India has just concluded an election involving a population twice the size of the EU or the US. It was a colossal political exercise in which more than 600 million people cast their ballot, a record-breaking number. The subsequent swearing-in ceremony of Narendra Modi, India's new prime minister, marked the largest peaceful transfer of power in world history, guided by established constitutional protocol.
Any election in India is usually a crucial moment of political assertion, providing an escape vent for anger and dissatisfaction, and helping forge a larger consciousness. India votes often, in large numbers and mainly freely and fairly. In the last three decades, the country has held eight general elections, and with a couple of exceptions it has voted out the governing party or coalition every time. No other developing country can equal this record.
However, there’s another uncomfortable side to Indian democracy, which is a deeply embedded dynastic culture that borders on widespread corruption and cronyism, a perennial and sometimes dangerous conflict between individual and group rights, and a shocking absence of good governance.
For all its “success” in holding elections frequently and changing government regularly, democracy has not made the Indian state either enthusiastic or capable of providing even basic services and protection to its citizens. It is telling reflection of democracy’s perverse consequence that almost a quarter of India’s elected legislators in the last parliament had a criminal record, or that thrice as many Indians own mobile phones as have access to adequate sanitation.
Over the last three decades, Indian politics has also become extremely polarised, bitter and vituperative, with the Congress, BJP and Left blocks unwilling to consult each other on national issues or even acknowledge a measure of political legitimacy to each other. There is now a do-or-die nature to elections and democracy in India, where the defeated party is treated more like a vanquished army in medieval days.
While India certainly offers a better political model than many other developing nations, especially those in its geographical vicinity, and has managed major social challenges rather peacefully over the last 70 years, Indians are generally not self-critical enough about their democracy. Instead of reflecting on how it is neither deep, nor liberal nor truly responsive, there is a persistent intellectual strain of self-congratulation, and public debate at least until this election has been overwhelmingly focused on rights, not on remedies or responsibilities.
But in recent times, there has been a new development that can usher in major social and political change in the country, and this is the dramatic rise of the Indian middle class. While definitions about middle class vary among economists, in political terms it includes educated and working people who live and toil in cities or towns, either as taxi drivers, nurses, IT engineers or multinational executives. They all have common interests and have begun to organise themselves.
The dramatic rise and fall of the Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party in recent months presents the most compelling evidence of this group’s sway, and how it is clever enough to see through the drama and insincerity of old-style politics. This group is no longer content with symbolic gestures, empty promises or doctrinaire labels, and at a minimum it demands safe streets, reliable water and electricity, proper schools and colleges, and opportunity for economic advancement.
It also brings an altogether fresh perspective on the social contract between government and citizens, the beginning of an ownership of the political process and a realisation that public resources belong to the country and not to politicians to dispense as they wish.
The increasing footprint, engagement and demands of this middle class has already forced a small revolution in Indian politics by forcing many chief ministers and other officials to cut back on VIP indulgences like expensive cars and palatial homes. The rapid growth of India’s civil society, which now acts as a useful watchdog over the political and business elite, and which has helped shepherd major pro-transparency reforms like the Right to Information Act, is a mirror to the rapid growth of the middle class.
It remains to be seen how much more of a transformative and catalytic role the middle class can play, and whether India does remain a place where family, caste, religion, and crony connections are still very trenchant and influential in politics.
But it is also very encouraging that in the just concluded election, and in the public debate leading up to it, some of the most passionate and penetrating moments were around issues of development, corruption and accountability. India’s middle class has arrived and will probably shape its democracy for the better.
Subhash Agrawal is a New Delhi-based analyst and founder of India Focus, a political affairs think tank