Are Indians too Dumb for Democracy?

Before you jump on me, consider these developments in recent months. 

1. Bihar is looking to increase caste-based reservation to 75%. This was a follow-up to the caste-based survey tabled in the Bihar Assembly.
2. Toxic smog at Delhi has forced a partial shutdown of activities. Yet, some people were found defying the government’s orders to stop stubble burning, a major contributor to the smog.
3. Congress (INC) came to power in Karnataka riding on promises of freebies, including that of free electricity. In a span of months, the state is reeling under power cuts. 

The political parties can argue that they play to win, and, therefore, doing whatever it takes to win is but natural. In defense, the people can claim that they were only pursuing their self-interest, a legitimate exercise in a democracy. 

But if democracy requires political parties to do people’s bidding, does it follow that it’s people who are to be blamed here? 

Indeed, who is at fault here? The players or the game itself?

The answer lies in the conditions that midwifed the birth of the modern Indian state. 

Economic model

At Independence, India was a very poor democracy. As India’s Economic Survey 2016-2017   observes it was in fact one of the poorest nations, regardless of political systems. Simultaneously, it was a highly cleavaged society with deep social fissures. 

In such societies, distrust of the private sector is high. As if to clarify our national way forward: the Soviet Union (USSR) transformed into an industrial powerhouse in a few decades aided by centralized planning and execution. India adopted a socialist economic model though it stopped short of treading the Soviet Union path.

Because of these factors, “India had to redistribute early in the development process, when its state capacity was particularly weak.” Naturally, India was forced to “redistribute inefficiently, using blunt and leaky instruments”. But the inefficient redistribution efforts persisted because of “difficulty of exit”. The exit was particularly more difficult in an ideological climate that favored “redistribution over investments”. 

Precocious Democracy

Unlike the western democracies that arrived at universal franchise through struggles and in phases, India gatecrashed its way to universal franchise all at once in 1950. 

Devesh Kapur explores this topic at length in his paper, “Why Does the Indian State Both Fail and Succeed?” Most western countries experienced a phase of strong economic growth before they turned to democracy. India is unique in that it pursued democracy prior to economic development. Therefore, the state’s redistributive tendencies were further amplified.

According to Kapur, India’s problems are an outcome of this “precocious democracy”; it bypassed the normal routes and arrived at the destination much sooner than expected. 

This precocious democracy impaired India’s ability to fund public goods. And, as Kapur notes: “By not providing public goods before shifting to redistribution, the Indian state weakened the legitimacy and trust to create a virtuous circle that could strengthen the social contract between citizens and the state.”

But, as asked earlier, if political parties have to respond to people’s interests, why don’t people demand basic public services and oust governments that fail to do this?

Because poor farmers may prefer targeted transfers/benefits in lieu of public services like education etc. Because slum dwellers may prefer targeted housing benefits to public infrastructure like roads. And so on and so forth! 

Due to deep social distrust, communities doubt how well the promise to provision public goods is carried out and whether it would really benefit them. As a result: “Electoral competition therefore revolves around distributing public resources as “club goods”—goods with excludability characteristics—rather than providing public goods to a broad base.” 

This has led to the exit of the section most concerned about the public goods: the middle class. 

A system that de-emphasizes public goods in lieu of highly targeted redistributive efforts naturally evades the middle class’ trust. As this class turns to private provision and market solutions, their reliance on the public services is reduced. With them exiting the system, the pressure to change it is reduced too. 

In an Indian twist to electioneering and politics, the social cleavages ensure that politics of ‘signaling’ are more important than delivery of public services. Owing to the checkered history between various communities, it’s far more vital for communities to have “their people” in power than receiving any tangible benefit. 

It’s not a coincidence we started this discussion with Bihar, where the plank of self-respect pushed the state into the abyss of lawlessness for nearly two decades.  

In short, the players come and go, but they can’t choose the game. And the game was rigged from the start.

Further Reading:

1. “The Economic Vision for Precocious, Cleavaged India” (Document) 
2. “Why Does the Indian State Both Fail and Succeed?” (Document)