The birth of a new nation-state at the end of British colonial rule enabled sovereignty to be restored to the people for the first time in its history. People, who were, until then, mere subjects, could now be known as citizens—with social, political, and economic rights. They could exercise their vote now. However, seventy-odd years after this historical moment, India’s democracy is mired by the challenges it faced at its formation. What are the burdens that Indian democracy carries with it?
Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s 2003 book The Burden of Democracy is a short but extraordinarily evocative essay on the Indian democracy in the making. In these 120-odd pages, Mehta engages with two pertinent questions on democracy: Is exercising political choice meaningful or an illusion? And if it is meaningful, has the exercise led to creating a better social world?
Mehta argues: “Our choices have come to bear the imprint of the social inequality on the one hand and overbearing statism on the other. It argues that the texture of social relations in Indian society deforms its politics and that the organization of the state impedes it from serving us well.” (p. 7).
Democracy itself was never something that pervaded the Indian minds during the anti-colonial struggle. While the idea that ‘the people’ would seem authoritative, there was still confusion over what form it would take. However, a representative government emerged from a negotiation between India’s elites and colonial powers. Importantly, it was nationalism, instead of democracy, that seemed to evoke political passion. And, precisely for this reason, despite democracy, the whole colonial state apparatus was kept intact.
Mehta asks: “Despite having a functioning democracy for almost five decades, does the entire repertoire of our habits and practices outside the sphere of formal politics conduce to the formation of democratic citizens with a robust sense of right and wrong, a sensitive enough social conscience, and a minimal sense of justice?” (p. 22).
Unlike what our politicians tell us about ‘unity in diversity’, Mehta suggests that we are “diverse in our unities” which has allowed “each of us to imagine the connection with the others in his/her own way” (p. 11). But, more starkly, it is the inequality between individuals that has caused more harm to Indian democracy than anything else. Inequality remains not just the biggest burden of democracy but an explanation of all our discontents.
Because inequality is significantly social in nature. And since our society is already structured around caste, class, gender, religion, and language hierarchies, inequality has become an intrinsic aspect of our society. Therefore, much of our politics has become just the “politics of recognition” (p. 35). A sense of injury has been able to galvanise political parties along caste, religion, and regional sense by implicitly otherising other groups as threats. In this sense, India’s democracy has been an anomaly—since political equality preceded social one. And it is also precisely what Ambedkar spoke of.
Another key aspect of democracy has been the role of caste. “The discourse of equality in Indian democracy”, Mehta writes, “often seeks to achieve equality between groups” (p. 45). Provocatively, however, Mehta adds: “We have arguably never had an anti-caste politics. What we have witnessed in decades since independence is anti-upper-caste politics” (p. 48). Such politics has enabled different caste groups to seek representation—and, therefore, recognition. However, unless Dalits gain access to the market, their prospects of prosperity remain dull.
Having already noted that inequality is an intrinsic feature of our society—and also our democracy. There is an element of servitude so intricately structured within the Indian society that no matter how much empowerment on social terms is made, such tendencies have barely waned away. Despite contractual conditions, the master-servant relations do not allow the master and servant to sit at the same levels.
In addition to this, corruption shows that one desires more money and that one can display corruption and get away with it. See, for example, the recent case of a Judge in Delhi High Court, in whose house the firefighters found a big stash of cash by a mere chance. If judges are corrupt, who else can a society depend on for justice?
Another aspect of Indian democracy is the very nature of the state. “India inherited a colonial state and kept much of its functioning architecture intact” (p. 77). Indian state, Mehta notes, tends to work in a paradoxical sense with the Market. As someone once remarked, India runs perfect markets and states, “The only trouble is we run a market like a state, and a state like a market” (p. 84).
The state had controlled all aspects of the market for too long as a remedy to effectively uplift people from abject poverty (which it could not do so), and simultaneously, the state has worked to effectively only create opportunities for private individuals—the state acting to satisfy private interests of collusive interest groups. More critically, the state thought of itself as a remedy to all problems of public life. However, it could not effectively resolve most of these concerns. Take poverty, for instance.
If our democratic institutions are unequal in nature—and function barely to improve our social lives, why do citizens not demand the state of most basic needs: education and healthcare? Mehta points out two reasons. First, most of its citizens do not pay taxes—thereby causing what he calls “representation without taxation”—and therefore, they do not deem their state any role. And second, there is too much control by the centre—and the devolution of power does not truly take place.
Now, what about political parties? Parties have since galvanised on the ethnification of votes, whereby votes are expected to vote along caste lines. Moreover, there is barely any internal democracy within political parties, making their very structure opaque to outsiders as well as the citizens. And as a result, inner-party deliberations also tend to be absent.
So, what needs to be done to ease the burden of Indian democracy? Indian democracy—and the state—should work to protect the civil liberties of individuals and help expand economic opportunities for its citizens. It should also build new relationships between the public and the private: “recognizing that there are some things states are particularly bad at but also recognizing that we will be impoverished unless all enjoy the minimum basis for social self-respect and acknowledge each other through projects we hold in common” (p. 126).
Mehta’s The Burden of Democracy captures everything that impedes Indian democracy from functioning—and from citizens exercising choices that help make their lives better. In his provocative essay, Mehta has suggested that social inequality and the state’s burden to meet basic needs are two of the major burdens of Indian democracy. However, while the book is crisp, it will take one time to read and introspect.