Hundreds of millions of Indian citizens have begun voting and will continue to do so for six weeks. Democratic elections in India are the most massive human mobilizations in the world, more than any other election, war, pilgrimage, migratory movement or international fair. There are more than a million polling stations and even a team of elephants to transport ballot boxes to the Himalayas. Unlike many other democracies, in India participation is higher among the poor than the rich, among the less educated than among graduates, in villages than in cities. Since the elections five years ago, women vote (slightly) more than men.
The success of democracy in India has refuted the pessimistic predictions after independence and the first elections in 1952, when it was a very poor and poorly literate country. But India is not an isolated case. Let’s look at the numbers. A little more than half of the world’s population lives in a democracy. Let us consider that “rich” countries are those whose income per person is above the world average (in purchasing power, around $18,000 per year) and “poor” are those that are below that threshold. About half of the world’s population living in democracy lives in relatively poor countries (including India, but also Indonesia, South Africa, and others), while about half of the population living in dictatorships lives in relatively rich countries (including China, but also Saudi Arabia, Russia and others).
Some mainstream sociologists were baffled by India’s case because it does not fit the classical doctrine that economic development must precede democracy: from Seymour Lipset to Adam Przeworski, who has repeatedly predicted that “India will be a dictatorship before 2030.” ”. However, India is neither an exception nor an anomaly. Early modern democracies, such as Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States, also established broad male suffrage for competitive elections in the 19th century when they were quite poor, as poor as India was in the mid-20th century or as it is now. .
For about forty years after independence, when the government was dominated by the National Congress party, initially led by Jawaharlal Nehru, the centralized, closed economy grew at an annual rate of 1%, which was often the subject of ridicule. But since the early 1990s, when India liberalized and opened up to new technologies and globalization, it has enjoyed significant benefits from open trade and capital inflows. Against all expectations, income per person in purchasing power has multiplied by five in thirty years.
Precisely because the country was slow to adopt more sophisticated institutions and policies, it has been able to adapt more easily to the global economy. Unlike developed countries with aging technologies and burdensome pre-existing social arrangements, India has not had to dismantle old industrial and bureaucratic structures that could have stymied innovation.
As a result, Indian citizens declare that they prefer democracy to an authoritarian regime by a ratio of four to one. In the most recent international survey by the Pew Research Center, 72% of Indian citizens declare themselves satisfied with the functioning of democracy in their country, only behind Sweden and in contrast, for example, with 33% in the United States and 29% in Spain.
The Congress Party, always led by the Gandhi family descended from Nehru, and the People’s Party (BJP), led by the current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, have alternated in government seven times. The electoral system is a copy of the British tradition of single-seat districts due to the plurality rule, which allows a party with less than 40% of the votes to obtain an absolute majority of seats in the lower house of Parliament.
However, while numerous smaller parties run independently, the two largest parties form very broad electoral coalitions: in the current elections, the BJP has formed a National Democratic Alliance with 12 parties, mostly regional or ethnic, while the Congress in opposition is running in an Alliance for Inclusive National Development of India (to fit the acronym India) with 23 parties, including several far-left ones. The participation of all these parties in federal politics works as a national unifying factor.
After the Cold War, India’s erstwhile foreign policy of “non-alignment” was replaced by one of “strategic autonomy.” India remains outside the United Nations Security Council, despite having become a nuclear power, and outside the G-7 despite being the fourth largest democratic economy.
However, India has been very dynamic in supporting the democratization of its neighboring countries in South Asia, which is still a poorly integrated region. It is also the oldest and most stable democracy in the so-called Brics group, now expanded to nine members, and has recently increased its relations and agreements with the United States and the European Union in a world of fluctuating international coalitions. From a global and historical perspective, democracy in India, although still open to future challenges, is already one of the greatest contemporary achievements of humanity.
