Book review: Bidyut Chakrabarty and Rajendra Kumar Pandey,Reconceptualizing Indian Democracy: The Changing Electorate

Covering 12 general elections and organized into 10 chapters, this book establishes a correlation between the way democracy has been conceptualized in India and the electoral process. It is argued that every successive national level election has left its imprint on the way democracy is theorized and practiced.

The book begins by explicating the features of the Fifth General Elections, held in March 1971, wherein various ‘democratic conventions’ (p. 23) were overturned, with the dissolution of the Lok Sabha before conclusion of its term and thus the delinking of national and state level elections. In terms of party politics, the election witnessed the silencing of internal dissent and emergence of a ‘pyramidal’ party structure, as Indira Gandhi initiated personality-based politics. Yet, as the authors argue, the salience of economic issues augured well for Indian democracy as that arrested political fragmentation based on primordial identities.

The authors then sketch in detail the thought of Jayaprakash Narayan and how he aimed to reconstruct as well as redefine democratic institutions and practice in India, through the successful mobilization that he spearheaded against the authoritarian regime helmed by Indira Gandhi during the national emergency. The authors lay particular emphasis on how corruption and diminishing public ethics are dialectically connected. In the next chapter, the authors elaborate on the aspect of ‘dynastic politics’, which became a marked feature of electoral politics in the 1980s. They argue that generational transfer of power in the mid-1960s and in the mid-1980s was very different: in 1964, after Nehru’s death, his daughter Indira Gandhi was not considered the heir apparent for the leadership of the Congress party. However, after Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984, her son Rajiv Gandhi was seen as the most natural choice and was immediately anointed the leader of the party. As dynastic politics gained legitimacy, it also led to an eclipse of issue-based elections like the 1971 elections, when Indira Gandhi claimed that she was the issue. Also typical of this election was the strengthening of regional parties.

The preponderance of the Congress party in electoral politics was soon challenged by V. P. Singh, who formed the Jan Morcha after resigning from the Congress and then led the National Front government as Prime Minister. The authors note that the success of the Janata Dal was on account of mobilization of the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), enabled by the adoption of the recommendations of the Mandal Commission, and that this also led to ‘primordialization of the democratic process’ wherein ‘primordial affinities’ (pp. 100–101) became central to electoral mobilization. In the latter part of the 1980s the BJP adopted a rightist posture, raising the pitch of its support of Hindutva and the construction of the Ram mandir. That filled an ideological vacuum, as the other parties, including the Congress, continued to espouse the cause of social justice. Yet the return of the Congress to power in the 1991 general elections was testimony to the emotional vulnerability of the Indian electorate, which was swept away by the sympathy wave that followed the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. The 1990s saw the steady rise of the BJP and its move towards the ‘nucleus of the political system’ as it raised the bogey of ‘cultural nationalism’ as well as actively sought the support of regional parties (p. 117, 125). Also, as the caste-based political parties gained electoral support, there was a concomitant decline of the Congress party.

The 14th and 15th general elections typified reinforcement of coalitional politics as well as the emergence of bipolar coalitional blocs. The authors also argue that as regional parties aimed to reach out to specific social groups, they encouraged clientele-based programs which would enable them to leverage a dedicated bank of voters during elections. While this led to democratic politics taking on clientelist features, it also reflected ‘deepening of democracy’ (p. 157) as the locus of power now shifted to the regional parties. While the BJP suffered successive defeats (in 2004 and 2009) as the issue of the Ram temple did not animate the electorate, who now understood the ‘hollowness of such emotive issues’, (p. 159) the Congress was able to harness its dedicated clientele of the poor and the marginalized to emerge victorious.

The authors then write in considerable detail on the nature and features of the 16th and 17th general elections, as the BJP along with its coalitional partners won handsomely at the hustings, resulting in the centrality of the political right. The authors argue that the ideology of Hindutva and Hindu nationalism enabled the BJP to trump the narrative of ‘social-justice and economic empowerment’ (p. 170) championed by the Congress and other caste-based parties. Further, the leveraging of the extensive organizational network of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) as well as the change in leadership of the BJP—with the reins of the party being handed over to Narendra Modi and his promotion of a ‘personality cult—catapulted the party to unprecedented electoral victories’.

Allegations of corruption and anti-incumbency were other factors responsible for the defeat of the Congress in 2014. The authors write that the 2019 election was a ‘watershed’ election as the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by the BJP received the highest vote share of nearly 45 per cent, which was unique for a pan-Indian conglomeration of political parties since the formation of the BJP in 1980 (p. 200). The Congress party was electorally decimated, and its leader Rahul Gandhi was defeated even in the traditional family bastion of Amethi constituency in the state of Uttar Pradesh. The 2014 election brought about a major reconfiguration in Indian politics as the BJP now took on contours of a mass party, occupying the space vacated by the Congress. The charismatic personality of Narendra Modi and the electoral strategy of Amit Shah along with an emphasis on ‘muscular nationalism’ contributed to scripting the party’s success. The 2019 elections were also noteworthy as they led to fulfilment of a major electoral promise made by the BJP namely scrapping of Articles 370 and 35 A of the 1950 constitution. The book concludes with the argument that the 17th general elections changed the nature of political discourse in India. It marked the rise of a ‘plebiscitary democracy’ wherein the appeal of the leader trumped that of the party and its ideology.

This book covers a lengthy period of Indian electoral history and is therefore useful for students of Indian politics who wish to understand the broad contours of how electoral politics has shaped up in India. However, in so far as reconceptualization of democracy in India is concerned, the book only provides a limited analysis and confines itself to stating broad trends that have marked each general election in India. These trends are also in the manner of post-facto description of the electoral process, with no detailed explanation advanced regarding why the electorate chose one party or coalition rather than the other. The book also often relies on various assumptions. For instance, that V. P. Singh’s exit from the Congress party was his ‘cunning plan’, which would enable him to emerge as a ‘public hero’ (p. 85), or that in the first few elections, political parties had provided adequate representation to various castes, religions and regions, which is why primordial identities could not cause cleavage and division within society (p. 111). In arguing in this manner, the book presents generalized statements without adequate referencing and ignores the vast literature on the politics of identity and mobilization of the backward and marginalized castes and communities in India. Concepts such as ‘clientelism’, ‘vote bank politics’ and ‘maturation of democracy’ which are repeatedly mentioned in the book, need to be fleshed out in greater detail with an engagement with the extant theories. While the book stops short of reconceptualizing democracy, the reference to ‘plebiscitary democracy’, which the authors do not pursue in detail, could potentially be an important insight about how democracy is shaping up in India when viewed through the prism of the rise of populism and populist governments across the world.