For India, ‘Middle’ Democracy Works

Few democracies in the world face the same challenges as India. Its remarkable ethnic, religious and cultural diversity is often susceptible to political manipulation aimed at sowing division and discord. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has received his share of criticism for pursuing policies that deepen social and political divisions. But the reality behind Modi’s initiatives are easily misunderstood in the context of India’s evolution as a democracy and a modern, territorial state, writes Subrata K. Mitra.

Frenzied CROWDS protest against an amendment to citizenship laws that are exclusionary on religious grounds. Legislation is passed to create a National Register of Citizens. Global condemnation rises over the revocation of the special status of the Jammu and Kashmir enshrined in Article 370 of the indian Constitution. isolated “lynch mobs” appear to target Muslims for the consumption and sale of beef. Allegations arise of “regulatory capture” being used against minorities. these scenes have deepened concern about the state of indian democracy. is india’s democracy regressing?

india is perceived by many to be a weaker democracy today than it was a year ago. For example, the country’s score in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy index 2019 fell to 6.9 (from 7.23 in 2018), on a scale of 1 to 10, the country’s lowest score on record since the Economist began publishing its annual global democracy barometer in 2006. Other democracy barometers such as Freedom house, and the Varieties of Democracy (V-dem) project show a similar finding.

i argue that the perception of democratic reversals in india has come about through a combination of protests against specific policies of the Narendra Modi government and the downturn of india’s economy. in india, where partisanship is based not on long-term party identification but short-term opportunity, these factors, thanks to a combination of low trust and high citizen efficacy, get easily transformed into mass protest. this explains the paradoxical resilience of india’s flawed democracy that neither rises to

the scandinavian heights of full democracy, nor goes down to a hybrid democracy or worse. i call it india’s “middle democracy” trap.

the reciprocal relation of democracy and GOVERNANCE

india’s transition to democracy came about through a fortuitous combination of circumstances, including incremental devolution of selfrule under British colonialism; the orderly transfer of power to the indian National Congress, the leading voice of the anti-colonial movement, which was well-schooled in the art and craft of power-sharing; the presence of two-tracking leaders who knew how to combine rational protest and institutional participation at critical junctures; a civil service well-honed in partnership with elected leaders; and a professional, politically neutral army and police (Mitra 2017). A dynamic, neo-institutional model of governance, which underpins india’s political system, has been instrumental in the accommodation of radical movements into the fabric of the country’s resilient democracy.

By drawing on the logic of human ingenuity driven by self-interest, the innovation of appropriate rules and procedures, and most of all the network of elite decision-makers at the union, region and local levels, india turned rebels into stakeholders and institutionalized mass participation in free and fair elections, in order to promote a culture of enfranchisement, empowerment and entitlement. this has promoted the recruitment of local elites into leadership at all levels of the system, and enhanced both democracy and governance. More than in many post-colonial societies, democratic governance in india has been sensitive to law and order, strategic social and economic reform and constitutional incorporation of social values (Mitra 2005). the indian model builds on appropriate legislative and administrative responses to relative deprivation, innovative policies of orderly rule, and the enhancement of the welfare of ordinary people (see Figure 1).

india, SEEN through routes to democratic backsliding

Building on lessons derived from the model in Figure 1 and recent theorizing on democratic backsliding by scholars such as Bermeo (2016), Waldner and Lust (2018) and Croissant and hellmann (2020), my assessment of india’s current democratic development focuses on four key factors.

the indian model earned early credibility through leaders such Gandhi, Nehru and Patel who acted as a bridge between the modern state and traditional society during india’s

1) leadership.