70 years after its first elections, India is a 'flawed' democracy

The Modi regime cited a rule in the Rajya Sabha book to tell the Secretariat that it has to reject a question that was “provisionally accepted” by the same authority in its wisdom. The question by Shanta Chetri of the Trinamool Congress, on India’s fall from democratic grace — its ranking has declined to 53 from 51 in the 2020 list, and it is therefore a ‘flawed democracy’ according to the Economist Intelligence Unit — was deemed trivial and the Ministry of External Affairs, citing the Ministry of Law and Justice, barred the query.

Citing ‘democratic backsliding’ and ‘crackdowns’ on civil liberties, the index noted that India had moved up the ladder to the 27th rank in 2014. The decline in democratic values, as reflected in institutions and politics, has been steep, and covers the period that the Narendra Modi government has been in power at the Centre. The BJP, till 2020, seemed an invincible force that would succeed in decimating the Opposition parties in power in the States and establish its vision of One Nation-One Party and the idea of One Nation-One Vote. In asking for Chetri’s question to be dropped, the Narendra Modi regime has iterated its intolerance to being held to account by the Opposition.

No questions in Amrit Kaal

In the year that India is spending a fortune to celebrate 75 years of Independence through esoteric and varied programmes and competitions as part of the Amrit Mahotsav, and at a time when the Prime Minister has declared that the next 25 years will be the Amrit Kaal of the country, it is ironic that the regime is afraid of answering questions. A less touchy or less discourteous regime would have had no problems with awkward questions and ought to have been able to defend its performance.

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The irony is not in the fact that it refuses to be answerable. The irony is that 2022 is the 70th year of India’s first assignation with multi-party, ideologically heterogeneous elections. The first step of the Indian voter’s enchantment with democracy and the power to make a decision on choice began with the first phase on October 25, 1951 and ended after 68 staggered days of voting on February 21, 1952.  Universal adult franchise was the basis of the first ever elections of Independent India. It was an extraordinary experiment and a gamble that paid off.

The sheer audacity of the exercise, spearheaded by Sukumar Sen, India’s first Election Commissioner, was breath-taking, as millions of voters were enlisted and constituencies carved out, and the powerless poor Indian went to the polling booth and cast her/his ballot. A total of 53 parties and 533 Independent candidates contested in the elections to the 489-seat Lok Sabha. Elections were also simultaneously held for most of the States.

Sprouting of political parties

The Jana Sangh was born in 1951, when Syama Prasad Mookerjee quit the Jawaharlal Nehru government and set it up. Dr BR Ambedkar also quit and set up his own party, later known as the Republican Party. Breaking away from the Congress, Acharya Kripalani’s Kisan Mazdoor Praja Parishad also contested the elections, as did the Socialist Party set up by Ram Manohar Lohia and Jayprakash Narayan.

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There was nothing unexpected in the participation of these challengers to the Congress led by Nehru. There were ideological differences between the Jana Sangh, the Socialists, Dr Ambedkar’s party and the Congress. But these were leaders and ideologies that had participated in shaping the idea of India as reflected in the Constitution.

The outlier and totally unexpected participant in India’s first general election was the Communist Party of India (CPI). To be able to participate in the elections, the ban on the CPI declaring it illegal imposed in 1948 had to be lifted, even as the Communists withdrew the tactics of ‘armed struggle’ and called off the Telangana armed insurrection.

Communists in parliamentary politics

It was a carefully negotiated entry of the Communists into the arena of parliamentary politics. In the States, including West Bengal, the CPI had participated in elections held before Independence. The difference was that in 1951, the basis of elections changed from limited franchise to universal franchise.

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The negotiation between the Communists represented by Jyoti Basu with Nehru was mediated by Mridula Sarabhai, who was a friend of Nehru and of Basu; the latter modestly claimed, “I knew her.” The Communists ended the Telangana movement, prisoners were released and the party participated in the 1951-52 elections. It won 16 seats and over 3% of the votes.

The idea of an ideologically heterogeneous Parliament, where a party like the CPI had a voice that consistently challenged the party in power, is a benchmark of how a democratic state accommodates difference, dissent, disapproval and debate. In contrast, 70 years after the first elections, the Modi regime has written to the Rajya Sabha that a question it provisionally accepted must be disallowed.

Throttling of debate

The number of instances since 2014 where debate has been denied because questions were not allowed to be raised has climbed steeply. The issues on which debate has been throttled include the issue of the almost yearlong farmers’ agitation, hacking phones using Pegasus spyware to snoop on journalists, politicians, civil society activists and judges, the border faceoff with China and its incursions into Indian territory, specific cases of rape like Unnao and Hathras, citizenship, and more. A punitive Parliament denied members entry into the Rajya Sabha in the Winter Session because of unruly behaviour.

By disallowing a question on why India was less democratic in 2020, the Modi regime has inadvertently confirmed the damning assessments of the US-based Freedom House and Swedish V Dem Institute, that India has become a flawed democracy and an ‘electoral autocracy’. The distance travelled by India’s democracy between then — when the first elections were held — and now, is that the identity of the sovereign has undergone a radical metamorphosis.

‘Benevolent’ autocrat as sovereign

If Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman reflects the values of her party and the regime she serves, she has revealed, either deliberately or inadvertently, that the people are no longer sovereign in India as said by the Constitution. Quoting from the Mahabharat, as though it said only one thing, she said: “The king must make arrangements for the welfare of the populace by way of abandoning any laxity and by governing the state in line with dharma, along with collecting taxes which are in consonance with the dharma.”

Because she used no qualifiers and there were no caveats to explain that the sovereign in India was not a king, it seemed that she and the government of which she is a minister had substituted the people by a king, who was a benevolent autocrat dispensing welfare and controlling laxity, which could mean anything, not excluding freedom of expression or even the freedom to participate in protests, debates, and elections.

Seventy years after India concluded its first election as an independent country and installed the people as the sovereign, it points to a new, dangerous and deplorable shift that would effectively overturn the foundations of Independent India as a republic.

(Shikha Mukerjee is a political commentator for print, digital and television. She was political editor of The Times of India in Kolkata).

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