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Book Review
Democracy coming of age?
SURESH NAMBATH
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Analysis of Indian democracy to identify possible directions to transform it into a substantive one
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SHORT ON DEMOCRACY — Issues Facing Indian Political Parties: Edited by Arvind Sivaramakrishnan; pub. by ImprintOne, C-562, Sushant Lok-I, Gurgaon-122002, and distributed by Foundation Books, Cambridge House, 4381/4, Ansari Road, Daryaganj,
New Delhi-110002. Rs. 595.
Democracy is never ever handed down to the people. Even in countries where democracy was seemingly the result of a consensus among the political elite, the pressures of popular movements, in whatever form, were at work. In India, the anti-colonial freedom movement was certainly not synonymous with a pro-democracy upsurge, but the main vehicle of the anti-British struggle, the Congress, embodied democratic aspirations and invited mass participation.
Even so, the political institutions necessary for a functioning democracy needed to be built up from the time of Independence. Political parties had to mature and develop their representative character; regional aspirations had to find an organised form; ideological divides had to become clearer. These are the issues that form the subject matter of Short on Democracy: Issues facing Indian Political Parties, a collection of essays edited by Arvind Sivaramakrishnan.
Survival imperative
As Sukumar Muralidharan points out in the first essay, unlike the liberal democracies in the West, which went through a prolonged process of evolution, independent India was born with universal suffrage. However, the Indian Constitution, he says, “did not spring full blown from the minds of a supposed liberal elite at the moment of independence but, rather, emerged from a strategic engagement between the Indian political leadership and the people they were guiding to freedom.” Democracy, he argues, “became almost a survival imperative for a nation of immense diversities and inequalities.”
For the first couple of decades after Independence, the Congress virtually represented the Indian state, aiming at national self-reliance, but pulling in different directions without any definite ideological orientation. Indeed, the split in the Congress in 1969 was a sign of the maturing of Indian democracy, a result of the accentuation of the ideological differences in the polity. Simultaneously, political parties that reflected the socio-economic and regional divisions began to emerge, chipping away at the Congress support-base. But the main opposition to the Congress at the national-level had to first come from its own breakaway groups. Zoya Hasan deals with these issues of ideological drift and political consolidation in her analysis of the decline of the Congress, and its recent revival in response to the challenge of communal politics.
Leadership
Although the Indian political system did mature over the years, political parties have largely tended to avoid inner organisation democracy, sensing any transparent choice of leadership as a threat to managing social and regional divisions within the organisation. A strong leadership that distributes different favours to different factions at different times is seen as best equipped to carry along the whole party. Leaders have emerged through dynastic succession or through selection by a caucus as contests for the leadership are seen as essentially divisive.
But this certainly cannot be seen as indicative of a situation where a party exists solely to serve the interests of the leadership. In his analysis of the politics of the Samajwadi Party, V. Krishna Ananth goes to the extent of saying, “Mulayam Singh Yadav is in politics in order to preserve himself, his brothers and his son.” And that “the Samajwadi Party exists to serve this end.” But surely, no party can build a support base, let alone sustain it, on the basis of a politics of self-aggrandisement. Corruption is an integral part of the Indian political system, but this does not alter the fact that political parties can make themselves relevant only through a self-evident commitment to serving the interests of their supporters.
Personality cult
Parties with a strong central leadership usually develop a personality cult around their leaders. Neena Vyas draws on Max Weber to explain the charismatic authority that prominent Indian politicians seemed to enjoy. Noting that charisma, as defined by Weber, could last for only a relatively brief period, she goes on to detail the factors that contributed to the sustenance of the personality cult in Indian politics. After making use of caste loyalties to come to power, leaders take advantage of state patronage at their disposal to create a personality cult around themselves. Lack of intra-party democracy and the whipping system also gave the leaders enormous power over second line functionaries and the cadre, she argues.
But some parties are more personality cult-based than others. Parties with a support base of unorganised sections tend to have leaders who are heavily dependent on the personality cult. This is because unorganised sections, by definition, have no mechanism to make their leaders directly accountable. Their support for a particular leader is based on the trust they repose in him or her. Such leaders, therefore, concentrate more on cultivating their own image as a trustworthy and capable personality than on articulating policies and programmes. Cadre-based parties with an organisational link between the leadership and the support base have no such overwhelming need for personality-based politics.
If India is to progress toward closing the democracy deficit that the book identifies, the breaking up of parties that yoke together conflicting ideologies, and the weakening of parties that overly depend on personality-cult politics and centralised command structures will have to be among the many signposts on the way.
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