INDIA’S DEMOCRACY TODAY
India’s Democracy Today
Garima Goel, Louise Tillin
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his special issue enquires into the landscape of Indian
democracy as it unfolds today, seven decades after the
beginning of India’s democratic life. The establishment
of a new form of political dominance under the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) since 2014 has attracted much comment.
Contributors look for the threads of historical continuity or
change that provide deeper contextual understanding to
navigate these more proximate changes in political fortunes.
Do they represent long-term breaks? Are they undergirded
by larger changes in society? And how will they, in turn,
affect India’s social and institutional construct? To reconsider
debates on India’s democracy at this potential hinge point,
the articles reflect on the characterisation of the forms that
political power takes in India, the changing substance of
civil society, institutions of democratic accountability (such
as federalism and parliamentarism), democratic values, and
representations of inequalities in class and caste structures
in political life.1
New Hegemony?
The first article addresses the nature of the shift under the
current BJP-led regime. Suhas Palshikar (p 36) argues that the
recent electoral outcomes herald a “second dominant party
system,” but the dominance was not limited to the arena of
elections.2 A prominent feature of the new regime, according
to Palshikar, is its ability to produce and propagate new ideas.
Events such as demonetisation and the Uttar Pradesh elections
have been used to quickly introduce ideas, respectively, of a
cashless economy and a narrow secularism based on strict
equality, without public debate. Palshikar suggests that the re-
gime has been able to create a wide acceptance of potentially
controversial ideas by linking ideas of “development” and
“Hindutva” with “nationalism;” This results in an ideological
dominance, marking the arrival of a “new hegemony.”
How does the BJP navigate the construction of hegemony
within the political institutions that have shaped the land-
scape of democracy over the last seven decades? The next two
articles in this issue consider different elements of the institu-
tional matrix. Sandipto Dasgupta (p 43) looks at the reasons
that India adopted a parliamentary over presidential system as
a means to enshrine the supremacy of the legislature, facilitate
regular and routinised debate, and prevent a separation of
power through an elected presidency that could create alter-
native power centres. He suggests that the adoption of a
parliamentary model reflected the desire for a “negotiated
and coalitional developmentalist project” in the early decades
after independence. This model has come under pressure,
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albeit in different ways, by the centralising and plebiscitarian
proclivities of, first, Indira Gandhi, and, today, Narendra Modi.
The third article by Louise Tillin (p 49) looks at the implica-
tions of the return of centralised political power for Indian fed-
eralism. Federalism is typically thought of as a mechanism that
institutionalises a model of power sharing. However, Tillin
shows that India’s federal system was designed in ways intended
to limit constraints on the policymaking ability of parliamen-
tary majorities. The regionalisation of political life in recent
decades partially obscured these features of institutional
design by necessitating a more coalitional form of politics and
centre–state bargaining. With the return of single-party domi-
nance in Parliament, Tillin argues that the design of Indian
federalism makes it harder for states to resist a centralising
national government when it is equipped with a majority.
Democratic Values
Over the last 70 years, discontent with the system, or with the
parameters of choices within the system, have been expressed
in different ways. The next article by Garima Goel (p 54)
looks at the relatively new option of “None of the Above”
(NOTA) that citizens may choose while voting. This measure
has provided potential new means of expressing discontent,
but we know little about how it has been used since its intro-
duction and the extent to which it will strengthen democratic
processes. Goel analyses geographical patterns of NOTA voting
to assess where this option has been exercised. She finds that,
contrary to expectation, it is not the urban, more highly
educated constituencies that have used NOTA to express dis-
content with political candidates. Rather, NOTA votes increase
as constituencies become more rural and less literate, with
the largest concentration of usage found in constituencies
dominated by Scheduled Tribes.
If NOTA may be opening up new forms of citizen–state
engagement that could ultimately provide alternative forms of
democratic accountability, new laws such as the “Right to
Information” have also expanded the range of tools open to
citizens to hold the state to account. However, as Christophe
Jaffrelot and Basim U Nissa (p 62) show, exercising these rights
can be dangerous in much of the country.
To address entrenched social inequalities, political parties
have provided descriptive representation to a vast array of
castes over time, and it is generally accepted that this has led
EPW would like to thank Garima Goel and Louise Tillin for putting
together this issue on “India’s Democracy Today.”
august 18, 2018 vol lIiI no 33 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

to the deepening of democracy in India. Yet, the scholarly
focus on caste, Gilles Verniers (p 68) argues, has obscured
changes in the class composition of the ruling class, at least in
India’s most populous state. His analysis of the socio-economic
profile of legislators in Uttar Pradesh reveals the rise of busi-
nesspersons in politics across regions, castes, and parties of
the state. The heterogenisation of representation on the basis
of caste has been accompanied by a homogenisation on the
basis of class, Verniers suggests.
Other Interventions
While many of the articles in this special issue consider recent
developments in Indian democracy, discussions at the confer-
ence from which these articles emerged were cognisant of the
importance of historicising present-day trends when seeking
to characterise the nature of democracy in India. For instance,
Kanchan Chandra opened the conference by arguing that
India’s democracy has long coexisted with several authoritarian
strains, albeit in ways that have shifted in balance across time.3
These, among others, include a hierarchical style of leadership
based on cults of personality, heredity among the ruling class,
limits on dissent, and the militarisation of everyday life. She
argued that the authoritarian elements exist alongside free
and fair elections, a certain amount of political inclusion, and
fundamental rights that act as democratic constraints.
With reference to recent elections and referendums in the
United States and the United Kingdom respectively, many
commentators have suggested that there has been a rise in
Economic & Political Weekly EPW august 18, 2018 vol lIiI no 33
INDIA’S DEMOCRACY TODAY
“illiberal” politics in liberal democracies across the world.
Jonathan Spencer has recommended that this apparently new
trend in politics could productively be read in light of the experi-
ence of South Asia, where citizens have long been familiar with the
“inherently agonistic” nature of politics and the “unruly spirit of
democracy.” Seen in this light, the zealous campaigns and divi-
sions seen in the political events elsewhere may not seem so queer.
Again, during Vernier’s presentation, participants at the
conference noted that the data he presented indicated the pos-
sible emergence of a new ruling class in India.
The articles in this special issue open a range of avenues for
analysing the nature of India’s democracy in this period of
substantial political change.
Garima Goel (garimagoel99@gmail.com) graduated with an MRes
in Contemporary India from King’s India Institute, King’s College
London. Louise Tillin (louise.tillin@kcl.ac.uk) teaches at the King’s India
Institute, King’s College London.
Notes
1 Contributors build on the proceedings of a conference on “Democracy in
India,” organised by the India Institute at King’s College London in June 2017.
2 Also, see Palshikar (2017).
3 For a full account see Chandra (2017).
References
Chandra, Kanchan (2017): “Authoritarian Elements in Democracy,” Seminar,
May, Vol 693, http://www.india-seminar.com/2017/693/693_kanchan_
chandra.htm.
Palshikar, Suhas (2017): “India’s Second Dominant Party System,” Economic &
Political Weekly, Vol 52, No 12, pp 12–15.
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