THE REALITIES OF INDIAN DEMOCRACY
From the farm laws to Covid-response, a key feature of recent debates has been the role of states in India’s democratic functioning and political economy. This week, we recommend journalist M Rajshekhar’s Despite the State: Why India Lets Its People Down and How They Cope. As a reporter with the website, Scroll.in, Rajshekhar immersed himself in the politics, society and governance of six states — Mizoram, Bihar, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, and Punjab. The result is a superb, though disturbing account, of the descent of democracy and the story of state capacity on the ground. The author argues that the democratic crisis in India predated the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014. He examines political parties which have become centralised, extractive, clientistic and dominant. But the book’s strength is the stories depicting how the tragic interplay of poor politics and poor governance affects citizens.