Eminent Voices Against Indian "Democracy"

If you have about half-an-hour free this bright Sunday morning, do tune into my appearance on The Scott Horton Show on Antiwar Radio. I talk about India’s democracy being restricted to “socialist” parties, urbanization in India, the need for the State to build roads, Kashmir and more. Click here to listen to the show.

In effect, I have hugely lowered the prestige and legitimacy of India’s socialist “democracy.”

As luck would have it, on this bright Sunday I am joined by three eminent columnists in ridiculing Indian democracy. This feels good. I am not alone.

The first of these columnists is Meghnad, Lord Desai, who contrasts political practices in Britain with India and finds that in India “political parties do not possess a rank and file.” This sentence says it all:

Parties select candidates with no reference to local members or with any rules being obeyed. Local constituencies do not interview candidates nor do they vote to choose them.

Lord Desai then makes a deep comment about politics and political parties in India today:

Parties are… a temporary collection of local satraps who will gather their troops for the election battle and if one party won’t have them they will migrate elsewhere.

In other words, our democracy is a sham, and our “socialist” political parties are not like political parties elsewhere in the world. They operate from high above, and have no real connect with the people.

This is, of course, clearly visible these days, as Rahul Gandhi tries to get “in touch” with poor villagers. It is obvious that a huge gulf separates Rahul Gandhi from his constituents.

Interestingly, Lord Desai ends on a pessimistic note. He writes:

How long this process can go on without totally corrupting Indian democracy is an open question. Some may say that this is the true reflection of our culture, an Indianisation of western democracy. If there are no serious political parties but only fragments which float independently and come together temporarily for election, where is the political debate about issues rather than personalities?

There are of course too many parties and no party controls its members any longer. To reform this system, you need someone inside who can see that this decay must be stopped. I doubt however that there is any force now that can do this.

Read Lord Desai's column here.

The second columnist who merits our attention is Mrinal Pande, writing about Lucknow and its “stone gardens” – the numberless statues erected by Mayawati. She says Mulayam had done much the same during his tenure as chief minister. And that Lucknow is ruined. What is noteworthy is her assertion of what exactly ruined Lucknow and UP: she puts the blame squarely on “social justice.”

The subtitle to her column reads:

India’s social justice revolution has not changed ruling norms: It has created autocrats from other castes

Note the word “autocrat.” Read Mrinal Pande's column here.

This cannot be Democracy.

As to our collective future under these autocrats, Manas Chakravarty has written a delightful spoof on India’s “family democracy” – where Indira the Eleventh comes to power, where Sharad Pawar the twenty-fifth becomes her minister, as does Abdullah the umpteenth and so on and so forth.

A great spoof indeed.

So I am not alone in holding Indian democracy in contempt. Makes me feel good.