Ever since India got its independence in 1947, several
statesmen wrote obituary for Indian Democracy. There were common apprehensions
that India would ever be able to survive as a country.
Winston Churchill, for example, predicted that after the
British left the subcontinent, "India will fall back quite rapidly through
the centuries into the barbarism and privations of the Middle Ages". J. E.
Welldon, the Bishop of Calcutta in 1915 quoted, “As soon as the last British
Soldier sailed from Bombay or Karachi, India would soon become a battlefield
for antagonist racial and religious forces .The peaceful and progressive
civilisation setup by Great Britain
would shrivel up in a night”.
Seventy One years after independence, India somehow
survives but it remains an unnatural nation and for few people, an unlikely
democracy. We opted for democracy as our
political system. But many people keep wondering – how democratic is Indian
polity?
Democratic theory mentions that poverty, widespread
illiteracy, and a deeply hierarchical social structure are inhospitable
conditions for the functioning of democracy. Yet except for those 18 months in
1975-77, India has maintained its democratic institutions ever since it became
independent. When Prime Minister Indira Gandhi suspended democracy in June 1975
and declared a state of emergency, it seemed that India was finally starting
down the path that most of the world's poorer democracies had already traveled.
Yet democracy returned 18 months later, and emergency rule proved to be an abnormality
rather than an emerging structural trend.
Last year, I was travelling from Bangalore to Pavagada in
Karnataka, a 3 hours long journey. Early on, my car was held up by a level
crossing. A goods train passed by leisurely, and I read the signs on the wagons
- SR, NR, SCR, SER, WR - the ‘R’ standing for ‘Railway’, the other letters for
the different regional branches of India's greatest and most genuinely
public-service organization. In the course of their wanderings over the years,
the wagons had got all mixed up, so that one which rightfully belonged to the
Northern Railway was placed next to one that was the property of the South
Central Railway, and so on. It was typical that the wagons belonging to
different regional branches of Indian Railways had got so messed up; but that
there was an Indian Railways to which all those branches owed allegiance
signalled a unity amidst the diversity.
I feel there are 4 critical reason (in no particular
order) for democracy for India to survive. The first is the game of cricket - an
Indian sport accidentally invented by the west which keeps the people united.
The second is the bollywood industry, another great popular passion that unites
Indians of different languages, faiths and social classes together. Third,
there are some vital unifying legacies of the Britishers, such as Civil Services,
Defense Services (Army, Air force and Navy) and the English language, which
allow goods and people to move more or less peaceably across India, and to
traffic with one another. The fourth, and in my view most crucial, reason why a
united and democratic India survives is the constitution.
That unity and pluralism are inseparable in India and in
wonderfully expressed in the Indian currency graphically, which has a portrait
of Mahatma Gandhi on one side of all banknotes, with the denomination of the
note printed in bold in Hindi and English and, in smaller type, in 15 other
scripts.
A decade back, it was difficult to find solution to the
common man’s problems. If a government teacher did not teach properly, could
the parents do anything about it? Or if a doctor in a government hospital did
not treat properly or did not give medicines? What could a poor person do if
the ration shop keeper openly sold off the ration somewhere else? Or what could
any one of us do if the policeman refused to register any FIR?
Today, the situation the different. Social Media has played a critical role in reliving the democracy. Who would have imagined that a person travelling on a train would tweet to a railway minister and seek help to arrange milk for his child and railway minister would get it arranged for this person who tweeted.
Right to Information was also another concrete step towards making our polity democratic. The system will become more democratic when a common person will have more direct involvement in government decision making and when government would start co-creating policies
