Transcript Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen
Politics in India
Comparative Politics Today, 9/e
Almond, Powell, Dalton & Strøm
Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Longman © 2008
Country Bio: India
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Population:
 1,103,37 billion (2005)
Territory:
 1,269,338 sq. miles
Year of Independence:
 1947
Year of Current Constitution:
 1950
Number of Constitutional
Amendments:
 93 (as of April 2006)
Head of State:
 President A.P.J. Abdul Kalem
Head of Government:
 Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
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Language:
 English, Hindi (primary tongue of
30% of the people), Bengali,
Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu,
Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada,
Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kasmiri,
Sindhi, Sanskrit
 Note: There are 24 languages, each
of which is spoken by a million or
more people
Religion:
 Hindu 80.5%, Muslim 13.4%,
Christian 2.3%, Sikh 1.9%, Buddhist
0.8%, Jain 0.4%, other 0.6%
(Census 2001)
Scheduled Castes
 16.2% of population
Scheduled Tribes
 8.2% of population
Background
 Poverty and underdevelopment
 New sense of optimism
 Integration into a global market economy
 But will it bring sustained growth
 Good case for cross-cultural comparisons of the transition to
democracy
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Has democratic political system
Secular constitution
Liberalized but still mixed economy
Mass poverty
Complex ethnic composition
Current Policy Challenges
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New international environment has posed a sharp challenge to India’s
traditional policy of non-alignment
 Panchasheela
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Indo-Pakistani rivalry – source of great anxiety
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Potential for nuclear war
1998 nuclear tests
Series of negotiations and confidence-building measures
Kashmir
Key strategic partner with U.S. – South Asia policy
Poverty
Mass literacy
 Few elite institutions: IIT, IIM
 No infrastructure for mass literacy
 Education is the responsibility of India’s regional governments
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Infrastructure problems in road transport and shipping facilities
The Twin Legacies of Colonial Rule
and the Anti-Colonial Movement
 Historical controversies
 Highly organized feudal state in India versus “segmentary” early
state
 Colonial rule
 Mahatma Gandhi
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Satyagraha – nonviolent resistance
Cross-community coalitions – Hindi-Muslim unity
Indian National Congress
India Act of 1935
 Impact of British rule on India
 Congress Party
 India became independent in 1947
 Jawaharlal Nehru- India’s first prime minister
The “Givens” of Indian Society: From
Hierarchy to Plurality
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Religious diversity and political conflict
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Hindu’s divided
Jammu and Kashmir have Muslim majority
Punjab has a Sikh majority
Several other small states have a Christian majority
Ayodhya
Hindu nationalism
Partition of British India and the creation of Pakistan
Sikhism
Castes and politics
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Jatis – basic social units that still govern marriages, social networks, food taboos, and
rituals in India
In the past it regulated the choice of occupation: hereditary and caste-specific
More than 2,000 jatis in India; divided into four varnas
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The Brahmins – priests
Kshatriyas – rulers and warriors
Vaisyas – mercantile class
Sudras – service groups, agriculturists, and artisans
Dharma
Dalits
The “Givens” of Indian Society: From
Hierarchy to Plurality
 Language
 Key component of identity
 Divided into two main groups: Indo-Aryan languages of the
North and the Dravidian languages of the South
 Largest single language is Hindi, which, along with English,
is recognized as an official language of India.
 Social Class
 Did not develop a revolutionary peasant movement
 Industrial working class is quite small and only a fraction is
unionized
 Middle peasant cultivators
 Pressures of mechanization; more landless
Political Institutions and the Policy
Process
 Like many former British colonies, India adopted a
parliamentary democracy
 Has survived many challenges including political change, societal
change and wars
 Decentralization of power; devolution; rule of five
 The President
 Designed with the British monarch in mind; in practice, the office
combines ceremonial roles with some substantive powers
 Power formally vested in the president, and he is expected to
exercise these powers on the advice of the Council of Ministers,
with the prime minister at its head.
 The Prime Minister
 Controls and coordinates the departments of government and
determines policy through the submission of a program for
parliamentary action
 If he commands a majority in the Lok Sabha, his government is
secure.
Political Institutions and the Policy
Process: The Parliament
 Upper House – the Rajya Sabha (the Council of
States) has some features of the U.S. Senate (India
is a federation)
 Lower House – Lok Sabha (House of the People)
 545 members; 543 are directly elected and two are
nominated by the president of India as representatives of
the Anglo-Indian community
 Simple majority; single member constituencies; 5 year term;
can be dissolved
 Guaranteed representation of former untouchables and trials
in the Lok Sabha – “reserved seats”
 Designed to be an instrument of democratic
accountability
Political Institutions and the Policy
Process: The Parliament
 Zero hour
 Ultimate control over the executive lies in the motion
of no-confidence
 Rajya Sabha consists of a maximum of 250 members,
of which twelve are nominated by the president for
their special knowledge or practical experience.
 The legislative process generally follows the British
practice.
 Once both houses pass a bill, it requires the president’s
assent to become a law.
 Joint sessions are used to resolve conflicts.
 Lack of party discipline
Political Institutions and the Policy
Process: The Judiciary
 Constitution committed to individual rights of equality and
liberty
 System that is both independent from external control and free
to interpret the law
 Supreme Court has original and exclusive jurisdiction in disputes
between the Union government and one or more states, or
disputes between two or more states
 It has appellate jurisdiction in any case, civil or criminal that
involves a question of law in the meaning and intent of the
Constitution
 Supreme Court determines the constitutionality of any
enactment.
Political Institutions and the Policy
Process: The Bureaucracy
 Bureaucratic apparatus that is both
professionally organized and politically
accountable
 Enormously complex system that
combines national or all-India services
with regional and local services
 IAS, IPS
The Federal Structure
 Fear of “balkanization”
 Special features of the Indian Constitution
 Produce highly centralized form of federalism
 Division of powers between the central government and the states with
a bias in favor of the center
 The financial provisions affecting the distribution of revenues
 Kashmir
 Test of the integrative ability of the Indian political system
 Union List
 Special powers: emergency powers; use of executive powers,
special legislative powers
 State List
 Pattern of cooperation between center and the states
The Articulation of Interests
 Trade Unions and Employer’s Associations
 Under India’s labor law, any seven workers can set
up a trade union
 All India Trade Union Congress
 All India Railwaymen’s Federation
 Interest groups closely affiliated with parties
 Indigenous Interests
 Satyagraha
 Chipko
 Indian Peasant Union
 Kisans
The Articulation of Interests
 Local Politics
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Social activists
Dharna
Gherao
Rajiv Gandhi
The Articulation of Interests
 Democracy and the challenge of
governance
 Indian case demonstrates how
transactional politics within firm boundaries
laid down and defended with
overwhelming force by the state have
helped in the functioning of representative
political institutions.
The Articulation of Interests
 The Military
 Professional and apolitical character of the army
 Office corps of India has remained nonpartisan
even during political turmoil.
 Absence of leadership vacuum at the upper and
middle levels of the system and the fragmented
character of the command structure = relative
immunity of the Indian political system from a
military takeover
The Party System
 The Congress System
 The Congress Party
 The Bharatiya Janata Party
 The Communist Party
 The social bases of the parties
 Congress Party cuts across all social groups and cleavages of
India; catch-all party
 Hindu nationalist BJP is very much a party of the HinduHindi-belt – has extended somewhat beyond the upper
social order and Hindu upper caste
 Communist parties (CPM and CPI) attracts more support
from lower social classes and the more educated voters.
The Political Socialization and
Political Culture
 The interaction of tradition and modernity
 W.H. Morris-Jones: three idioms: the modern, the
traditional, and the saintly
 Political learning
 Schooling is limited, and primary schooling is not a
federal subject
 Mass illiteracy
 Liberalization and penetration by the electronic
media
 Elections
 Participation has stabilized around 60%
Political Recruitment
 Percentage of politicians of rural origin has
grown in the Lok Sabha over the years
 Percentage of Brahmins has dropped
significantly
 Many regional governments have become
important recruitment ground for new leaders
and a school for training these potential
leaders.
Policies to address the Economy,
Welfare and Poverty
 Politics of incremental growth and redistribution
 Mass poverty has always been high on the nation’s political
agenda
 National Development Council
 Eliminated famine and a reliance on imported food
 Green Revolution
 Food procurement
 Planned development based on mixed economy
 “commanding heights” – dominated by the public sector
achieved some welfare and some negative side-effects
 Quota-permit-raj
 Corruption and inefficiency
 Manmohan Singh - liberalization
Conclusion: Democracy and
Development
 What kind of democracy will emerge over the nest
decades in India?
 An elitist, affluent, and secure India
 A majoritarian democracy, reforming but still poor, armed
with nuclear teeth, threatening its neighbors
 Democratic potential of politics from below
 Its “million mutinies” ensconced in the context of a
responsive state and elites well versed in the art and
science of governance, can pave the transition to
liberal democracy despite predictions to the contrary.