CONTEMPORARY INDIA Economy, Society, Politics Edited by Neera Chandhoke Praveen Priyadarshi PEARSON ALWAYS LEARNING Praise for Contemporary India ... a welcome addition to the vast body of literature available on the theme. The chapters ... are well conceived and structured. They provide useful insights for a better understanding of contemporary developments and trends relating to the Indian economy, polity and society. —M. J. Vinod, Professor Department of Political Science Bangalore University ... an excellent collection of articles meant for undergraduate and post-graduate students, scholars, academics and journalists. It can become an excellent refer- ence book, too. —Muzafar H. Assadi, Professor Department of Political Science University of Mysore The division of the book into the three parts ... brings out and reflects political science’s disciplinary need of expanding its contours to capture the multifaceted dynamics of contemporary India. The book will go a longer way than satisfying the needs of its basic target group. —Amartya Mukhopadhyay, Professor Department of Political Science University of Calcutta The book has been written using a framework that will aid critical thinking about Indian society. A commendable effort towards creating good textbooks for university students in India. —Virginius Xaxa, Professor Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics University of Delhi [This book] seeks to take stock of both India’s progress in establishing and refining democracy, and also the extent to which this has yielded satisfactory outcomes. The contents of the book are interdisciplinary with lucid expositions, and the outcome is refreshing. —Ashish Saxena, Associate Professor Department of Sociology University of Jammu ... well written with a clear thrust on analysing in a simple, lucid manner the three most important segments of contemporary India. A striking feature of the book is its analysis of the past and the present of Indian society and politics with equal elan.... [T]his book has combined historicity with today’s India in a splendid manner. —Aneek Chatterjee, Assistant Professor Department of Political Science, Presidency College University of Calcutta ... a winning combination of facts and analysis on some of the most salient facets ... of contemporary India. Admirable for its clarity and readability, it is sure to be a prized collection for any serious student of India. —Ashok Acharya, Reader Department of Political Science University of Delhi ... a comprehensive text catering to the demands of undergraduate students and general readers who are interested in knowing the working of the Indian economy, democracy and sociological changes that have taken place in the country. —Poonam Kanwal, Reader Department of Political Science Janki Devi Memorial College, University of Delhi This is a wide-ranging collection that addresses the tumultuous experience of Indian democracy. [T]his book will help in understanding why democracy, despite many hurdles, still works in India and how it influences Indian politics. —Partho Datta, Reader Department of History, Zakir Husain Evening College University of Delhi This volume ... is useful and has relevance not only for students, but also for the general readers who are interested in contemporary issues that influence the nation today. The merit of the chapters lies in discussing complex issues in a manner that will help in the pedagogic exercise. Written by teachers who are actively involved in the classroom teaching, the text is lucid and has an interdis- ciplinary approach.... The contradictions brought out in the democracy and the democratic system of India will help students to think in a critical manner. —Ranjeeta Dutta, Lecturer Department of History and Culture Jamia Millia Islamia Copyright © 2009 Dorling Kindersley (India) Pvt. Ltd. Licensees of Pearson Education in South Asia No part of this eBook may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the publisher’s prior written consent. This eBook may or may not include all assets that were part of the print version. The publisher reserves the right to remove any material present in this eBook at any time. ISBN 9788131719299 eISBN 9789332500747 Head Office: A-8(A), Sector 62, Knowledge Boulevard, 7th Floor, NOIDA 201 309, India Registered Office: 11 Local Shopping Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017, India Contents Introduction: Democracy in Contemporary India vii Neera Chandhoke and Praveen Priyadarshi PART I: ECONOMY 1 Basic Features of the Indian Economy in 1947 3 Samir Kumar Singh 2 The Evolution of Development Strategy Since Independence 16 Ambuja Kwnar Tripathy 3 Some Important Constituents of Economic Policy 33 Samir Kumar Singh 4 Regional Disparities, Poverty and Food Insecurity 49 Satyajit Puhan 5 Human Development: Health and Education 70 Neera Chandhoke 6 Science and Technology Policy: IT and Social Change 86 Neha Khanna PART II: SOCIETY 7 The Changing Social Structure in Contemporary India 107 N. R. Levin 8 The Explosion of the ‘Middle Class’ 121 Sujit Mahapatra 9 Catalysts of Social Change: Adult Franchise and Education 139 Ravi Nandan Singh 10 Social Movements and the Mass Media 156 Bindu Menon vi Contents 11 Social Mobility and Changes in Occupational Structure 169 Wasudha Bhatt 12 Social Movements: Challenges and Opportunities 184 Silky Tyagi PART III: POLITICS 13 The Nature and Functioning of Democracy 215 Swaha Das and Hari Nair 14 The Parliamentary System: An Evaluation 226 Kumar Rahul 15 Democracy: Social and Economic Dimensions 247 Praveen Priyadarshi 16 The Changing Nature of the Party System 260 Pushpa Kumari 17 The Nature of Coalition Politics 277 Sanjeev Kumar 18 Why Is Secularism Important for India? 288 Neera Chandhoke 19 Contemporary Debates on Nationalism 306 Mohinder Singh 20 Dimensions of Indian Federalism 324 Rajesh Kumar 21 Democratic Decentralization and Panchayati Raj 344 Moitree Bhattacharya (Mukhopadhyay) 22 The Changing Nature of Public Administration 358 Suranjita Ray 23 India in the Global Strategic Environment 372 Satyajit Mohanty Glossary 389 About the Editors and the Contributors 400 Index 402 Introduction Democracy in Contemporary India Neera Chandhoke and Praveen Priyadarshi This volume is the product of a joint effort by a number of scholars who carry out research and teach at the University of Delhi. Many of these scholars are fellows of the Developing Countries Research Centre of the university, where the initiative to put together a volume on contemporary India first took shape; others are fellow travellers. In view of the fact that: (a) a foundation course on contemporary India has been introduced at the BA level in the university; (b) the course straddles four disciplines of history, economics, sociology, and po- litical science, and (c) there are very few original works that negotiate all the themes included in the course in one work, a group of committed scholars and teachers decided to write original and well-researched pieces on each topic of the course. The authors have written especially for students, and though the essays are the products of in-depth research, they are written in an easy, conver- sational style. But we hope that the volume can serve as an introduction to con- temporary India for the general reading public, journalists, professionals and, of course, students, both undergraduate and postgraduate, of other universities. The course on contemporary India covers a variety of conceptual and em- pirical themes ranging from the state of the economy at the time of Indepen- dence to the emergence of the new middle class. We were of the opinion that different themes should be approached from the vantage point of democracy. Democracy, in other words, provides both a perspective and a thread that ties different aspects of contemporary India together. In the following section, we chart out some of the main characteristics of democracy in the country to serve as a framework for understanding. DEMOCRACY ‘For my part/ wrote the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘I wish to say that, in spite of everything, I have a firm faith in India’s future.... Al- though many of my old dreams have been shattered by recent events, yet the basic objective still holds and I see no reason to change it. That objective is to build a free India of high ideals and noble endeavours where there is equality viii Introduction of opportunity for all.’1 More than five decades have passed since Pandit Nehru wrote these words and it is clear that a democratic culture has been institution- alized in the country. This culture was first introduced to the Indian society by the freedom struggle in the first half of the 20th century. The electoral and the political processes after Independence have consolidated this culture. We have a fully functional electoral system; we have one of the most politicized elector- ates in the world; an electorate that never fails to surprise every time a verdict is out; we have an untidy, unruly, but vibrant civil society peppered by social movements and campaigns; we have a Constitution that is arguably one of the finest in the world and is deeply respected; and even if the Parliament and the Executive let us down periodically, the Supreme Court has been highly proac- tive, particularly when it comes to protecting the basic rights of citizens. India’s democracy is alive and kicking, and the civil society in the country, embedded as it is in a democratic culture, fiercely guards the rights of the citizens against infringements or violations.2 Yet, the gains of political democracy have not been accompanied by ad- vances in social or economic democracy. If there is one lesson that we have learnt from our experience with political democracy in India, it is that though political/formal democracy ensures political and civil rights, constitutionalism, the rule of law, and a vibrant civil society, it does not by any means guarantee well-being, absence of caste discrimination, or secularism. We certainly have reason to pat oursplves on the back because India is hailed as the world’s largest democracy However, problems blight the lives of millions of citizens, largely in the rural areas, where they suffer from unimagined hardship in the form of poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy, and disease. We admittedly have reason to feel proud that we have one of the most democratic electorates in the world—the results of the 2004 general elections and of the state elections in 2006 and 2007 bear testimony to this. Yet, discrimination on the basis of caste continues to haunt the everyday lives of millions of the so-called lower castes. We can preen over the fact that civil liberties in the country are safe in the hands of a repre- sentative government, a hyperactive judiciary, and human rights groups. Yet, communal riots continue to scar the body politic, leaving wrecked lives and livelihoods in their wake. India’s democratic culture has shown a remarkable capacity to tolerate economic ill-being and discrimination on the basis of as- criptive characteristics such as caste and religion, even as it zealously guards 1. Jawaharlal Nehru, Address to Aligarh Muslim University,’ delivered on 24 January7 1948, in S. Gopal (ed.), Jawaharlal Nehru: An Anthology (New Delhi: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 1980), p. 206. 2. The state in any given democracy has to necessarily be democratic, but since states embody power, it is civil society that needs to be imbued with a democratic political culture, so that states can be pressurized through the building up of public opinion and collective action to discharge their democratic obligations. Introduction ix the frontiers of political democracy. This is the paradox of democracy in our country. But if political democracy has not led to the eradication of mind-numb- ing poverty, oppression, and inhuman practices which thrive on discriminating against the lower castes and religious minorities, the democratic project neces- sarily remains incomplete. To put the point in different words, the democratic project has neither realized its own potential nor delivered on its own prom- ises. What are these promises? We do not have to go far in order to search for these promises. There was a time when the Cold War had frozen the distinction between formal democracy characterized by political and civil rights (liberal democracy), and substantive democracy characterized by social and economic rights (socialist democracy). The end of the Cold War, however, dissolved this distinction and, increasingly, democracy is seen not only as an institution but as a continuum, as a process that leads or at least should lead from formal to substantive democracy or from political and civil rights to social, economic, and cultural rights. In other words, democracy promises rights, justice, freedom, equality, and human dignity. The roots of democracy are to be found in the basic axiom of our elec- toral democracy—universal adult franchise. Universal adult franchise promises that each citizen is free to cast his/her vote for whomsoever s/he wants; that there is no constraint whatsoever on his/her political freedom to do so. The second promise that it embeds is that of equality; each vote, and by implication each voter, counts for one and only one—no less and no more. No one is either privileged or deprived in this matter on the grounds of class, caste, gender, or religious belief. These ascriptive characteristics are morally irrelevant in our democracy. But if political freedom is not accompanied by economic and social free- dom, the democratic project remains unfinished. What is the point, a commit- ted democrat may well ask, in granting equality to citizens on one day every five years, when people remain unequal and ‘unfree’ in their daily lives? In other words, though formal or political democracy is essential for human dig- nity, it is not sufficient. For if the vast masses of citizens remain outside the boundaries of the demos because they belong to, say, the beleaguered lower castes who are compelled to live life in this and not that way, or because they are religious minorities which are subjected to rank and inhuman discrimina- tion, or because they are caught up in mind-numbing poverty, deprivation, and ill-being, the democratic project has stopped short at what is known as formal democracy. This is not the democracy that Pandit Nehru, the tallest statesman and the architect of modem India had dreamt of and articulated repeatedly in his public speeches and in his reflective writings. In his usual elegant manner, Pandit Nehru had said during the closing debate on The Resolution of Aims and Objects’ in the Constituent Assembly. The first task of this assembly is to free India through a new constitution, to feed the starving people, and to clothe