06-14-2006, 11:31 PM
<b>The vote for India </b>
Vandita Mishra Posted online: Wednesday, June 14, 2006 at 0000 hrs Print
<i>India prides itself on having made democracy distinctively Indian. Can it now isolate and package its features for export? </i>
Vandita Mishra
It was a disorienting start to a conference on India. Deliberations on âThe State of Indiaâs Democracyâ at Indiana University in the small US town of Bloomington recently were kicked off by a lecture on democracy-building in Iraq. The lecture was delivered by Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and founding co-editor of the âJournal of Democracyâ, Washington D.C. In 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser of governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad; last year he published his sharp critique of âthe American occupation and the bungled effort to bring democracy to Iraqâ.
The question Diamond squarely placed at the conference door was this: What lessons can India provide to the project to ââbringââ democracy to Iraq? In other words, even as India grapples with its many internal challenges, can it offer an ââIndian modelââ to the world? Does it have portable lessons in democracy?
In retrospect, those were not stray questions in Bloomington. They increasingly resonate in Washington, within its democracy-promotion community and outside it.
Within the sprawling and well-resourced democracy-promotion community in Washington, both among groups allied with the Bush administration as well as those who claim to chart an independent mission, there is loud thinking, becoming louder, about Indiaâs possible fit in their project in Iraq and across the world. Now that India openly proclaims its growing economic-strategic-nuclear intimacies with the US, will it also shed its reluctance to become its partner in democracy-promotion?
Outside the democracy-promotion community, in seminars and scholarly papers, there is a newly fraught discussion about the âIndian model.â Here, however, the question is framed differently: At a time when the currency of international power is being redefined, why must India not leverage a unique resourceânot its rising economic power, but its proven ability to nourish internal diversity and pluralism through the structures of liberal constitutional democracy? India must now realise that its ââdemocratic capitalââ built up over five-and-a-half decades also has enormous instrumental value in a world in which the battle of ideas and images just became more fierce.
What bolsters Indiaâs claim to global eminence of this kind, this argument goes on, is not just the manner in which it has won its moral and political legitimacy in the past, but also the ways in which it negotiates its future. As India hosts debates on growth and social justice and gender equality, and most of all, as it wrestles with the continuing challenge of providing a safe house to its minorities, particularly its Muslims, within the framework of a liberal democracy, the world cannot afford to take its eyes off India. Because, suddenly Indiaâs questions are also the worldâs questions. In âThe Idea of Indiaâ, Sunil Khilnani wrote ââThe future of western political theory will be decided outside the West. And in deciding that future, the experience of India will loom largeââ. There appears to be a growing acknowledgement of the force of that observation in seminar rooms in Washington.
So, can we speak of an ââIndian modelââ for the world? If so, does it hold out exportable lessons in democracy, a lâAmericaine? Or must India make use of the ââdemocracy dividendââ by some alternative method, given that US democracy-promotion is mired in Iraq, its legitimacy so deeply in question?
The search for answers must first tackle some other questions. To begin with, what exactly does it mean, call it âdemocracy promotionâ or âdemocracy assistanceâ, or the âbuilding of democratic statesâ from outside?
Formally, of course, democracy-promotion need not be tied to American foreign policy goals â other governments, transnational organisations and international networks are also in the game. But it also remains true that the agenda of the worldâs lone superpower weighs heavy on any act of dividing up the field between the good guys and the bad guys by cheerleaders outside a country.
On paper, all democracy-promotion is non-partisan. But the lines between the use of foreign resources to ââaid democracyââ and to engineer political change have long been disputed on the ground. In Ukraine, for instance, ever since it became clear that an Orange-tinted fairytale may not be headed to its scripted happy endingâdivisions surfaced within the Orange bloc and pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovichâs party fared well in the last parliamentary electionâan old suspicion has reared its head anew: in the end, where it mattered, whose script was it, anyway?
But the question, more fundamentally for India, is this: Is there a standard checklist of democracy? After all, till not so long ago, India itself seemed to be a democracy in defiance of the reigning checklist which prescribed these preconditions â economic prosperity, limited inequality, a strong middle class, high levels of literacy, a productive market economy and a vigorous civil society. Democracy came to India in a unique mix of circumstances and improvisations. India prides itself on having made democracy distinctively Indian. Can it now isolate and package its features for export?
And then, what happens to the democracy deficit within the state that is promoting democracy abroad? In the US, amid new media revelations of the unsuspected magnitude of Bushâs warrant-less domestic surveillance programme, some have complained of an ââoutrage fatigueââ. The list of excesses and cover-ups by an ââimperial presidencyââ that has systematically chipped away at the powers of Congressional oversight is very long indeed: it includes cooked-up intelligence on Iraq, secret CIA prisons, Abu Ghraib. It also includes what recent reports in the media have hinted might soon blow up to be the worst such scandal so far â the cold-blooded massacre by US marines of defenceless and innocent civilians in the Iraqi town of Haditha. In India, the renewed violence in Vadodara underlined democracyâs work not yet done in large pockets of continuing fear and insecurity. As reports in this paper have described, Muslims are also being systematically discriminated against in the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in the districts of Gujarat.
At the bottom, perhaps, lies this question: Is democracy a method, a training, an enclosed certitude? Or is democracy, in India as in the US, a politically-contested and ever-vulnerable claim, constantly seeking to democratize itself?
The US faces the brunt of these questions as it presses on in Iraq. At some point in the foreseeable future, India may have to choose whether and in what manner it wants to take them on.
The writer, a senior assistant editor with The Indian Express, is currently a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow, National Endowment for Democracy, Washington. The views expressed are her own.
vandita.mishra@expressindia.com
Vandita Mishra Posted online: Wednesday, June 14, 2006 at 0000 hrs Print
<i>India prides itself on having made democracy distinctively Indian. Can it now isolate and package its features for export? </i>
Vandita Mishra
It was a disorienting start to a conference on India. Deliberations on âThe State of Indiaâs Democracyâ at Indiana University in the small US town of Bloomington recently were kicked off by a lecture on democracy-building in Iraq. The lecture was delivered by Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and founding co-editor of the âJournal of Democracyâ, Washington D.C. In 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser of governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad; last year he published his sharp critique of âthe American occupation and the bungled effort to bring democracy to Iraqâ.
The question Diamond squarely placed at the conference door was this: What lessons can India provide to the project to ââbringââ democracy to Iraq? In other words, even as India grapples with its many internal challenges, can it offer an ââIndian modelââ to the world? Does it have portable lessons in democracy?
In retrospect, those were not stray questions in Bloomington. They increasingly resonate in Washington, within its democracy-promotion community and outside it.
Within the sprawling and well-resourced democracy-promotion community in Washington, both among groups allied with the Bush administration as well as those who claim to chart an independent mission, there is loud thinking, becoming louder, about Indiaâs possible fit in their project in Iraq and across the world. Now that India openly proclaims its growing economic-strategic-nuclear intimacies with the US, will it also shed its reluctance to become its partner in democracy-promotion?
Outside the democracy-promotion community, in seminars and scholarly papers, there is a newly fraught discussion about the âIndian model.â Here, however, the question is framed differently: At a time when the currency of international power is being redefined, why must India not leverage a unique resourceânot its rising economic power, but its proven ability to nourish internal diversity and pluralism through the structures of liberal constitutional democracy? India must now realise that its ââdemocratic capitalââ built up over five-and-a-half decades also has enormous instrumental value in a world in which the battle of ideas and images just became more fierce.
What bolsters Indiaâs claim to global eminence of this kind, this argument goes on, is not just the manner in which it has won its moral and political legitimacy in the past, but also the ways in which it negotiates its future. As India hosts debates on growth and social justice and gender equality, and most of all, as it wrestles with the continuing challenge of providing a safe house to its minorities, particularly its Muslims, within the framework of a liberal democracy, the world cannot afford to take its eyes off India. Because, suddenly Indiaâs questions are also the worldâs questions. In âThe Idea of Indiaâ, Sunil Khilnani wrote ââThe future of western political theory will be decided outside the West. And in deciding that future, the experience of India will loom largeââ. There appears to be a growing acknowledgement of the force of that observation in seminar rooms in Washington.
So, can we speak of an ââIndian modelââ for the world? If so, does it hold out exportable lessons in democracy, a lâAmericaine? Or must India make use of the ââdemocracy dividendââ by some alternative method, given that US democracy-promotion is mired in Iraq, its legitimacy so deeply in question?
The search for answers must first tackle some other questions. To begin with, what exactly does it mean, call it âdemocracy promotionâ or âdemocracy assistanceâ, or the âbuilding of democratic statesâ from outside?
Formally, of course, democracy-promotion need not be tied to American foreign policy goals â other governments, transnational organisations and international networks are also in the game. But it also remains true that the agenda of the worldâs lone superpower weighs heavy on any act of dividing up the field between the good guys and the bad guys by cheerleaders outside a country.
On paper, all democracy-promotion is non-partisan. But the lines between the use of foreign resources to ââaid democracyââ and to engineer political change have long been disputed on the ground. In Ukraine, for instance, ever since it became clear that an Orange-tinted fairytale may not be headed to its scripted happy endingâdivisions surfaced within the Orange bloc and pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovichâs party fared well in the last parliamentary electionâan old suspicion has reared its head anew: in the end, where it mattered, whose script was it, anyway?
But the question, more fundamentally for India, is this: Is there a standard checklist of democracy? After all, till not so long ago, India itself seemed to be a democracy in defiance of the reigning checklist which prescribed these preconditions â economic prosperity, limited inequality, a strong middle class, high levels of literacy, a productive market economy and a vigorous civil society. Democracy came to India in a unique mix of circumstances and improvisations. India prides itself on having made democracy distinctively Indian. Can it now isolate and package its features for export?
And then, what happens to the democracy deficit within the state that is promoting democracy abroad? In the US, amid new media revelations of the unsuspected magnitude of Bushâs warrant-less domestic surveillance programme, some have complained of an ââoutrage fatigueââ. The list of excesses and cover-ups by an ââimperial presidencyââ that has systematically chipped away at the powers of Congressional oversight is very long indeed: it includes cooked-up intelligence on Iraq, secret CIA prisons, Abu Ghraib. It also includes what recent reports in the media have hinted might soon blow up to be the worst such scandal so far â the cold-blooded massacre by US marines of defenceless and innocent civilians in the Iraqi town of Haditha. In India, the renewed violence in Vadodara underlined democracyâs work not yet done in large pockets of continuing fear and insecurity. As reports in this paper have described, Muslims are also being systematically discriminated against in the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in the districts of Gujarat.
At the bottom, perhaps, lies this question: Is democracy a method, a training, an enclosed certitude? Or is democracy, in India as in the US, a politically-contested and ever-vulnerable claim, constantly seeking to democratize itself?
The US faces the brunt of these questions as it presses on in Iraq. At some point in the foreseeable future, India may have to choose whether and in what manner it wants to take them on.
The writer, a senior assistant editor with The Indian Express, is currently a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow, National Endowment for Democracy, Washington. The views expressed are her own.
vandita.mishra@expressindia.com