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Among the most significant features of India’s political development has been the commitment of its leaders to democracy, national unity and economic development, accompanied by their ability to establish the necessary political institutions, both of the state and civil society, and to root them in Indian society—in other words, to create and maintain the structure of a democratic state. These institutions have been sustained despite rapid social change, with new social groups regularly entering the political arena and asserting their rights. The repeated successions of governments at the Centre, that have been brought about peacefully and constitutionally, have been a sign of the basic inner strength of this democratic structure.
However, the political system has been under strain, facing an increasing loss of vitality. There has been a certain disarray, a deterioration in political institutions. These are not able to respond adequately to the challenges posed by economic development and social change, the growing political awakening among the people and their aroused and rising expectations, the refusal of the oppressed and the disadvantaged to accept their social condition, and the growing class and caste conflict among contending social groups, especially in the countryside, for a larger share of political power and gains of economic development.
Most of the political institutions, as a consequence, have been losing their moral authority and the country has been difficult to govern—at least, difficult to govern well. This ‘crisis of governability’ takes multiple forms: unstable governments, frequent elections and changes of electoral moods, inability to accommodate and reconcile contending demands and needs of different social groups and classes, weakening of law and order, growing civil discord and disturbance, sometimes reaching the proportions of insurgency, communal violence, increasing recourse of people to violent and extra-constitutional agitations, growing corruption, and, above all, the failure of the governments at the Centre and the states to implement their policies or to provide effective governance.
At the same time, it would be wrong to suggest that the political system or its institutions have been crumbling or that India has been undergoing a crisis of the state. In spite of all their weaknesses, the political system and its institutions have proved to be quite resilient and have managed to function, even though inadequately; they have also retained their legitimacy, in part because of their very longevity, but much more because of the greater participation by the people in the political process, especially in elections.
Undoubtedly, apart from the skewed socio-economic structure, the major culprit for the weakening of the political institutions has been the quality of political leadership. It is the quality of political leadership which plays a critical role in nation-building and the development of political institutions. More than a crisis of the state or the political system, there has certainly been a crisis of leadership as the calibre of leaders both at the Centre and in the states has been going down over the years.
For several decades now, the political leadership has functioned without any strategic design or perspective, ideology or wellthought-out tactics for managing the political system. It has relied instead on ad hocism and gimmickry for meeting the challenges in the polity and on populism, personal appeal, and use of big and black money to maintain itself in power. At best, it has taken recourse to such tactical measures as opportunistic coalitions of ideologically and programmatically disparate political parties and groups, or putting together of caste and communal coalitions or the centralization of the party and government processes through coteries. Consequently, even major parties and political leaders have been living a sort of hand-to-mouth existence; they are able to win elections but thereafter are neither able to govern nor maintain their authority. Even such a tall leader as Indira Gandhi was not able to check the erosion in institutions like the party, parliament and the bureaucracy.
The Downslide of Parliament
Next to elections and civil liberties, parliament occupies a pivotal position in a parliamentary democracy. In India, parliament and the state legislatures not only legitimize a government, but they are also the supreme organs for formulation of policies, overseeing their implementation, and in general acting as ‘watchdogs’ over the functioning of the government. Unfortunately, over the years, there has been a general downslide in its performance, and signs of decay in the institution have set in.
Jawaharlal Nehru worked incessantly to install respect for parliament and ensured that it functioned with decorum and responsibility. He attended its settings regularly, however busy he was otherwise. He paid full attention to the views of the Opposition parties, treated them with respect as an integral part of the democratic process, and often let them influence and even change government policies. The Opposition parties, in turn, acted responsibly, abiding by the parliamentary rules of the game. The system continued to function quite well in the Nehru and immediate post-Nehru years. However, gradually, over the years, parliament started becoming ineffective. Its role began to diminish and its policy-making powers to atrophy. Its proceedings began to degenerate in the late 1960s. From then on, parliamentary procedures have been routinely ignored and parliament’s and state legislatures’ sessions have been marked by shouting and abuse and rowdy behaviour, even towards the prime minister. Also, frequent walk-outs, unruly scenes, disgraceful disorderliness, demonstrations by the members inside parliament and legislatures and other disruptive tactics, including the staging of dharnas (sit-ins), have progressively taken the place of reasoned arguments and parliamentary give and take. In recent years, quite often parliament has not been able to transact any business for days because of the disruption of its sittings by one party or the other.
Unlike in the Nehru period, in recent years, in general it is observed that once a government gets a majority in the legislature it formulates and tries to implement its policies, irrespective of the views of the Opposition, and the latter, in turn, opposes government policies and actions irrespective of their merit. Parliament and state legislatures seldom witness a confrontation of well-workedout alternatives. There occurs a great deal of denunciation but little meaningful debate takes place. Often, the worth and efficacy of a government decision is tested not in parliament or a state legislature but in the streets and in the media. The Question Hour, once a pride of parliament, has degenerated into a shouting slugfest and is often suspended.
Defectors, who crossed floors, changed parties, and toppled governments, not for political or ideological reasons but for personal gain, leading to rapid changes of governments, became common in the states after 1967. At the Centre, the malady was reflected in the toppling of the Janata government in 1977. It appeared at one stage that the entire parliamentary system would be turned into a mockery when a few defecting MLAs or MPs could make or unmake governments. The situation was, however, saved and the governments given greater stability and longevity by the anti-defection law of 1985. But in recent years defections and break up of alliances and coalitions have again become common with defectors smartly remaining within the ambit, though not the spirit, of the anti-defection law.
Overall, as a result of the inefficient functioning of state legislatures and parliament since the late 1960s, parliamentary institutions have been brought into disrepute, have declined in authority among the people and have been playing a diminishing role in policy formulation and governance. Even so, they have not become totally ineffectual. They continue to perform, though inadequately, the role assigned to them under the constitution: they still give some voice to public opinion and reflect the popular mood. The government still dreads the opening of a parliamentary or assembly session. Above all a government can continue to hold power only if it retains the confidence of the house—since 1977, seven governments at the Centre have fallen because of their losing majority in the Lok Sabha.
The Cabinet
The cabinet, chosen and headed by the prime minister and constituted by the senior ministers, forms the effective executive branch of the Indian political system and functions on the principle of collective responsibility. The strength of a government is measured by the strength of its cabinet. Unfortunately, the role and significance of the cabinet as a policy and decision-making institution has also been declining since 1969, that is, with the beginning of Indira Gandhi’s government. Since then the cabinet has most often been bypassed and ignored by the prime minister, especially in policy-making. The cabinet ministers, owing their office to the prime minister’s pleasure, have often accepted this position, expressing their dissent at the most on some minor issues. Moreover, there has hardly been a reversal of prime ministerial dominance over the cabinet under the much weaker political personalities that have occupied the prime minister’s chair subsequent to Indira Gandhi. Individual cabinet ministers have continued to have some degree of influence depending on their personal calibre, the extent of their own political support base and the extent of popular support they bring to the party in power.
This decline in the role of the cabinet is because of the increasing centralization of power in both the government and party in the hands of prime ministers, which is in turn due to the reliance of the ruling parties on them for winning elections.
A second factor contributing to the erosion in the authority of the cabinet has been the emergence of the Prime Minister’s Secretariat, known popularly as the PMO, as an independent and virtually parallel executive that encroaches on and usurps the powers and functions of individual ministries and the cabinet. The PMO gathers information, gives advice, initiates policies—even economic and foreign policies—oversees their implementation, and takes a hand in deciding appointments and promotions of high administrative officials. The domineering role of the PMO, starting with Shastri and Indira Gandhi, has continued through the Janata period, the BJP-led government, headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and to some extent even to the UPA government headed by Manmohan Singh.
This concentration of power in the hands of the prime minister has been rather unhealthy and has had a deleterious effect on policy-making as well as governance in general. While it is necessary that the country and the government is provided with a strong leadership, such strong leadership is not to be equated with the concentration of power in the hands of one individual. A strong cabinet also enables a multiplicity of interests and regions and cultural zones to share power and take an effective part in decision-making.
The Judiciary
One political institution that has held its ground in all essentials is the judiciary. The high judiciary, especially the Supreme Court, has fully utilized its right and obligation to enforce and interpret the constitution. It has set high standards of independence from the executive and legislative arms of the government. It has also been in the forefront of the defence of Fundamental Rights. For these reasons, it enjoys high legitimacy and respect among the people.
An important criticism of the Indian judiciary has been with regard to its socially conservative and status quoist character. This, it is argued, has made it insensitive to social issues and movements and resulted in its standing in the way of radical socio-economic legislation in the name of the defence of individual rights. For example, for years the Supreme Court interpreted the right of property to negate land reforms, nationalization of banks, etc. It also tended to ignore the Directive Principles of State Policy laid down in the constitution. But these conservative rulings of the Supreme Court were largely rectified because of the easy procedure provided in the constitution for amendment of its provisions. As we have seen in the earlier chapters, this procedure was repeatedly used by Nehru and Indira Gandhi to bend the stick the other way.
Moreover, in recent years, the Supreme Court itself has become more sensitive to social issues, from the rights of women, workers and minorities, to ecology, human rights, social justice and equity and social discrimination. An example of its social activism has been the introduction of public interest litigation under which even a postcard dropped by a victimized citizen to the Chief Justice is treated as a writ petition. This does not mean that the poor and the disadvantaged have actually acquired easy access to the higher courts. But it has opened a window that was completely shut earlier.
Perhaps the two most negative features of the Indian judicial system today are (i) the inordinate delays in the dispensation of justice as a case can drag on for years and even decades—the backlog of the cases in the High Courts alone amounting to several lakhs, and (ii) the high costs of getting justice, thus limiting access to the courts only to the well-off.
In recent years, the Supreme Court has also been accused of ‘judicial despotism’ by arrogating to itself powers which are vested in the executive or the legislature by the constitution. Judicial ‘activism’, some have suggested, can go too far.
Two other constitutional institutions, namely, the President and the Election Commission, have also performed quite well in independent India. The Presidents have functioned with dignity and in a non-controversial manner and within the widely accepted interpretation of presidential powers as provided in the constitution. Similarly, the Election Commissions have on the whole fulfilled with credit their constitutional obligation to hold free and fair elections involving millions of voters, nearly a million polling booths, and thousands of candidates in state and central elections.
Public Administration and the Bureaucracy
Perhaps the most important institutional crisis India faces is that of the quality of public administration and the bureaucracy. The deterioration of administration, even while its role in the life of the citizen has grown manifold, lies at the core of the ‘crisis of governability’ in India, including the breakdown of law and order and growth of crime in several states and large cities. Even the best of social and developmental legislation and policy measures are nullified in the course of their implementation.
The Indian bureaucracy is, moreover, rigid, basically conservative, pro-status quo, and resistant to social change, especially in regard to empowerment of the poor or redistributive measures. It favours the dominant social groups and influential persons, especially in rural areas. With its non-performance character and ‘file-pushing’ procedures, it is also not geared to take on the new task of economic development and involving the people in its processes. Moreover, even for routine work the administrative system has hardly any mechanism for enforcing discipline and punishing inefficiency and poor performance or checking corruption and rewarding meritorious work and honesty.
Perhaps the worst feature of Indian administration is revealed in its dealings with common people. Government servants, especially policemen, are generally discourteous, domineering, unhelpful, corrupt, inefficient and arbitrary in their approach towards the ordinary citizen. And, of course, the question of their accountability to the citizen cannot even be raised. This relationship of the government servant with the citizens goes some way in explaining the anti-incumbency voting in recent years. Using democracy and their voting power, the people, in their desperate quest for a friendly, honest, cooperative and minimally efficient administration, have been changing governments at every election.
Even at the middle and higher levels of bureaucracy, because of complex rules, regulations and procedures, and the increased personal and discretionary powers, there prevail inefficiency, undue delays, low standards of integrity, and corruption. The number of capable efficient and honest officials may, however, be larger than popularly believed.
At the same time, there has been an inordinate expansion of the bureaucracy, which is completely out of proportion to its usefulness or productivity. Consequently, the central, state and local government bureaucracies have come to claim too large a share of public expenditure and government resources, leading to the neglect of developmental and welfare activities.
One positive feature of the Indian bureaucracy that still holds is its tradition of political neutrality, with bureaucrats implementing policies of the government in power irrespective of their own opinions. It is noteworthy that the Communist governments in West Bengal and Kerala have not complained of the higher bureaucracy obstructing or sabotaging their policies on political, ideological or class grounds.
The partisanship that has been increasingly betrayed by the bureaucracy in recent years has not been on ideological or political grounds but has been ‘functional’ in character. Because of their dependence on ministers, MLAs and MPs for their appointment to plum postings, promotions, transfers, extensions in service, postretirement employment, protection from disciplinary action against misuse of authority and corruption, and, in the case of lower levels of bureaucracy, for recruitment in the first place, many in the bureaucracy and the police have been increasingly enmeshed in political intrigue and in implementing the personal or political agenda of their political masters. Political interference with the bureaucracy and the police has led to the undermining of their discipline and effectiveness and the promotion of corruption among them. A result of this is that ‘the vaunted “steel frame” has come to resemble porous foam rubber’. The bureaucracy no longer possesses that old pride in its service and an esprit de corps or a sense of solidarity, derived from common interests and responsibilities.
It is true that the overthrow of the existing inflexible bureaucratic administrative system is not possible; to be rid of bureaucracy is Utopian. Nevertheless, the need for its radical reform, regeneration and restructuring, so as to make it a suitable instrument for good government and development and change has now acquired an urgency which can no longer be ignored. Interestingly, the ills of the administrative structure, as well as the required remedial measures, have been repeatedly studied by several administrative reform commissions and a galaxy of public administration experts and experienced and knowledgeable bureaucrats. Only the political will to undertake these measures has been lacking so far. Two other aspects of the role and impact of bureaucracy may be referred to here. The bureaucratic values, mentality and structures have spread to nearly all spheres. They pervade India’s academic and scientific institutions and are largely responsible for the incapacity of our scientists and academics to realize a large part of their potential. Similarly, bureaucratization and bureaucratic control of the public sector undertakings, combined with political interference, has come in the way of their healthy development and functioning.
The Police
The Indian police, showing all the weaknesses of the bureaucracy, suffers from certain additional maladies. By any criterion, it is in a bad shape. Its degeneration is largely responsible for the marked deterioration in the law and order situation. This is despite a more than hundred-fold increase in expenditure on the police and its sister paramilitary forces over the last sixty years. As a result the state has routinely to rely on the latter or sometimes even call in the army for maintaining civil order. The Indian police does not adequately perform its conventional role of crime prevention and investigation and the punishment of criminals, who readily assume that they will not be apprehended and if apprehended will not be successfully prosecuted and punished; in many cases even complaints against them will not be registered. All this happens partly because of police inefficiency, poor training of policemen and their ostensible connivance with the criminals and partly because of the slow-moving courts and the reluctance of the ordinary citizen to give evidence against criminals because of the fear of unchecked reprisals.
One of the worst features of the Indian police is the negative attitude towards the common people which it has inherited from the colonial period. The poor not only get little help from the police when they need or seek it, but are often met with a certain inhumanity, ruthlessness, violence and brutality. People encountering the law and order machinery in the course of their struggles for social justice and enforcement of laws and policies existing for redressal of their grievances are frequently subjected to lathicharges, tear-gas attacks and at times unprovoked firing. Moreover, because of the spread of communalism in its ranks, the police bias against the minorities gets reflected in partisanship during communal riots. The Indian police has also gained notoriety for brutality against undertrials leading sometimes even to deaths— the number of reported custodial deaths in 1997 was over 800. The overall result is that people view the police with fear, resentment and hostility.
Political interference and manipulation and use of the police by politicians has made matters worse and has led to its corruption and demoralization and the spread of indiscipline in its ranks.
On their part, ordinary policemen and policewomen are quite discontented because their pay and service conditions, promotional chances and social status are quite poor. The necessity to rescue the police as a crucial institution of the state from utter degeneration, and to restrain, reform and restructure it, besides altering its attitude towards the common people, has perhaps been perceived by successive governments as the most urgent administrative task for the last several decades. Yet, till now, no government has made even an attempt in that direction. One example of this neglect has been the failure of all the central and state governments to implement or even pay serious consideration to the National Police Commission Report of 1979.
The Armed Forces
The Indian military has continued to be a highly disciplined and professional non-political force and has maintained the tradition of respecting democratic institutions and functioning under civilian supremacy and control. While the military advises on defence policy and has full operational authority during an armed conflict, the basic contours of defence policy are determined by the civil authority.
This development of the military–civil authority relationship was not fortuitous; it was carefully thought out by the national leadership of independent India from the beginning, worried as it was that India might also go the way of most of the Third World countries in falling prey to some form of military domination. This, along with not wanting to divert resources from the urgent task of economic development, was a major reason why Nehru and other leaders kept the numbers as also the profile of the armed forces quite low till 1962. After the India–China war, the size of the military was increased though in terms of the country’s population it continues to be smaller than that of China and Pakistan or even South Korea, Indonesia, the US and most of the European countries. India has also kept its defence budget low in terms of its ratio to the national income. The aim has been to ensure that India’s defence forces are adequate to meet threats to its security while not letting them become an intolerable drag on economic development.
Indian political parties have also kept up the tradition of not letting defence affairs and the military become a matter of partisan political debate or inter-party struggle. The apolitical role of the military has also been strengthened by the stability of India’s democratic institutions and the high level of legitimacy they enjoy among the people, including the armed forces.
Moreover, immediately after independence, the class and regional bias from colonial times in the recruitment of both the ranks and officers of the armed forces was given up. They are now recruited from diverse social strata and castes, religions and regions. This has given the Indian military a heterogeneous, all-India character, and along with its training has imparted it a pan-Indian, national perspective, and made it a force for national unity and integrity. This has also made it difficult for any section of the military or its officer corps to think of staging a coup by mobilizing and consolidating the armed forces behind a single unconstitutional political centre.
While there is little danger of military intervention in political affairs, a disquieting feature that has emerged recently is that of the glorification of the military and the military ethos by certain political forces and in the media.
Centre–State Relations
In the long view, Indian federalism with its fine balance between the powers of the Centre and the states, as envisaged in the constitution, has stood up well despite occasional hiccups. It has succeeded in conforming to, as well as protecting, the diversity of the Indian people.
It is, of course, true that from the beginning India’s federal system has been based on a strong Centre as carefully provided for in the constitution. In the actual working of the system, the central government gradually acquired greater influence over the states because of the pattern of economic development adopted, which was based on planning, public sector, central funding of antipoverty programmes, and central financial disbursement to the states from its greater tax resources. Besides, in the first decades after independence, the same party controlled the central and the state governments, which gave the prime minister and the central Congress leadership a certain leverage over the state governments. This leverage was, however, not used sufficiently by Nehru, especially to push through land reforms, and was used often, but not wisely, by Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. On the other hand, as over the years the states increasingly came to be ruled by parties other than Congress, central influence over state governments has declined. The dismantling of the licence quota system and the lesser role of central planning have also had a similar effect.
Over the years, the need for a strong central government with greater authority to influence state administrations has been felt in certain crucial areas. In a multi-religious, multilingual and multi-ethnic country like India, the Centre has the critical role of protecting minorities of all kinds as also the disadvantaged groups such as the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, women and the landless. A strong Centre is also required to mitigate or at least prevent the growth of acute regional disparities by use of different means. A strong Centre has also been found necessary to deal with divisive caste, communal and regional forces and interregional conflicts.
At the same time, it would be wrong to say that the federal character of the Indian political system has suffered erosion over time. The states have continued to enjoy the autonomy provided by the constitution, as is evident from the functioning of the states ruled by parties other than the one ruling at the Centre. The state governments have continued to enjoy full autonomy in the fields of culture, education, land reforms, agricultural development, irrigation, health care and water supply and other areas of public welfare, local government and industrial development, except in the case of big industries and foreign investment for which central licences were needed till recently. Moreover, nearly all the central government plans and schemes of economic and social development and welfare have been implemented—well or badly—through the states’ administrative machinery.
Unfortunately, certain states are or have been misruled and are lagging behind in economic development and welfare activities, including maintenance of a peaceful environment for their citizens. But this is so not because of central intervention or lack of state autonomy but because of maladministration by the state governments concerned. For example, land reforms were stymied or did not benefit the landless in some of the states because of the obduracy of their state administrations and despite pressure from the central government. On the other hand, the Kerala and West Bengal governments did not have much difficulty in introducing pro-peasant land reforms despite their ruling parties having little say in the central government.
The only real encroachment by the Centre on the states’ constitutionally guaranteed autonomy has been the frequent use of the constitutional provision under Article 356 to impose central rule in the form of President’s Rule in a state. This power was designed to be exercised rarely and in extraordinary circumstances such as the breakdown of administration or constitutional government in a state. It was, however, frequently used during the 1970s to dismiss inconvenient Opposition-ruled state governments or to discipline the state units of the ruling party. Fortunately, this misuse was largely checked later. It would, however, be wrong to say that the misuse of Article 356 reduced the autonomy of the states ‘to a farce’.
We may point out in the end that a federation is not a weaker form of a Union; it is a form of a strong Union suitable to a diverse society. Similarly, a strong Centre and strong states are not antithetical to each other in a federation. This was also the conclusion of the Sarkaria Commission, appointed in 1980 to examine Centre–state relations. The federal principle requires that both the Centre and the states should be strong enough to perform their functions and to deliver on their programmes and promises. Nor is there any contradiction between a strong nation state and decentralization of power. Democracy, national cohesion and development in a diverse society like India’s require not greater centralization but greater devolution of power and decentralization of decision-making and decision implementation.
In fact, greater decentralization and devolution of power to the third tier of government, that is, local self-government, was a basic part of the national movement’s political–administrative agenda as also of the constitutional design of independent India. Consequently, an attempt was made in the late 1950s to transfer a great deal of local administrative power to elected zilla (district) parishads and village panchayats, with a view to develop grassroots democracy and enable effective political participation by the people and involve them in the planning and implementation of various developmental schemes. The results of this attempt were, however, utterly disappointing because these three-tier institutions were soon downgraded and stifled by the bureaucracy and used by the landed elite to enhance the power they already exercised through control over land and greater access to state administration and local bureaucracy. Furthermore, the state governments were adverse to parting with any of their powers to institutions of local self-government. The only states where the Panchayati Raj experiment bore fruit in the 1980s were Karnataka and West Bengal. The panchayats have, however, been restructured on a sounder footing all over the country in recent years and are beginning to show better results. One million of their 3 million members are women. On the other hand, the municipal government in most of India’s cities and towns continues to be inefficient and corrupt and lacking in effective administrative power; and there has been a continuous decline in urban facilities such as roads, parks, street lighting, water and electric supply, sewage, health care and sanitation, schooling and control of crime and pollution.
Political Parties
Political parties, which are the kingpins of a democratic political structure, have gradually become the weakest link in India’s political system. Political parties and the party system have been decaying and suffer from several maladies. Among these are: inter- and intra-party instability; intense infighting and factionalism within parties; weak and inefficient organization in many of them, resulting in their fragmentation; the continuous proliferation of parties, leading to the formation of unstable coalitions; continuous shifting of loyalties of political leaders and workers from one party to another; lack of democracy and debate within most parties; failure to mobilize and provide support to developmental, welfare and social justice policies, with non-participation and lack of mobilization of large segments of disadvantaged groups except during elections. Most political parties function without any long-term political programme or developmental design and increasingly live from election to election, diverting political debate from programmes and policies to peripheral or personalized issues. Many of them rely upon appeal to caste, religion or regional chauvinism. For example, since 1989, all-India elections have been fought over such non-issues as the Bofors and hawala scandals, the reconstruction of a non-existing temple, reservations of a few thousand jobs in government service, the merits of a Vajpayee over a foreign-born Sonia Gandhi, or victory over a few hundred intruders in Kargil.
To retain or acquire power, political parties have been indulging in unlimited populism, placating the voters with proliferating grants and subsidies, promises of free electricity, cheap rice and so on. Many parties and political leaders have been weakening political institutions by emphasizing their personal role and rule. One symptom of India’s political malaise is the refusal of political leaders to retire, however old or discredited they might be. They firmly believe in the old Sanskrit proverb: ‘Trishna najeerna vayemesh jeenam.’ (It is we who have become old and not our desires.)
An important consequence is that the political leadership has been losing authority among the people and is, therefore, unable to make the necessary institutional improvements and changes in society even if it wants to and even when it is backed by the required electoral majority. The more dangerous result is that the entire realm of politics has been getting devalued. There is among the people a growing distrust of and a cynicism towards politicians and political parties. Most people tend to associate politics and public life with hypocrisy and corruption. Because public life has thus become so discredited, idealistic young people have not been entering politics; those who do so regard politics primarily as an avenue for their social and economic mobility.
Yet, political workers, leaders and parties are critical to the functioning of political democracy and good governance. To sneer at them or to denigrate politics is a sure recipe for political disaster and an invitation to authoritarianism, fascism and militarism.
The decay of Congress organization has been serious since the democratic polity has developed so far under its broad umbrella or dominance. For years now, the flabby Congress party organization has done little systematic political work at the grassroots and has been little more than an electoral machine, though it has become increasingly ineffective even as such.
As we have seen earlier, though Indira Gandhi succeeded in replenishing the party’s social support base, she weakened its organizational structure further by centralizing its functioning and increasing its dependence on a single leader. Unfortunately, no alternative political formation has emerged to perform the political functions Congress has performed as ‘the central integrative institution of the system’. Congress is still the only national party which has a presence in all parts of the country and which is committed to secular democracy with a left-of-centre political character.
When in the Opposition, non-Congress parties have failed to provide responsible, rational and effective criticism. When in power, as in 1977, 1989 or 1998, they have not been able to put forward an alternative national developmental programme or agenda. Moreover, most often from 1967 till this day, with rare exceptions as in Kerala and West Bengal, they have formed unprincipled, opportunistic alliances to get into power, ignoring all ideological, programmatic or policy differences.
Among the Opposition parties, only the CPM and the BJP have been partial exceptions to the process of the decay and in some cases disintegration and disappearance of political parties. The CPM, too, has been stagnating for some time. It has been rigid and dogmatic both in its organizational structure and political programme and policies. Even though it has accepted the logic of the parliamentary democratic system, its programme fails to reflect this recognition fully. While its political practice follows Euro-Communism or is social democratic, its guiding theoretical framework continues to be Stalinist, based on the notion of the violent overthrow of the capitalist system. Moreover, it too has no national developmental perspective within a parliamentary democratic framework. The only choice it offers the people is that of an alternative social system.
The BJP is the only political party which has grown continuously in recent years. The growth of the BJP is, however, ominous not only because of its appeal to religious and communal sentiments but even more so because of the RSS domination over it. Its basic cadre, leadership and ideological framework is provided by the RSS which seeks to establish Hindu Rashtra based on the exclusion of the minorities. Organizationally and ideologically undemocratic, the RSS ideology represents the Indian version of fascism. Without the RSS, the BJP would become, despite its communal outlook, just another right-wing party—a right-wing version of Congress— which emphasizes Hinduness or has a particular appeal to some sections of Hindus in the manner of the Christian Democratic parties of Italy and Germany or the US Republican Party.
The party has grown in recent years because of the gradual disappearance of all other right-wing parties, decline of Congress, and the support of the burgeoning middle classes, which have, however, hardly any commitment to equity and social justice. But the BJP, too, is beginning to suffer from many of the ailments of Congress as it grows electorally as an alternative to it on an all-India scale.
In recent years, a large number of regional or one-state, one-leader parties have come into existence as a result of specific local factors, the decline of Congress, and the immense possibilities of making economic gains through politics.
Corruption
The prevalence of large-scale corruption, growth of crime and criminalization of politics and police have become major threats to India’s development, democracy and moral health.
The colonial administration was from the beginning inaccessible to the common people and ridden with corruption except at the top where salaries were very high. But because of the underdeveloped character of the economy and the limited character of the colonial state’s functioning, corruption affected only a small segment of the people. However, with the introduction of the permit-licence-quota regime, shortages of consumer goods, and high taxation during the Second World War, blackmarketing, and tax evasion became widespread. But corruption had not yet pervaded the administration or touched the political system.
Economic development, a rapid and large increase in the development and regulatory functions of the state opened up vast areas of the economy and administration to corruption. Political patronage could also now be used to gain access to the economic resources of the state and to acquire permits, licences and quotas.
There were major signals in the Nehru era that political and administrative corruption, including large-scale tax evasion, was beginning to burgeon. Strong and timely steps could, however, have checked further erosion of the system as also reversed the trend. In the 1950s, the tentacles of corruption were not yet far-reaching and major barriers to it existed in the form of a political leadership and cadre with their roots in the freedom struggle and Gandhian ethos, a largely honest bureaucracy, especially in its middle and higher reaches, and a judiciary with high integrity. But little was done in the matter. Nehru did take up individual cases of corruption but no strategy was evolved to deal with the roots of the problem and to act expeditiously.
As a result, the scale of corruption went on increasing as the government began to assume a larger role in the life of the people. Over time, the political system too began to fall prey to corruption. Not tackled at the lower levels, corruption gradually reached the higher levels of administration and politics. With added fillip provided by political patronage, rampant and all-pervading corruption began to engulf and corrode the administration. Corruption is, however, no longer the preserve of bureaucrats and politicians. No section of society is free from it; the media, academia, the professions and the judiciary have also got tainted by it. Today, so far as the common citizens are concerned, corruption, along with administrative delays and inefficiency, has become the bane of their lives.
The saving grace, however, is that there are still a large number of honest officials and political workers and leaders, but they are neither rewarded nor given recognition for being honest and are overshadowed by the constant denunciation, and even exaggeration of corruption in administration and public life.
A major source of corruption in the Indian political system since the late 1960s is the funding of elections. Elections have been becoming costlier by the day giving unfair advantage to those backed by moneybags and black money.
For years, communal and caste riots have been initiating hooligans into politics. As a result of communalism and casteism, laxity in enforcement of law and order, corruption, and the use of money and muscle power in elections there has been criminalization of politics in some parts of the country, with a nexus developing between politicians, businessmen, bureaucracy, police and criminals. The two naked expressions of this unhealthy phenomenon are the large scale on which money, criminal gangs and civil servants are used for ‘booth-capturing’ and to rig elections in some states and the criminal records of some of those elected to parliament and the state legislatures. One positive development in this respect, however, is the growing debate in the country on the ways and means—ideological, political and institutional— needed to deal with the twin evils of corruption and the role of criminal elements and money power in politics.
Conclusion
Despite a certain disarray and deterioration in some of India’s political institutions, they have continued to function and shown a resilience that has surprised many political scientists and dismayed the prophets of doom. Despite ineffective government, unstable central governments in recent years, greater violence in society, corruption in administration and political life, decay in political parties and party system, the prevalence of widespread cynicism regarding politics and political institutions, India’s democracy has shown remarkable vitality and continues to flourish, and its institutions have taken deep root. The authority of the electoral system has gone unchallenged so far. Elections, conducted under the watchful eyes of an independent Election Commission, still validate leaders and parties. The weapon of the vote is cherished and freely used by the people, especially the poor and the intelligentsia, to express their desires, to show their preference for particular policies and to punish at the ballot box those who promise but do not deliver.
The only unfortunate part is that, as in other democracies, the Indian political system lacks a mechanism through which the direction and implementation of the policies preferred by the electorate can be enforced. There is, therefore, a strong need to reform and reinvigorate both political and administrative institutions to meet the changed needs of the time, especially the demands of the poor and the disadvantaged for a greater share in the fruits of development and for the lessening of their oppression. The institutions as they have functioned so far have been geared to the maintenance of the social status quo and stability; and they have not performed that task badly. But they have to be reshaped further to undertake the new twin tasks of economic development and social transformation, mandated by the immense politicization of the people brought about by the national movement and the functioning of democracy. Simultaneously, there was and is also the need to create fresh structures and institutions through which the people’s energies are harnessed for these twin tasks. Clearly, the role of political parties and political leaders is critical in this respect. While political leaders of the type and calibre thrown up by the freedom struggle can perhaps no longer be expected, the future of the Indian people depends a great deal on their capacity to produce and reproduce leaders with a basic social and political commitment to the ideals cherished by the freedom struggle and embodied in the constitution.