Democracy in practice
ARVIND SIVARAMAKRISHNAN
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Assessment of the functioning of democracy in five South Asian states
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STATE OF DEMOCRACY IN SOUTH ASIA: SDSA Team; Oxford University Press, Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi-110001. Rs. 595.
This clear and accessible report of a collaborative investigation across all five South Asian states shows that South Asian democracy is robust and that South Asia’s citizens have few illusions about their respective democracies but want them to function much better. Support for democracy in South Asia varies neither by religion nor by social class but by country. The overall support is the more remarkable because during the independence struggle many in the Indian National Congress leadership resisted the universal franchise, and because today chaotic politics, corruption, factionalism, and poor institutional performance throughout the region generate authoritarian attitudes and an often misplaced confidence in purportedly neutral experts and technocrats.
Functioning
Therefore, the actual functioning of South Asian democracy raises serious issues at every level. Minorities, whether ethnic or religious, favour democracy more than other groups do; and the dispossessed, real entities if not primarily class entities for themselves, want public services and utilities to remain public, and fear their privatisation. As to the elites, the report shows education as correlated with articulated definitions of democracy; data on elite participation in political processes would have been helpful, especially as India’s elites in particular have been publicly accused of seceding into a narcissistic world of enormous wealth and privilege, of using the Indian Republic only as a vehicle for their private interests, and of forcing it to satisfy their every craving.
Political participation
Political participation, however, is problematic throughout South Asia. It is mainly channelled through political parties, which are largely devoid of internal democracy, often responsible for electoral corruption, clearly responsible for the ethnicisation and fragmentation of the political space, and concerned more with obtaining power than with stating specific policy and fulfilling mandates. The temptations of office have been sufficient for both India and Pakistan to use constitutional and legislative measures in order to curb ridiculous behaviour in assemblies, but the effective abolition of conscience votes strengthens party dominance and distances representatives from their constituents even further. Decentralisation too, is mostly fictitious; central and provincial governments intend no real devolution, and local assemblies continue to be controlled by established local power and patriarchy. Their funding levels also remain derisory.
Some political parties have nevertheless introduced new concerns, particularly those of the dispossessed, into everyday political discourse. Yet the results are more often formal than substantive, and the maintenance of colonial-monarchical public institutions has caused enormous problems in the form of Byzantine procedures, secrecy, monumental corruption, and sheer exploitation by the powerful. In contrast, South Africa redesigned its public institutions as soon as the state was reconstituted in 1994. In South Asia, the formal equality of constitutional rights no longer hides elite fear of the masses — a fear also shown by the framers of the U.S. Constitution when they decided that the President would be elected not by the popular vote but by a small electoral college — but the consequences are extremely dangerous, in the way public institutions and processes are widely distrusted and in the way the South Asian military, paramilitaries, police, and other security services, as is documented, commit and collude in atrocities with apparent impunity.
Other forms
Very importantly, 40 per cent of those surveyed feel that armed insurgents in South Asia have justified grievances, but a majority of respondents disapprove of violent protest; the authors call armed insurgency the “dead end” of democratic politics, but the clear implication is that legitimate grievances must be addressed by the states concerned.
As to other forms of political action, attempts by the poor to mobilise have had mixed success. Trade unions barely figure outside the tiny percentage of South Asians in the formal sector of the economy, elected representatives of the poor and oppressed often become part of the remote and self-sealed political world, and NGOs are only variably effective, though among their successes is resistance to bullying private-sector corporations and to various land-grabs. The incompatibility of mass poverty and hunger with democracy continues to be the major problem for South Asian bodies politic.
Some of the book’s most encouraging passages are those on the culture of democracy, on how the very fact of democratic space changes institutions and social attitudes; the terms used evoke Benjamin Barber’s characterisation of politics as epistemology. While political philosophers will appreciate those passages, other strong passages are the clear chronologies and the detailed explanations of the stratified sampling used. All the survey questions are also appended.
If it was only 20 or so years ago that democracy was often described as unsuitable for South Asia, usually by westerners ignorant of their own countries’ repressive attributes and still imbued with an enduring sense of racial and cultural superiority, this report will help end that nonsense. It will be of value to students and teachers, to journalists and public servants, and in general to any reader interested in this politically vibrant region of the world.
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