The flawed miracle of Indian democracy

Shashi Tharoor spoke to Rajeev Srinivasan in.rediff.com

There is no doubt that India is undergoing a period of ferment in which profound challenges have arisen to the secular assumptions of Indian politics, to the caste structures underpinning society, and to the socialist consensus driving economic policy. Any one of these three changes would be significant enough to send political scientists scurrying to their keyboards; all three occurring simultaneously point to a dramatic transformation.

Many observers point to the bad news coming out of India -- riots, corruption, the rise and fall of governments, uncertainties on economic policies. Yet you seem quite upbeat about India.

Yes, there's a lot of bad news, and my book doesn't gloss over it. But, at the same time, the bad news is offset by ample evidence of good. There are the remarkable levels of food production and distribution that enabled the country to withstand a drought in 1987 which would have cast a spectre of famine across any other developing country.

Ten years later, India boasts a record harvest, exceeding its own targets; India has conquered starvation (though not yet hunger). There is the profusion of skilled workers, talented professionals, inventive technicians and able managers at all levels of Indian industry. There is the entrepreneurial spirit which, when unshackled at last, has begun to prove a remarkable engine of growth. There is the very stability of the economy -- for decades a vehicle of slow but steady growth -- which suggests a capacity to absorb and transcend the problems that now beset it.

There is even the immense size of the country, which has converted serious insurgencies into "local" problems, leaving most of the rest of India unaffected and ensuring that the centre holds even when things fall apart on the periphery. Corruption is being tackled by an activist judiciary and by energetic investigative agencies that have not hesitated to indict the most powerful Indian politicians. The press is free, lively, irreverent, disdainful of sacred cows. Non-governmental organisations are active in defending human rights, promoting conservation, fighting caste injustice.

Above all, there is the flawed miracle of Indian democracy itself. At a time when most developing countries opted for authoritarian models of government to promote nation-building and to direct development, India chose to be a multi-party democracy. And despite many trials and tribulations, including twenty-two months of autocratic rule during a state of Emergency declared by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1975, a multi-party democracy -- freewheeling, rumbustious, often corrupt and sometimes inefficient, perhaps, but nonetheless flourishing -- India has remained.

The system has successfully allowed the expression of the competing claims of the various forces in Indian society, with several peaceful changes of government through the ballot box. India's democracy helps to acknowledge and accommodate the various identities of its multifaceted population. Indians are comfortable with multiple identities and multiple loyalties, all coming together in allegiance to a larger idea of India -- an India which safeguards the common space available to each identity, an India that remains safe for diversity. Continued