PSC 1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 23: Liberal Democracy, Agriculture In Argentina, Hindutva
14 Dec 2016
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The Paradoxes of Indian Politics
• Remarkable endurance of its liberal-democratic political system
• India is the world's largest democracy
• Paradox: India has had an overdeveloped state in an underdeveloped civil society
o Faced the unique problem of implanting liberal democracy in a predominantly rural
society
o In the history of every other long-stadig ad edurig deora…
• The consolidation of its structures and norms comes only after urbanization-
industrialization has already substantially or fully taken place
▪ India institutionalizes a liberal-democratic society in a predominantly
agricultural society
• Here it is the weight of landlords, farmers, peasants and the rural
poor that plays a disproportionately greater role than anywhere
else in shaping the character of that democracy
• The role of the Congress party as a system of patronage and vote-
gathering, of administration and networking, of transactional
exchanges and bargaining in the countryside
• Crucial to the functioning of Indian democracy
• At least since the late sixties and early seventies India has had a remarkable combination
of endemic political instability at the national level yet remarkable systemic durability
overall
o Decline of the Congress
o Mutation and mutilation of various democratic institutions from the bureaucracy to
the judiciary to the public media
o ‘ise of Idias iddle-upper peasantry
o Political volatility shown by key minority groups like Dalits, tribals, Muslims
o Extremely uneven character of economic development
• Giving rise to
▪ Highly unequal distribution of living standards and life opportunities
▪ Rising mass expectations and growing frustrations at their lack of
fulfilment
• Historial delie of the Cogress… et iailit of a other politial foratio to full
replace the Congress and its role
o The result:
• Emergence of a political and ideological vacuum
• Collapse of what has been called the Nehruvian Consensus
• Its four founding principles – now all under attack
▪ Socialism
▪ Secularism
▪ Democracy
▪ Non-alignment.
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