India: elections vs. democracy vs. unity

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See the Sol Sanders Archive By Sol Sanders SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

Half-naked tribals using hi tech wireless gadgets to vote illustrates the anomalies of current Indian elections. For as potentially 675 million go to the polls in a four-phased, month long process, the shibboleths associated with Òthe worldÕs largest democracyÓ are tested. It also illustrates the dilemmas Washington faces in attempting to substitute ÒdemocracyÓ for an Iraqi terror regime ø the still larger effort to remold the Greater Middle East political culture ø as a defense against future 9/11s. For many of the problems of Indian ÒdemocracyÓ ø poverty, illiteracy, ethnic, linguistic and caste animosities ø are those of the Middle East.

The outline of the Indian process is simple. It is to choose 543 members of the Lok Sabha, the lower and more powerful house of a bicameral legislature in the British tradition. An independent elections commission delineates constituencies. They vary from 25 million [!] to 50,000 voters. But from here on, the Indian system takes on peculiarities of the incredibly complex Indian polity of more than one billion people.

There are reserved seats for so-called Òscheduled castesÓ ø historically deprived groups. [Two seats were constitution ally reserved for Anglo-Indians, descendants of mixed ancestry]. The election is first-past-the-post but while most candidates are independents, the successful generally belong to political parties. A government is named by the otherwise figurehead president [he in turn named by the prime minister through parliament consensus for a fixed term] who appoints as prime minister the leader with the most seats. But that party may ø particularly if it does not have an absolute majorityø form a ruling coalition.

The outgoing government is a coalition of 23 parties under the current largest party, the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP], of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. At the moment it does not seem likely to get an absolute majority. Most prognosticators say the principle national opposition party, the Indian National Congress, which ruled almost unchallenged for 40 years, will not make a comeback.

Although it is a muddle not unknown in older parliamentary regimes, the two leading parties do present alternative programs. The BJP, which began to defeat the Congress in the mid-80s, has its origins in Hindu revivalism ø and, in fact, its initiators were the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh [RSS][National Volunteer Organization] a para-military marrying of Fascist-Nazi youth organizational methods with Hindu self-denial. Its violent past [and present] is linked with the assassins of Mahatma Gandhi, the national leader who led the CongressÕ successful fight for Indian independence. The BJPÕs predominantly upper [priestly] caste and, particularly, its middle-class origins have also made it, at least theoretically, an opponent of the socialism which the Congress espoused under IndiaÕs longtime Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The Congress has in principle now, too, moved to a neo-liberal economic line. It continues professions of devotion to secularism, sometimes fudged. And though its alliance with the Soviet Union has gone aglimmering, were it to return to power, there is enough difference between the two to suggest different policies including foreign policy.

However, since it is unlikely either would have a majority, coalition government and compromised policies appear the future. The present volatile oalition patchwork ø and the one the Congress would try to put togetherø is just that. They often contain ideologically opposed groups. What binds them is patronage in a country where poverty is the norm. But that is often vitiated because the parties are regional, based on linguistic, ethnic, religious, and most of all, caste loyalties. The complexity of the caste structure is so great but so endemic that it often overrides all other considerations.

Because Union coalition governments depend on these regional parties for their existence, increasingly power is devolving to the 31 Indian states. This dispersal is reinforced by the statesÕ differing ethnic and linguistic characteristics ø and recently by increasing differences in economic progress. The major southern states [which for example do not share the Hindi-Urdu lingua franca of most of northern India] and the several western India states are developing at a more rapid rate ø especially from the impoverished but politically powerful Uttar Pradesh [170 million] and Bihar [85 million] with a population increase faster than most other areas.

This power shift, in the end, could destroy Indian unity. It is a fear dogging the country since independence ø especially with the creation of Pakistan from Moslem majority areas in the partition of old British India, and then the breakaway of Bangla Desh from Pakistan despite their Moslem commonality. [India retains a larger Moslem population than Pakistan, 150 million or more.] Disparate economic progress ø defying the old clichŽ of an inevitable [poor] ÒHindu rate of growthÓ øcould intensify the differences among the states, producing even more volatile coalition politics.

It will take more than elections, however fair and miraculous they appear given IndiaÕs numbers, to maintain Indian democracy ø and unity.