Why did India Become a Democracy and Why did it Remain Democratic? A Survey of the Literature and Some Comments to the Scholarly Debate (original) (raw)

IS INDIAN DEMOCRACY ALIVE AND KICKING? Introduction

2020

Abstract: Into 62 years of long journey of the largest democracy of the world, India and we still retrospect how better it has performed to the expectation set by the makers of Indian constitution. "Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people" As 16 th American president Abraham Lincoln quoted in appraisal of a political structure which derives its power and authority from the subjects of governance. A structure of governance different from imperial autocracy where people are made aware and responsible through equal participation and representation in the process of governance and development. Thus, this paper analyzes in true sense the essence of Indian Democracy and the status of development in India, even after 60 years of Independence.

The Success story Of India’s Democracy : From Beginning till today

Democracy implies˜A arrangement of government in which every one of the people of a nation can vote to choose their representatives. Media appeared in 1780 with the presentation of a daily paper in particular˜The Bengal Gazette and from that point forward it has developed a wide margin. It has been assuming a critical part in forming human personalities. India goes for the foundation of fair communism. It requires financial advance. Without financial fairness, political correspondence isn't conceivable. Some vital elements are there which are in charge of the achievement of the procedure of democracy (key words: media,democracy, people administraton, government public, people)

Democracy and Development in India: An Investigation

In the early years of independence, criticisms were made that Indian political system or democracy would collapse sooner or later because of its diverse population and low per capita income. However, India proved wrong to its critics and shown to the world that democracy not only thrived and sustained but also deepening. Following the procedural view of democracy; India has achieved the goal of establishing democracy and has successfully completed its fourteenth Lok Sabha election without any hindrance. But, so far as substantive democracy and the trajectory of human development is concerned, some of these hopes and aspirations have been partly realized; other badly dashed. Although, India is among the top ten largest economies of the world, it ranks 134 among 187 countries in the Human Development Index (HDI). It shows that human development in India is far behind. Also, measuring the democratic performance of 167 countries, the study of Economist Intelligence Unit shows that India has not achieved the rank of ‘full democracy’; rather it is placed in the list of ‘flawed democracies’. It shows that India has underperformed in terms of governance, political participation and political culture.

Aditya Mukherjee Democracy in India IIC Quarterly

IIC Quarterly, 2021

I will, in this overview, look into the process of the emergence of democracy in India, how the democratic idea was spread by the Indian national movement, and how it was sought to be implemented by the independent Indian nation state. I will end by highlighting the current challenges to this process, which has reached alarming proportions today. At the outset one must set aside the oft-repeated notion that democracy was a gift of British colonialism in India. Colonialism by definition represents the very opposite of democracy. It is the denial of political, economic and cultural freedom to the colonised people. THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT AND DEMOCRACY Democracy in India was a product of it being a critical element in the imagination of the nation by the anti-imperialist national movement that emerged in India in the second half of the 19th century. The nation that was imagined by Indian nationalists was to be independent, democratic, secular, inclusive of all kinds of diversity and pro-poor-a vision that Rabindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru and others termed 'the idea of India'. As Mahatma Gandhi said, such an independent democratic nation or 'Swaraj … will not be a free gift of the British…. It will be a declaration of India' s full self-expression…. It is a treasure to be purchased with a nation' s best blood'. 1 At almost the same time as the early Indian nationalists had started the process of nation formation, or what they called the process of 'the Indian nation-in-the-making' with this vision or 'idea of India', British colonial rulers campaigned for the exact opposite.

Concept of Indian Democracy and the Emerging Challenges to Its Democratic System

2020

We are all familiar with the idea that democracy is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Today, the most common form of democracy is representative democracy, in which citizens elect officials to make political decisions, formulate laws, and administer programmes for the public good. Since independence, India has managed to stay on the democratic path in a way unprecedented among states freed from colonialism. Recently, however, the dominance of muscle power of the political candidates, bypassing of democratic deliberations, attacks on religious minorities, frequent riots, and maladministration of the independent institutions, in addition to the pre-existing challenges such as education, economic backwardness, regionalism, corruptionhas given rise to claims that India’s democracy is in grave danger. However, equality, good governance, education, decentralization of power, civil society participation can remove these threats to have better democratic setup i...