Staying the liberal democratic course is key to India’s security, ambitions

Telling It Straight

The poll campaigning in five states conjures up an image of a vibrant democracy at play in India. The campaign noise even drowns out serious reservations about the ‘free and fair’ character of elections due to opaque electoral bonds and the Election Commission’s questionable conduct. Even if these apprehensions weren’t there, we must remember that there is more to democracy than elections.

It is in the ‘more’ that we have witnessed less since 2014. The space for public debate has shrunk, institutional structures have been hollowed out, political rights smothered by suppression, the criminalisation of dissent and the crushing of protests. Why, the very idea of citizenship based on the constitutional dictum of civic equality has been negated by the CAA.

The threat to our democracy has been chronicled globally. In March 2021, Sweden’s V-Dem Institute categorised India as an “electoral autocracy”, while Freedom House, a majority US government-funded organisation, listed India as “partly free”. In November 2021, another Swedish think-tank, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, categorised India as the “backsliding democracy with the most democratic violations during the pandemic” and a “major decliner” in its Global State of Democracy 2021 report.

All these reports confirm that Indian democracy is in deep distress, though Delhi was invited by the US to the Summit for Democracy in December – but so were ‘democracies’ like Pakistan, Malaysia, Iraq and Angola. Many Indians hope the US will fix India’s democratic decline. They are going to be disappointed. American geopolitical interest in keeping India at the centre of its efforts to counter China gets priority over shared values. It is for us Indians to recognise that our democracy matters not merely for the intrinsic value that it brings to one-seventh of humanity. It is as much a hard power imperative for Delhi in a fragile world order.

It was a very poor and illiterate India, emasculated by two centuries of colonial subjugation, that chose to be a democracy. The principle emerged from the freedom struggle in which our leaders advocated liberal and progressive values for the people, going against the grain of India’s socio-religious structure. Even if the practice of democracy was imperfect, the idea of it took deep roots among Indians who saw intrinsic value in it. India’s multiple diversities could have easily become its weakness but democracy, sustaining our ‘unity in diversity,’ converted it into its major internal strength.

As India’s democracy backslides, this internal strength is under stress. An already fragile situation in Muslim-majority Kashmir or Christian-majority Nagaland becomes even more threatening, with top generals warning of a two-and-a half-front security challenge for the country. While China and Pakistan are the two external threats, the half front refers to the internal security challenge from border regions like Kashmir and Nagaland. Economic development is bound to suffer when our 22% religious minorities, promised equal rights under a secular Constitution, feel that they are being targeted by a majoritarian government.

A weakened democracy, with ineffective checks and balances, has already made India one of the most economically unequal countries in the world, where the rich have gotten richer and the poor poorer. Rising inequality, seen to be a consequence of cronyism, can eventually lead to social turmoil and instability. A socially divided and economically weak India will not be able to muster the hard power needed to take on China.

One of the challenges from China has come in India’s neighbourhood, where Delhi has exerted maximum sway since independence. Even when it had limited hard power, the moral power of India’s democratic example sustained its influence in South Asian capitals. India was the exception in a region where regimes failed to deal fairly with religious and ethnic minorities. A bulwark against majoritarianism, Indian democracy was the aspirational beacon for neighbouring peoples.

India’s democratic decline opens the doors for China in the region more easily. The vast gap between Indian and Chinese comprehensive national power and Beijing’s greater enthusiasm in engaging our neighbours accentuate the deficit caused by India’s democratic deterioration. India’s timid response to the Ladakh border crisis has severely dented Delhi’s hard power credentials while its soft power lies in tatters.

It is only as a bulwark against authoritarianism that India can hope to play a counterweight to China. An Indian democratic failure is a failure of democracy as an idea – it strengthens China’s hand, and allows Beijing to export its growth and governance model to the world. India has to be the example that influences others to pursue the path of democracy, and it is critical for the world that Delhi itself stays true to the democratic course.

Over the years, India had shown that it would not only practise democracy in word and deed but also deliver in ample measure to all its citizens, irrespective of religion, caste, gender, race and ethnicity. It lifted 271 million Indians out of poverty between 2006 and 2016. If longstanding democracies like India show backsliding in their conduct, it is a vote of no-confidence in the belief that democracy can deliver and be effective.

Many Indians mistakenly assume that democracy is merely a catchphrase that has little value in the real world. They forget that ideas have power. Furthering India’s interests requires a wise blend of material and ideational resources. The idea of India provided us the internal stability and strength needed to springboard to great power. If the lived idea of a democracy is allowed to be hollowed out to a mere slogan, India will not be in a position to secure its own interests, let alone rise to global leadership that Indians so eagerly desire.