Overall Reality of Indian Democracy

The elaborate poll exercise in the world’s largest democracy is over. With 62 per cent of the electorate turning out in the last, that is, fifth, phase of the polling for the 15th Lok Sabha, the average voting percentage of this year’s parliamentary elections happens to be around 57 which is slightly lower than the 58 per cent touched in the previous (2004) Lok Sabha polls. However, the fifth phase polling figure being provisional it is expected to be revised upwards in course of time, and hence the all-India average could end up reaching the 2004 level.

This is most significant given the intense heat wave conditions prevailing in large parts of the country. This shows that despite all its deficiencies parliamentary democracy is both alive and kicking in India. The common man/woman is well aware of his/her right to vote and exercises it judiciously across the vast landmass on the appointed day. And the fact that in most cases the exit poll predictions go wrong (as had happened in 2004 when the pollsters had almost uniformly decreed that the then ruling NDA’s ‘Shining India’ dispensation would decisively win the polls whereas in reality the UPA emerged victorious)—this may happen this time too—is also a tribute to the electorate: zealously preserving the sanctity of the ‘secret ballot’. This too manifests the inherent strength of our parliamentary democracy, indeed a unique phenomenon in the developing world.

With the poll process having come to an end hectic parleys have begun among the major parties and alliances (even before the counting of votes and declaration of results) to cobble up a majority in the coming Lok Sabha. While these polls were distinguished by the singular lack of substantive issues, political, economic, social, dominating the election campaign (something experienced in no previous election), which is why subjective and personalised attacks by leading figures on the national plane acquired such prominence in the media, there is total ignorance among all “expert analysts” and pspehologists on which party or combination would run the government at the Centre, even though one major outcome is beyond dispute: a hung parliament with no single party or alliance getting the requisite majority. But beyond that it is extremely hazardous to forecast the shape of things to emerge. Even though all exit polls predict a slight edge for the Congress-led UPA over the BJP-led NDA, there is no guarantee that that prediction won’t become a casualty once the results trickle in on May 16, that is, by the time this journal comes out in print and reaches its readers.

The success of the regular holding of parliamentary polls is no doubt a reflection of the effective manner in which elections are being conducted by the Election Commission across the length and breadth of this country braving all odds among which money and muscle power have come to assume prime and increasing importance over the years. However, it would be a gross mistake to equate this success with the country’s governance. The most eloquent testimony to the failure of governance in India is being provided by the continued incarceration of a medical practitioner, Dr Binayak Sen, who languishes in jail in Chhattisgarh. For two long years Dr Sen, despite his failing heart, is in detention without being given bail as he is charged with having helped the dreaded Maoists in the area (and who doesn’t know that the country’s PM himself has branded these Maoists as posing the ‘most serious threat to India’s internal security’?)—in fact he completes two years in prison precisely this day (May 14). Despite 22 distinguished Nobel laureates, several Indian MPs and a number of eminent citizens having called for his release, both the State and Central governments are unmoved—taking shelter behind the draconian provisions of a law enacted in the State to fight the Maoists they have refused to pay any heed to such exhortations and the court too has not granted him bail. In this scenario The Indian Express has aptly observed:

As long as Sen remains in jail-without-bail, every state action against Naxals remain suspect—is it genuine vigilance, or mere bloody-mindedness?

While the authorities can justifiably project the regular holding of parliamentary elections as a vivid expression of the successful operation of democracy in the country as a whole, the persistent attacks on the downtrodden and the dispossessed in the rural hinterland—the real cause behind the growth and sustenance of Maoist/Naxalite extremism in the most backward regions of central India—as also the seemingly unending persecution of a social activist-cum-medical doctor like Dr Binayak Sen expose the limits of democratic functioning in practice and unmask the fundamental infirmities afflicting the world’s largest democracy.

To cast a blind eye to this overall reality of Indian democracy is to indulge in self-delusion.

May 14 S.C.