democracy. Why Democracy? Because there is a lot more to it than we think. Ten years ago, I knew very little about the subject. I can say this now. Back then, I didn’t know that I didn’t know.

The 2007 special issue of The Economist had an article on rating democracies across the world. Their “Democracy Index” is based on five criteria: electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; the functioning of government; political participation; and political culture. They classified 192 countries into four categories: full democracies (28), flawed democracies (54), authoritarian regimes (55) and hybrid regimes (30).

India falls in the “flawed democracy” category. We have the institutional framework of legislature, executive, judiciary. We have adult franchise and hold regular elections. But “Electoral processes” and “Functioning of government” are only two dimensions. “Political participation” and “Political culture” are also key criteria. Most middle-class Indians hold a low view of politics and political processes. We often hear Indians say, “Maamla shouldn’t get politicized”, or “There should be minimum political interference”.

The World Values Survey – one of the sources used by The Economist for its ratings - has been tracking values in different countries for the past 15 years. It provides interesting insights into our complicated views on democracy.

When asked “What kind of political system would you prefer?”, 90% of Indians plumped for democracy, over-ruling alternatives like army rule by a whopping margin. However, we also want a command-and-control type of leadership: over 60% felt it would be good to have a strong leader who didn’t have to deal with the messy realities of parliament and elections. As far as taking individual ownership is concerned, 60% prefer a society that assures safety and stability through appropriate regulations, compared to only 25% who wanted a deregulated society where people are responsible for their own actions.

It seems that we want strong leaders to take us to the “promised land”, minimal responsibility for ourselves in this process, and the authority to fire the leaders when they fail us. Democracy in India is a bit like cricket – it is a spectator sport.

No wonder we are a flawed democracy. These flaws don’t have quick-fixes; they are not about new laws or transparency in government. They are substantially about us as a people and how we embrace the political system that we have given ourselves. Democracy’s role has evolved over the past fifty years. At first, it helped hold the country together. Today, in the India of 9% GDP growth, it is about conflict resolution of a different kind. When the pace of change in a society is slow, the distance between the leading and lagging edge isn’t very significant. But when the pace quickens, the gaps will widen, the disparities become visible, the schisms can have material consequences. Almost a third of India falls in what is called the “red corridor”, where the social fabric is tearing. Economic exclusion and political disenchantment are interlinked.

As we begin to shed our discomfort for economic liberalisation, more and more Indians can see that the market is an efficient discovery mechanism for prices. We need to extend this thinking and realize that democracy is the best discovery mechanism for decisions. Democracy demands that more citizens get political, i.e. engaged in the rough-and-tumble of the issues that matter to them. And this is our weak point – we have built the scaffolding of democracy, but not imbibed its soul. Making democracy work is as much about our values as it is about institutions.

In the journey across the river of democracy, India is only halfway across. We therefore cannot reap the dividends of a full democracy. So we look enviously back at China, on one bank of this river, and admiringly at the mature democracies on the other bank, not sure which way to move. We have no option but to push ahead, in the manner of the old proverb, by “crossing the river, feeling one pebble at a time”. This is the obligation of our generation.
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The author is Co-Founder of Janaagraha.