democracy of india essay

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Democracy In India Essay

Democracy is regarded as the best type of government since it allows citizens to directly elect their leaders. They have access to a number of rights that are fundamental to anyone's ability to live freely and peacefully. There are many democratic countries in the world, but India is by far the biggest. Here are a few sample essays on the topic ‘Democracy In India’.

100 Words Essay On Democracy

200 words essay on democracy, 500 words essay on democracy.

Democracy is a term used to describe a form of government in which the people have a voice by voting. Democracy is an essential part of any society, and India is no exception. After years of suffering under British colonial control, India attained democracy in 1947. India places a great emphasis on democracy. India is also without a doubt the largest democracy in the world.

The spirit of justice, liberty, and equality has permeated Indian democracy ever since the country attained independence. As the world’s largest democracy, India has been a shining example of how democracy can foster progress and ensure rights for all its citizens.

In a democracy, the people have the ultimate say in how their government is run. They elect representatives to represent them in government, and they can hold those representatives accountable through regular elections. And finally, the rule of law is important in a democracy to ensure that everyone is treated equally before the law and that the government operates within its proper bounds. Democracy has been a recent phenomena in human history, only really taking root in the last few centuries. But it has quickly become one of the most popular forms of government around the world. India is one of the world’s largest democracies, with over 1 billion people living within its borders.

India's constitution serves as the foundation for its democracy. The Indian Constitution guarantees equality for all citizens regardless of caste, creed, or religion. It also establishes a system of representative government, with elected officials at the national, state, and local levels. And finally, it enshrines the rule of law by establishing an independent judiciary to interpret and uphold the Constitution.

There are many different types of democracy, but most modern democracies are based on the principles of popular sovereignty, representative government, and rule of law and public opinion.

There are two main types of democracies—direct and representative. Direct democracy allows citizens to participate directly in the decision-making process, while representative democracy allows citizens to elect representatives to make decisions on their behalf. The advantages of democracy in India include the fact that it allows for greater participation of citizens in the political process, and it also provides checks and balances on the government. The disadvantages of democracy in India include the fact that it can be slow to make decisions and that it can be difficult to hold people accountable for their actions.

Features Of Indian Democracy

Sovereignty | One important aspect of Indian democracy is sovereignty. The absolute control a governing body has over itself without external influence is referred to as sovereignty. In India's democracy, people can also exert their power. The fact that Indians choose their representatives is remarkable. Furthermore, these officials continue to be accountable to the general public.

Political Equality | It is the foundation of Indian democracy. It also simply means that everyone is treated equally under the law. The fact that there is no discrimination based on caste, religion, race, creed, or sect is particularly notable. As a result, all Indian citizens have equal political rights.

Rule Of Majority | A key component of Indian democracy is the rule of the majority. Furthermore, the winning party creates and governs the government. In addition, the party with the most seats creates and governs the country. Most importantly, no one can object to majority support.

Socialist | Being socialist implies that the country continuously prioritises the needs of its citizens. The poor person should be offered numerous incentives, and their fundamental needs should be met by any means necessary.

Secular | There is no such thing as a "state religion," and there is no discrimination based on religion in this nation. In the eyes of the law, all religions must be equal; it is not acceptable to discriminate against anyone based on their religion. Everyone has the right to practise and spread any religion, and they are free to do so at any moment.

Advantages And Disadvantages Of Democracy In India

There are many advantages and disadvantages of democracy in India. On the one hand, democracy gives everyone an equal say in how the country is run. This is particularly important in a country as large and diverse as India. On the other hand, democracy can also be slow and chaotic, and it can be difficult to get things done. One advantage of democracy in India is that it ensures that everyone has a say in how the country is run. This is especially important in a country as large and diverse as India.

There are many different languages spoken in India, and democracy ensures that everyone has a voice. Another advantage of democracy in India is that it leads to more stability than other forms of government. In a dictatorship, for example, one person has all the power. This can lead to them making decisions that are not in the best interests of the country. In a democracy, there are checks and balances in place so that no one person has too much power.

Explore Career Options (By Industry)

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Data Administrator

Database professionals use software to store and organise data such as financial information, and customer shipping records. Individuals who opt for a career as data administrators ensure that data is available for users and secured from unauthorised sales. DB administrators may work in various types of industries. It may involve computer systems design, service firms, insurance companies, banks and hospitals.

Bio Medical Engineer

The field of biomedical engineering opens up a universe of expert chances. An Individual in the biomedical engineering career path work in the field of engineering as well as medicine, in order to find out solutions to common problems of the two fields. The biomedical engineering job opportunities are to collaborate with doctors and researchers to develop medical systems, equipment, or devices that can solve clinical problems. Here we will be discussing jobs after biomedical engineering, how to get a job in biomedical engineering, biomedical engineering scope, and salary. 

Ethical Hacker

A career as ethical hacker involves various challenges and provides lucrative opportunities in the digital era where every giant business and startup owns its cyberspace on the world wide web. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path try to find the vulnerabilities in the cyber system to get its authority. If he or she succeeds in it then he or she gets its illegal authority. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path then steal information or delete the file that could affect the business, functioning, or services of the organization.

GIS officer work on various GIS software to conduct a study and gather spatial and non-spatial information. GIS experts update the GIS data and maintain it. The databases include aerial or satellite imagery, latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates, and manually digitized images of maps. In a career as GIS expert, one is responsible for creating online and mobile maps.

Data Analyst

The invention of the database has given fresh breath to the people involved in the data analytics career path. Analysis refers to splitting up a whole into its individual components for individual analysis. Data analysis is a method through which raw data are processed and transformed into information that would be beneficial for user strategic thinking.

Data are collected and examined to respond to questions, evaluate hypotheses or contradict theories. It is a tool for analyzing, transforming, modeling, and arranging data with useful knowledge, to assist in decision-making and methods, encompassing various strategies, and is used in different fields of business, research, and social science.

Geothermal Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as geothermal engineers are the professionals involved in the processing of geothermal energy. The responsibilities of geothermal engineers may vary depending on the workplace location. Those who work in fields design facilities to process and distribute geothermal energy. They oversee the functioning of machinery used in the field.

Database Architect

If you are intrigued by the programming world and are interested in developing communications networks then a career as database architect may be a good option for you. Data architect roles and responsibilities include building design models for data communication networks. Wide Area Networks (WANs), local area networks (LANs), and intranets are included in the database networks. It is expected that database architects will have in-depth knowledge of a company's business to develop a network to fulfil the requirements of the organisation. Stay tuned as we look at the larger picture and give you more information on what is db architecture, why you should pursue database architecture, what to expect from such a degree and what your job opportunities will be after graduation. Here, we will be discussing how to become a data architect. Students can visit NIT Trichy , IIT Kharagpur , JMI New Delhi . 

Remote Sensing Technician

Individuals who opt for a career as a remote sensing technician possess unique personalities. Remote sensing analysts seem to be rational human beings, they are strong, independent, persistent, sincere, realistic and resourceful. Some of them are analytical as well, which means they are intelligent, introspective and inquisitive. 

Remote sensing scientists use remote sensing technology to support scientists in fields such as community planning, flight planning or the management of natural resources. Analysing data collected from aircraft, satellites or ground-based platforms using statistical analysis software, image analysis software or Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a significant part of their work. Do you want to learn how to become remote sensing technician? There's no need to be concerned; we've devised a simple remote sensing technician career path for you. Scroll through the pages and read.

Budget Analyst

Budget analysis, in a nutshell, entails thoroughly analyzing the details of a financial budget. The budget analysis aims to better understand and manage revenue. Budget analysts assist in the achievement of financial targets, the preservation of profitability, and the pursuit of long-term growth for a business. Budget analysts generally have a bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, economics, or a closely related field. Knowledge of Financial Management is of prime importance in this career.

Underwriter

An underwriter is a person who assesses and evaluates the risk of insurance in his or her field like mortgage, loan, health policy, investment, and so on and so forth. The underwriter career path does involve risks as analysing the risks means finding out if there is a way for the insurance underwriter jobs to recover the money from its clients. If the risk turns out to be too much for the company then in the future it is an underwriter who will be held accountable for it. Therefore, one must carry out his or her job with a lot of attention and diligence.

Finance Executive

Product manager.

A Product Manager is a professional responsible for product planning and marketing. He or she manages the product throughout the Product Life Cycle, gathering and prioritising the product. A product manager job description includes defining the product vision and working closely with team members of other departments to deliver winning products.  

Operations Manager

Individuals in the operations manager jobs are responsible for ensuring the efficiency of each department to acquire its optimal goal. They plan the use of resources and distribution of materials. The operations manager's job description includes managing budgets, negotiating contracts, and performing administrative tasks.

Stock Analyst

Individuals who opt for a career as a stock analyst examine the company's investments makes decisions and keep track of financial securities. The nature of such investments will differ from one business to the next. Individuals in the stock analyst career use data mining to forecast a company's profits and revenues, advise clients on whether to buy or sell, participate in seminars, and discussing financial matters with executives and evaluate annual reports.

A Researcher is a professional who is responsible for collecting data and information by reviewing the literature and conducting experiments and surveys. He or she uses various methodological processes to provide accurate data and information that is utilised by academicians and other industry professionals. Here, we will discuss what is a researcher, the researcher's salary, types of researchers.

Welding Engineer

Welding Engineer Job Description: A Welding Engineer work involves managing welding projects and supervising welding teams. He or she is responsible for reviewing welding procedures, processes and documentation. A career as Welding Engineer involves conducting failure analyses and causes on welding issues. 

Transportation Planner

A career as Transportation Planner requires technical application of science and technology in engineering, particularly the concepts, equipment and technologies involved in the production of products and services. In fields like land use, infrastructure review, ecological standards and street design, he or she considers issues of health, environment and performance. A Transportation Planner assigns resources for implementing and designing programmes. He or she is responsible for assessing needs, preparing plans and forecasts and compliance with regulations.

Environmental Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as an environmental engineer are construction professionals who utilise the skills and knowledge of biology, soil science, chemistry and the concept of engineering to design and develop projects that serve as solutions to various environmental problems. 

Safety Manager

A Safety Manager is a professional responsible for employee’s safety at work. He or she plans, implements and oversees the company’s employee safety. A Safety Manager ensures compliance and adherence to Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) guidelines.

Conservation Architect

A Conservation Architect is a professional responsible for conserving and restoring buildings or monuments having a historic value. He or she applies techniques to document and stabilise the object’s state without any further damage. A Conservation Architect restores the monuments and heritage buildings to bring them back to their original state.

Structural Engineer

A Structural Engineer designs buildings, bridges, and other related structures. He or she analyzes the structures and makes sure the structures are strong enough to be used by the people. A career as a Structural Engineer requires working in the construction process. It comes under the civil engineering discipline. A Structure Engineer creates structural models with the help of computer-aided design software. 

Highway Engineer

Highway Engineer Job Description:  A Highway Engineer is a civil engineer who specialises in planning and building thousands of miles of roads that support connectivity and allow transportation across the country. He or she ensures that traffic management schemes are effectively planned concerning economic sustainability and successful implementation.

Field Surveyor

Are you searching for a Field Surveyor Job Description? A Field Surveyor is a professional responsible for conducting field surveys for various places or geographical conditions. He or she collects the required data and information as per the instructions given by senior officials. 

Orthotist and Prosthetist

Orthotists and Prosthetists are professionals who provide aid to patients with disabilities. They fix them to artificial limbs (prosthetics) and help them to regain stability. There are times when people lose their limbs in an accident. In some other occasions, they are born without a limb or orthopaedic impairment. Orthotists and prosthetists play a crucial role in their lives with fixing them to assistive devices and provide mobility.

Pathologist

A career in pathology in India is filled with several responsibilities as it is a medical branch and affects human lives. The demand for pathologists has been increasing over the past few years as people are getting more aware of different diseases. Not only that, but an increase in population and lifestyle changes have also contributed to the increase in a pathologist’s demand. The pathology careers provide an extremely huge number of opportunities and if you want to be a part of the medical field you can consider being a pathologist. If you want to know more about a career in pathology in India then continue reading this article.

Veterinary Doctor

Speech therapist, gynaecologist.

Gynaecology can be defined as the study of the female body. The job outlook for gynaecology is excellent since there is evergreen demand for one because of their responsibility of dealing with not only women’s health but also fertility and pregnancy issues. Although most women prefer to have a women obstetrician gynaecologist as their doctor, men also explore a career as a gynaecologist and there are ample amounts of male doctors in the field who are gynaecologists and aid women during delivery and childbirth. 

Audiologist

The audiologist career involves audiology professionals who are responsible to treat hearing loss and proactively preventing the relevant damage. Individuals who opt for a career as an audiologist use various testing strategies with the aim to determine if someone has a normal sensitivity to sounds or not. After the identification of hearing loss, a hearing doctor is required to determine which sections of the hearing are affected, to what extent they are affected, and where the wound causing the hearing loss is found. As soon as the hearing loss is identified, the patients are provided with recommendations for interventions and rehabilitation such as hearing aids, cochlear implants, and appropriate medical referrals. While audiology is a branch of science that studies and researches hearing, balance, and related disorders.

An oncologist is a specialised doctor responsible for providing medical care to patients diagnosed with cancer. He or she uses several therapies to control the cancer and its effect on the human body such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy and biopsy. An oncologist designs a treatment plan based on a pathology report after diagnosing the type of cancer and where it is spreading inside the body.

Are you searching for an ‘Anatomist job description’? An Anatomist is a research professional who applies the laws of biological science to determine the ability of bodies of various living organisms including animals and humans to regenerate the damaged or destroyed organs. If you want to know what does an anatomist do, then read the entire article, where we will answer all your questions.

For an individual who opts for a career as an actor, the primary responsibility is to completely speak to the character he or she is playing and to persuade the crowd that the character is genuine by connecting with them and bringing them into the story. This applies to significant roles and littler parts, as all roles join to make an effective creation. Here in this article, we will discuss how to become an actor in India, actor exams, actor salary in India, and actor jobs. 

Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats create and direct original routines for themselves, in addition to developing interpretations of existing routines. The work of circus acrobats can be seen in a variety of performance settings, including circus, reality shows, sports events like the Olympics, movies and commercials. Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats must be prepared to face rejections and intermittent periods of work. The creativity of acrobats may extend to other aspects of the performance. For example, acrobats in the circus may work with gym trainers, celebrities or collaborate with other professionals to enhance such performance elements as costume and or maybe at the teaching end of the career.

Video Game Designer

Career as a video game designer is filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. A video game designer is someone who is involved in the process of creating a game from day one. He or she is responsible for fulfilling duties like designing the character of the game, the several levels involved, plot, art and similar other elements. Individuals who opt for a career as a video game designer may also write the codes for the game using different programming languages.

Depending on the video game designer job description and experience they may also have to lead a team and do the early testing of the game in order to suggest changes and find loopholes.

Radio Jockey

Radio Jockey is an exciting, promising career and a great challenge for music lovers. If you are really interested in a career as radio jockey, then it is very important for an RJ to have an automatic, fun, and friendly personality. If you want to get a job done in this field, a strong command of the language and a good voice are always good things. Apart from this, in order to be a good radio jockey, you will also listen to good radio jockeys so that you can understand their style and later make your own by practicing.

A career as radio jockey has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. If you want to know more about a career as radio jockey, and how to become a radio jockey then continue reading the article.

Choreographer

The word “choreography" actually comes from Greek words that mean “dance writing." Individuals who opt for a career as a choreographer create and direct original dances, in addition to developing interpretations of existing dances. A Choreographer dances and utilises his or her creativity in other aspects of dance performance. For example, he or she may work with the music director to select music or collaborate with other famous choreographers to enhance such performance elements as lighting, costume and set design.

Social Media Manager

A career as social media manager involves implementing the company’s or brand’s marketing plan across all social media channels. Social media managers help in building or improving a brand’s or a company’s website traffic, build brand awareness, create and implement marketing and brand strategy. Social media managers are key to important social communication as well.

Photographer

Photography is considered both a science and an art, an artistic means of expression in which the camera replaces the pen. In a career as a photographer, an individual is hired to capture the moments of public and private events, such as press conferences or weddings, or may also work inside a studio, where people go to get their picture clicked. Photography is divided into many streams each generating numerous career opportunities in photography. With the boom in advertising, media, and the fashion industry, photography has emerged as a lucrative and thrilling career option for many Indian youths.

An individual who is pursuing a career as a producer is responsible for managing the business aspects of production. They are involved in each aspect of production from its inception to deception. Famous movie producers review the script, recommend changes and visualise the story. 

They are responsible for overseeing the finance involved in the project and distributing the film for broadcasting on various platforms. A career as a producer is quite fulfilling as well as exhaustive in terms of playing different roles in order for a production to be successful. Famous movie producers are responsible for hiring creative and technical personnel on contract basis.

Copy Writer

In a career as a copywriter, one has to consult with the client and understand the brief well. A career as a copywriter has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. Several new mediums of advertising are opening therefore making it a lucrative career choice. Students can pursue various copywriter courses such as Journalism , Advertising , Marketing Management . Here, we have discussed how to become a freelance copywriter, copywriter career path, how to become a copywriter in India, and copywriting career outlook. 

In a career as a vlogger, one generally works for himself or herself. However, once an individual has gained viewership there are several brands and companies that approach them for paid collaboration. It is one of those fields where an individual can earn well while following his or her passion. 

Ever since internet costs got reduced the viewership for these types of content has increased on a large scale. Therefore, a career as a vlogger has a lot to offer. If you want to know more about the Vlogger eligibility, roles and responsibilities then continue reading the article. 

For publishing books, newspapers, magazines and digital material, editorial and commercial strategies are set by publishers. Individuals in publishing career paths make choices about the markets their businesses will reach and the type of content that their audience will be served. Individuals in book publisher careers collaborate with editorial staff, designers, authors, and freelance contributors who develop and manage the creation of content.

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Essay on Democracy in India

List of essays on democracy in india, essay on democracy in india – short essay for children (essay 1 – 150 words), essay on democracy in india – 10 lines on democracy written in english (essay 2 – 250 words), essay on democracy in india (essay 3 – 300 words), essay on democracy in india – what is democracy (essay 4 – 400 words), essay on democracy in india – for school students (class 6, 7 and 8) (essay 5 – 500 words), essay on democracy in india – for college students (essay 6 – 600 words), essay on democracy in indian constitution (essay 7 – 750 words), essay on democracy in india – long essay for competitive exams like ias, ips civil services and upsc (essay 8 – 1000 words).

India is the largest country in the world that follows the Democratic form of government. With a population of over a billion, India is a secular, socialistic, republic, and democratic country in the world.

India is considered as the lighthouse that guides the democratic movement in the African–Asian countries. Democracy in India is backed by our written Constitution which consists of a list of all fundamental laws upon which our nation is to be governed.

January 26, the day on which our Constitution came into effect is celebrated as Republic Day and it was on this day that Democracy truly entered India.

Audience: The below given essays are exclusively written for school students (Class 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 Standard) and college students. Furthermore, those students preparing for competitive exams like IAS, IPS and UPSC can also increase their knowledge by studying these essays.

Introduction:

Democracy in India can be defined as a government by the people, of the people and for the people. In India the government is formed by the citizens through their elected representatives.

Principle of Democracy in India:

In a democracy at least the fundamental rights of the individuals are guaranteed. The five principles by which the democracy in India works are Sovereign, Socialist, Secular, Democratic and Republic.

Enhancement Areas:

Some of the areas in which the Democracy in India can be improved include the eradication of poverty, encouraging people to vote and educate them about choosing the appropriate candidate, increasing literacy etc.

Conclusion:

Democracy in India is one of the biggest in the world and is celebrated worldwide. Given the wide range of culture and diversity, the need of the hour is that democracy is upheld without losing the diverse heritage of which the country is proud of. Democracy in India would be smooth when the emotions of every culture is acknowledged.

India is the largest democracy in the world. The citizens of the country who are above 18 years of age, elect their representatives in the Lok Sabha via secret ballots (general elections). They are elected for a period of 5 years and ministers are chosen from the elected representatives. India became a democratic nation in 1947 and thereafter the leaders were elected by the people of India. Different parties’ campaign using different future agendas and they emphasize on what they did for the development of people between the election periods. This way, the citizens can make an informed choice in selecting a particular representative.

The word democracy is derived from Greek and it literary means ‘power of the people’. The government is run by the people and it if for the people. The model of Indian democracy is followed by the entire Afro-Asian countries. Our form of democracy in India is much different from democracy of other nations like England and USA.

Although the democracy in India is much advanced, there are still some drawbacks which affect the healthy functioning of the system. These include religion and ignorance. Although we say India is a secular country, but there are still people present who believe in treating people from different religions differently. We have advanced from the ancient traditions like Sati but now a days, people kill each other over killing of Cow, which is considered as a sacred animal for Hindus. Other than these, much work needs to be done to reduce and eliminate poverty, illiteracy and gender discrimination among a list of many others.

India is the largest country in the world that follows the Democratic form of government. With a population of over a billion, India is a secular, socialistic, republic, and democratic country in the world. India is considered as the lighthouse that guides the democratic movement in the African–Asian countries.

Meaning of Democracy:

Democracy means ‘by the people, for the people, and of the people’. A democratic country is one whose government is made of the people, elected by the people to serve the people. The Indian country is governed by a parliamentary system of governance which follows the constitution of India. During the past 70 years, India has held regular elections for the legislative and parliamentary assemblies, reflecting the power of the election commission, who is regarded as the powerful authority.

Democracy in India has a very strong foundation that runs deep into the cultural and moral ethics. Thanks to the efficient leaders like Lal Bahadur Shastri, Sardar Vallabhai Patel, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, etc., whose contribution to a successful democratic India is immeasurable.

Principles of Democratic India:

Democracy in India follows five principles. They are:

a) Secular – A place where people are bestowed with the freedom of religion, to follow a religion of their own choice.

b) Social – Providing equality to everyone irrespective of their caste, creed, color, gender, and other differences.

c) Sovereign – A country that is free from the control of any foreign authorities or power.

d) Democratic – A country where the government is made for the people, by the people of the country with the representatives of people.

e) Republic – No hierarchy is followed while the head of the country is elected by regular elections and the power changes at a regular period of interval.

Not only does democracy in India mean that every citizen has the right to vote, but also it says that people – the citizens of India have full right to question the government if the government doesn’t ensure equality to its citizens in all spheres of life. While democracy in India is effective, we have a long way to go to become a successful democratic country. Illiteracy, poverty, discrimination, and other social issues should be eradicated completely to enjoy the real fruit of democracy in India.

The best definition of democracy has been described as the government of the people, by the people and for the people. India became a sovereign democratic nation back in the year 1947 and the country is still on the roads to development.

In true terms, democracy in India would mean a country wherein people can find quality and they have the freedom to express themselves. The ideal nation is going to be truly democratic and this leaves us with a baffling question. Is democracy in India truly established?

Given the state of turmoil which our nation is in, the question indeed has a palpable and sorry answer. To be honest, if democracy in India was legit, people will have the power to choose their destiny. While we do have a voting system in place which gives people the power to elect their representative, it is often seen to be grossly misused.

The Need to Educate and Enlighten:

If we want the largest democracy of the world to truly live up to the meaning of democracy; it is important to both educate and enlighten the masses. More and more people need to understand the power that has been vested in them. When the commoners understand the kind of influence they can have as far as choosing their political leader is concerned; it might help them think meticulously before putting in the vote and can sanctify the meaning of democracy in India.

There are so many people who do not even bother to register a vote. Are they not bothered about the outcome and progress of their nation? Unless, the right measures are taken to truly educate the mass about how democracy in India is the glorious future we should all dream of, things are least likely to change.

Handling the Flaws:

It’s been a long time since we became independent. So, it is important now to handle the flaws in the democracy in India. The seeds of corruption have been very deeply set in our country and one needs to do something as a start to combat the problem.

It is easy to whine and very hard to put up a fight. So, the right thing which you should do is ensure that you do your bit for the sake of improving the state of affairs of the country. Give in your best shot and be hopeful that things will change for the good as far as democracy in India is concerned.

When the people of the country start taking an active part in the welfare of the state, we will achieve the true meaning of democracy in India.

The word Democracy is derived from the Greek words ‘Demos’ and ‘Kratos’. Demos means People and Kratos means Power. Together put, it means People’s Power. Abraham Lincoln described Democracy as ‘Government by the people, for the people and of the people’. The emphasis on people clearly shows that Democracy is a people-centric form of government. Many consider it to be a superior form of governance as it ensures social and economic equality of every citizen in the country.

In India, a Democratic government was formed only after its freedom from the British rule in 1947. However, the practices of a Democratic system in India go way back. Both Rigveda and Atharvaveda have references of a system where the people gather as a whole and elect Kings.

Democracy in India is backed by our written Constitution which consists of a list of all fundamental laws upon which our nation is to be governed. January 26, the day on which our Constitution came into effect is celebrated as Republic Day and it was on this day that Democracy truly entered India.

Types of Democracy:

Democracy is of two types, Direct Democracy and Indirect Democracy.

In Direct Democracy, all the people come together in a single place to elect the governing executives themselves. This is possible for small cities where the population is less and everybody can gather together at one place. Even today, Switzerland exercises a Direct Democracy system.

Indirect Democracy is exercised in countries where there is huge population, making it difficult for all to gather at one place. In this case, people elect representatives who in turn elect the governing executive. Hence in India, Indirect Democracy is practiced.

Five Principles of Indian Democracy:

Democracy in India operates on five important principles:

1. Sovereign: In our country, we Indians are the supreme power and are not controlled by any other foreign power.

2. Socialist: There is economic and social equality promised to every citizen of India.

3. Secular: Every Indian citizen has the freedom to practise his religion of choice.

4. Democratic: Our government is elected by the people.

5. Republic: Supreme power is held by the people and their nominated representatives, instead of a hereditary king.

Working of Indian Democracy:

India has a Federal government where there are separate State governments which come under a single Central government. Indian citizens elect their leaders by the system of voting. Both State and Central elections happen once in five years. Every citizen above the age of eighteen years has the right to vote irrespective of caste, color, creed, religion, gender and education.

Any citizen has the right to stand as a candidate for the post of President and Prime Minister irrespective of religion, gender and education. Elections happen through secret ballots. People elect their representatives of the State who in-turn elect the Head of State, the Chief Minister. Similarly, the public elect the members of the Parliament who in turn elect the Prime Minister.

Democracy in India has succeeded on contrary to the beliefs of many political scientists. Today, India is a pioneer of Democracy in Asia and all other Asian and African countries look up to us for Democratic inspirations.

India is a democratic nation. If you do not know what democracy means, one of the most popular definition has to be, “the government by the people, for the people, of the people.”

So, if we truly want our nation to be democratic and preserve the value of this term, it signifies the fact that the common people should all be a part of the development of the nation. The government should so function that their decisions help in the betterment of the country and the citizens.

Are we truly a democratic nation?

A lot of people argue as to whether or not we are truly democratic, we need to know that there is still a long way to go. As per the books of law and the great Indian constitution, we can see that we are one of the leading democratic countries. However, if you decide to go beyond the books, you will perceive the change. There is a long way to go because democracy has a wider and deeper meaning.

The True Meaning:

Democracy means that people elect the representatives who in turn take charge of the nation and help in the betterment and upliftment of the citizens. While in India, which is a top democratic country, we do have the power to elect our representatives, there is still a lot which needs to be done. Our elected representatives do not understand the importance of the office they are holding. This is why the country has failed to make the kind of progress which it may have otherwise made.

Along with this, it is also seen that there are a lot of unscrupulous means which are often used for the sake of electing representatives. There has to be even more control when it comes to voting and election. When people are clear about their role and they understand that it is with their influence and power that the future of the country can be improved, they are likely to put their power to right use.

How can we truly live up to the tag of democracy?

The change needs to begin with you. There are so many people who complain about how our country has made a mockery of democracy, however what one has to clearly understand is that democracy calls for an equal work by everyone. Remember rather than whining and blaming, you should make it a point to do something yourself.

Create an awareness campaign and try and explain people as to why and how they could bring a change in the nation and contribute towards justifying the tag of India being a true democracy. This awareness and education can be critical in pushing the right waves of change.

Choose leader wisely: It is also important to make sure that we are mindful of who we are choosing as our leaders. You should take the decision on the right parameters rather than being judgmental and getting hoodwinked by superficial factors. The right decision today can safeguard your tomorrow.

So in the end you should understand that democracy is definitely one of the founding pillars for any progressive nation, India is a democracy but we still have a long way to go. Both the individuals and the leaders need to understand the true meaning of democracy and then find the right ways to work around things.

There is no great bond than what ties people to their motherland. So you should make it a point to let the meaning and feeling of democracy seep inside your body and mind and then let it work the magic. Our country deserves our love and respect and definitely the undivided attention as well.

So, let us do our bit for true democracy.

Over a long period of time, India has been ruled by different rulers as well had different forms of government. However, post the British era, India has seen a constant form of government which is governed under the law as laid down under the constitution of India. Democracy is one such important feature of our constitution. Under democracy, the citizens of the country have the right to vote as well the members who in turn form the government.

History of Democracy

The earliest mention of the word democracy has been found in the Greek political texts dating back to 508-507 BC. It has been derived from the word demos which mean common people and Kratos which means strength.

Democracy in Indian Constitution:

Democracy through the constitution of India gives its nationals the privilege to cast a ballot regardless of their rank, caste, creed religion or gender. It has five equitable standards – secular, socialist, republic, sovereign and democratic. Different political organisations represent people at the state and national level. They proliferate about the undertakings achieved in their past residency and furthermore share their tentative arrangements with the general population.

Each citizen of India, over the age of 18 years, has the privilege to cast a vote. The government has always encouraged the individuals to make their choice and cast their vote. Individuals must know everything about the applicants representing the decisions and vote in favour of the most meriting one for good government.

India is known to have an effective democratic framework. In any case, there are some loopholes as well that dampen the spirit of democracy and should be dealt with. In addition to other things, the legislature must work on disposing of poverty, lack of education, communalism, gender discrimination and casteism with the end goal to guarantee democratic system in its obvious sense.

Importance of Democracy in Indian Politics:

Indian democratic government is described by peaceful conjunction of various thoughts and beliefs. There are solid collaboration and rivalry among different political organisations. Since the poll is the path of democratic system, there exist numerous political organisations and every organisation has their own agenda and thoughts.

Good Effects of Democracy:

The democracy has its own share of advantages as well as disadvantages for the common citizens of the country. First, it is instrumental in protecting the rights of the citizens and gives them all the right to choose their government. Additionally, it does not allow a monocratic rule to crop us as all leaders know that need to perform in case they want the people to elect them during the next elections as well. Hence they cannot assume that they have powers forever. Giving all the citizens right to vote provides them with a sense of equality irrespective of their caste, gender, creed or financial status.

The government so formed after democratic elections is usually a stable and responsible form of government. It makes the government socially responsible towards all citizens and the government cannot ignore the plight of its citizens. On the other side, the citizen also behaves in a responsible manner as they know that it is not only their right but their duty as well to choose the government wisely. They are themselves to be blamed if they do not get the government they had wished for it is they who have not rightly exercised their right to vote.

Ill Effects of Democracy:

Democracy, however, leads to misuse of public funds as time and again the elections are conducted at short intervals when we don’t get a stable government and there is infighting among the elected representatives. Also, though considered a duty, the people at times do not exercise their right to vote and a very less voting percentage is seen in many areas which do not give a fair chance to all contestants. Last, but not the least, unfair practices during elections dampen the very spirit of democracy.

A government who strive to be successful cannot overlook the majority of the population that work at fields and the middle class in India. The laws are confined by just thoughts and beliefs of the population. Majority ruling government keeps away from struggle and showdown and makes a peaceful climate for all to live a happy life.

However, at times it has been seen that the majority of the general population of our nation are ignorant and struggle to make their ends meet on day to day basis. Except if the nation is financially and instructively propelled, it will not be right to believe that the electorate will utilize their right to vote to the best advantages of themselves and the nation.

Introduction (Definition) and Concept of Democracy in India:

Democracy in India is the largest in the whole world. Democracy means that the citizens of that country have the power to choose their government. Based on that concept laid by Abraham Lincoln, democracy in India gives rise to a government which is of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Since independence, our constitution has made sure that democracy in India is exercised in its truest form. The greatest of all the powers given to the citizens is their right to vote and maintain the fair establishment of democracy in India.

Not only that, but the system of democracy in India also gives every citizen the right to form a political party and participate in the elections. As you can see, the democracy in India focuses more on its common people than its ruling party.

Importance and Need of Democracy in India:

But why has the democracy in India gained so much hype globally? Well, with the second largest population in the world, we would have been a mess, if it were not for the democracy in India. There are people from so many religions, castes, and creeds that incorporating the system of democracy in India was the only way out to maintain peace in the country.

With so much cultural and religious diversity, democracy in India protects the citizens from unjustified partialities and favoritism. Democracy in India gives equal rights and freedom to every person regardless of their beliefs and standard of living.

The scheduled caste and scheduled tribes in our country had been out casted from the main society since ages. Democracy in India makes sure that they get as many opportunities and support from us as anyone else needs to grow and progress in life.

And to be honest, it’s not just the tribes and castes, in fact, in the absence of democracy in India, there would be so many disparities on gender and income levels. The allegedly weaker and less privileged sections of society including women, transgender, and physically handicapped would be mere space fillers in the country. Democracy in India empowers them with full rights and freedom of speech as well.

Types and Forms of Democracy in India:

Basically, there are two types of Democratic system practiced in the world. The same holds true in the context of our nation also. These two types of democratic systems are direct democracy and indirect democracy.

First, we will talk about direct democracy. In this kind of system, people directly participate in the process of picking their leaders. In fact, they are physically present during the whole process and collectively announce the name of their leader. As you can see, such kind of method is not feasible in the case of a large population. This is the reason why direct democracy in India has disappeared over the years. If at all, it is only followed in small villages and panchayat.

The second type of democracy is indirect democracy. The indirect democracy in India is the most popular alternative to form the government in the country. In this system, instead of getting involved directly, citizens of the nation participate indirectly in the process of electing their leaders. The biggest way to practice indirect democracy in India is by giving the votes during the election.

In the case of indirect democracy, the political parties pick a handful of their worthiest members and help them stand and fight in the elections. The common public gets to vote in favor of their favorite political leader. The one who gets the highest votes becomes the ruling minister in the respective region.

Democracy in India (Reality and Expectations):

Although ideally, all the procedures involved in the indirect democracy in India sound flawless, the ground reality is something else. Incorporating laws, in theory, is much easier than following in practical life. Same is the story with our country.

No matter how much we claim to have a fair and transparent system of democracy in India, we must admit that there are plenty of loopholes in reality. For instance, voting is done through Electronic voting machines (EVM).

The EVM topic has been the talk of the town for a while in India, especially during the recent elections. Allegedly, the ruling parties have been accused of interfering with the machines which led to a huge scam. In other words, it can be called nothing but a great dishonor to the indirect democracy in India.

Apart from that, we have a long history of violence and terror in the common public spread by the political parties, right before the major elections. This kind of shameful threating is specifically true in case of villages and small towns where people are made to vote at gunpoint for a particular party.

Moreover, democracy in India gives everyone equal rights to participate in the elections and in the process of voting. However, these right have been hampered on many occasions. A few years ago, women candidates in the political parties were not taken seriously. Even if they fought in the elections and won, their decision making was mainly carried out either by their husbands or by other political leaders in the same party.

The road to democracy in India has been uneven and tricky for the trans-genders as well. It wasn’t much before when they were crashed and killed just for trying to attempt and enter the political arena of the country.

That being said, things are changing at a considerable pace and for the better. There are more openness and acceptance in terms of people from other genders and age groups. The Election Commission is following strict measures to ensure a clean and fair system of democracy in India.

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• Democracy Essay for Students in English

Essay on Democracy

Introduction.

Democracy is mainly a Greek word which means people and their rules, here peoples have the to select their own government as per their choice. Greece was the first democratic country in the world. India is a democratic country where people select their government of their own choice, also people have the rights to do the work of their choice. There are two types of democracy: direct and representative and hybrid or semi-direct democracy. There are many decisions which are made under democracies. People enjoy few rights which are very essential for human beings to live happily. 

Our country has the largest democracy. In a democracy, each person has equal rights to fight for development. After the independence, India has adopted democracy, where the people vote those who are above 18 years of age, but these votes do not vary by any caste; people from every caste have equal rights to select their government. Democracy, also called as a rule of the majority, means whatever the majority of people decide, it has to be followed or implemented, the representative winning with the most number of votes will have the power. We can say the place where literacy people are more there shows the success of the democracy even lack of consciousness is also dangerous in a democracy. Democracy is associated with higher human accumulation and higher economic freedom. Democracy is closely tied with the economic source of growth like education and quality of life as well as health care. The constituent assembly in India was adopted by Dr B.R. Ambedkar on 26 th November 1949 and became sovereign democratic after its constitution came into effect on 26 January 1950.

What are the Challenges:

There are many challenges for democracy like- corruption here, many political leaders and officers who don’t do work with integrity everywhere they demand bribes, resulting in the lack of trust on the citizens which affects the country very badly. Anti-social elements- which are seen during elections where people are given bribes and they are forced to vote for a particular candidate. Caste and community- where a large number of people give importance to their caste and community, therefore, the political party also selects the candidate on the majority caste. We see wherever the particular caste people win the elections whether they do good for the society or not, and in some cases, good leaders lose because of less count of the vote.

India is considered to be the largest democracy around the globe, with a population of 1.3 billion. Even though being the biggest democratic nation, India still has a long way to becoming the best democratic system. The caste system still prevails in some parts, which hurts the socialist principle of democracy. Communalism is on the rise throughout the globe and also in India, which interferes with the secular principle of democracy. All these differences need to be set aside to ensure a thriving democracy.

Principles of Democracy:

There are mainly five principles like- republic, socialist, sovereign, democratic and secular, with all these quality political parties will contest for elections. There will be many bribes given to the needy person who require food, money, shelter and ask them to vote whom they want. But we can say that democracy in India is still better than the other countries.

Basically, any country needs democracy for development and better functioning of the government. In some countries, freedom of political expression, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, are considered to ensure that voters are well informed, enabling them to vote according to their own interests.

Let us Discuss These Five Principles in Further Detail

Sovereign: In short, being sovereign or sovereignty means the independent authority of a state. The country has the authority to make all the decisions whether it be on internal issues or external issues, without the interference of any third party.

Socialist: Being socialist means the country (and the Govt.), always works for the welfare of the people, who live in that country. There should be many bribes offered to the needy person, basic requirements of them should be fulfilled by any means. No one should starve in such a country.

Secular: There will be no such thing as a state religion, the country does not make any bias on the basis of religion. Every religion must be the same in front of the law, no discrimination on the basis of someone’s religion is tolerated. Everyone is allowed to practice and propagate any religion, they can change their religion at any time.

Republic: In a republic form of Government, the head of the state is elected, directly or indirectly by the people and is not a hereditary monarch. This elected head is also there for a fixed tenure. In India, the head of the state is the president, who is indirectly elected and has a fixed term of office (5 years).

Democratic: By a democratic form of government, means the country’s government is elected by the people via the process of voting. All the adult citizens in the country have the right to vote to elect the government they want, only if they meet a certain age limit of voting.

Merits of Democracy:

better government forms because it is more accountable and in the interest of the people.

improves the quality of decision making and enhances the dignity of the citizens.

provide a method to deal with differences and conflicts.

A democratic system of government is a form of government in which supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodic free elections. It permits citizens to participate in making laws and public policies by choosing their leaders, therefore citizens should be educated so that they can select the right candidate for the ruling government. Also, there are some concerns regarding democracy- leaders always keep changing in democracy with the interest of citizens and on the count of votes which leads to instability. It is all about political competition and power, no scope for morality.

Factors Affect Democracy:

capital and civil society

economic development

modernization

Norway and Iceland are the best democratic countries in the world. India is standing at fifty-one position.

India is a parliamentary democratic republic where the President is head of the state and Prime minister is head of the government. The guiding principles of democracy such as protected rights and freedoms, free and fair elections, accountability and transparency of government officials, citizens have a responsibility to uphold and support their principles. Democracy was first practised in the 6 th century BCE, in the city-state of Athens. One basic principle of democracy is that people are the source of all the political power, in a democracy people rule themselves and also respect given to diverse groups of citizens, so democracy is required to select the government of their own interest and make the nation developed by electing good leaders.

FAQs on Democracy Essay for Students in English

1. What are the Features of Democracy?

Features of Democracy are as follows

Equality: Democracy provides equal rights to everyone, regardless of their gender, caste, colour, religion or creed.

Individual Freedom: Everybody has the right to do anything they want until it does not affect another person’s liberty.

Majority Rules: In a democracy, things are decided by the majority rule, if the majority agrees to something, it will be done.

Free Election: Everyone has the right to vote or to become a candidate to fight the elections.

2. Define Democracy?

Democracy means where people have the right to choose the rulers and also people have freedom to express views, freedom to organise and freedom to protest. Protesting and showing Dissent is a major part of a healthy democracy. Democracy is the most successful and popular form of government throughout the globe.

Democracy holds a special place in India, also India is still the largest democracy in existence around the world.

3. What are the Benefits of Democracy?

Let us discuss some of the benefits received by the use of democracy to form a government. Benefits of democracy are: 

It is more accountable

Improves the quality of decision as the decision is taken after a long time of discussion and consultation.

It provides a better method to deal with differences and conflicts.

It safeguards the fundamental rights of people and brings a sense of equality and freedom.

It works for the welfare of both the people and the state.

4. Which country is the largest democracy in the World?

India is considered the largest democracy, all around the world. India decided to have a democratic Govt. from the very first day of its independence after the rule of the British. In India, everyone above the age of 18 years can go to vote to select the Government, without any kind of discrimination on the basis of caste, colour, religion, gender or more. But India, even being the largest democracy, still has a long way to become perfect.

5. Write about the five principles of Democracy?

There are five key principles that are followed in a democracy. These Five Principles of Democracy of India are -  secular, sovereign, republic, socialist, and democratic. These five principles have to be respected by every political party, participating in the general elections in India. The party which got the most votes forms the government which represents the democratic principle. No discrimination is done on the basis of religion which represents the secular nature of democracy. The govt. formed after the election has to work for the welfare of common people which shows socialism in play.

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Essay on Democracy in India for Students | 500+ Words Essay

December 20, 2020 by Sandeep

Essay on Democracy in India: India is the world’s largest democracy. Our country is a secular, democratic republic, and the President is the head of state, and the Prime minister is the head of the government. Citizens elect their leaders by casting votes. The candidate with a majority of votes wins the election and gets into power. India’s five democratic principles are sovereignty, socialism, secularism, democracy and republic establishment.

Essay on Democracy in India 500 Words in English

Below we have provided Democracy in India Essay in English, suitable for class 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 school students.

As quoted by Abraham Lincoln, “Democracy” is the government of the people, by the people and for the people. In other words, the absolute power to elect their representatives lies with the people who form the electorate. So, the power resides within the people and is expressed by their opinion and will. This kind of democracy, which is democratic, is most fitting in modern times. India is the world’s biggest democracy, with a population of more than a billion. India, a union of nations, is a republic with democratic capitalism, secularism, democracy and a parliamentary system of government. The republic is governed by the constitution, adopted on 26 November 1949 and put into effect on 26 January 1950.

Indian democracy has foundations which are very deep and solid. Our leaders like Mahatma Gandhi , Dr Rajendra Prasad, Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru , Lal Bahadur Shastri, and Indira Gandhi, etc., rightly hold the credit for this robust democratic base. Their contributions to Indian democracy’s progress have been incalculable. Our constitution has ensured that democracy is practised in India in its purest form since independence. The greatest of all the powers bestowed on people is their right to vote and to preserve a free democratic establishment in India. Not only that, but India’s system of democracy also gives every citizen the right to form a political party and take part in elections. As you can see, India’s democracy targets ordinary people more than its ruling party.

Types of Democracy in India

There are necessarily two types of Political system that are implemented around the world. The same also holds inside our country. These two forms of systems of democracy are direct democracy and indirect democracy.

Direct Democracy: Citizens engage directly in the process of choosing their representatives in this sort of scheme. They are, in fact, physically present in the whole cycle and collectively announce their leader’s name. As you can see, in the case of a large population, such an approach is not feasible. This is why, over the years, direct democracy in India has vanished. It is practised only in small villages and panchayat, if at all.

Indirect Democracy: India’s indirect democracy is the country’s most common option for forming the government. In this system, the nation’s people engage indirectly in the process of choosing their representatives, instead of being directly involved. Indirect democracy in India is best practised by giving the votes during the election. The political parties, in the case of indirect democracy, choose a few of their worthiest leaders and make them stand up and fight in the elections. The public at large gets to vote for their favourite elected official. The one who gets the highest votes in the respective region is the ruling minister.

Importance of Democracy in Indian Politics

Indian democratic government is represented through the peaceful combination of different beliefs and thoughts. There are strong cooperation and competition between various political organizations. Since the poll is the democratic system route, various political organizations exist, and each organization has its own agenda and thoughts. With so much ethnic and religious diversity, India’s democracy safeguards people from unwarranted prejudices and favouritism.

In India, democracy gives all equal rights and equality irrespective of their views and living standards. The expected caste and scheduled tribes in our country had since ages been thrown out of the main society. In India, democracy ensures that they get as many resources and support from us as everyone else does to develop and make progress in life.

Effects of Democracy

Democracy has its own share of benefits as well as inconveniences for the country’s ordinary people. Firstly, it is instrumental in defending citizens ‘rights and giving them the right to choose their government. Furthermore, it does not require a monocratic rule to crop us as all leaders realize that they do need to perform in case they want the people to nominate them during the next election. Therefore, they can’t believe they’ve powers forever. Providing all people with the right to vote gives them a sense of dignity irrespective of caste, class, religion or financial status.

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India’s democracy: illusion or reality.

For the last sixty years, since it gained independence in 1947, India has claimed the position of the world’s largest democracy. For almost as long, skeptics have seen India’s democracy as an Indian rope trick,1 an illusion in which the superstructure of democratic government—a parliament and prime minister, periodic elections, constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms—hides the reality of on-the-ground authoritarian rule by local landlords, bureaucracy, and party bosses, buttressed by a culture of caste-based inequality, and sustained by India’s continuing desperate poverty.

If this is an illusion, it is an impressive one. Within two years of independence, and through open and spirited debate, India produced a constitution that guarantees “fundamental rights,” and a federal and parliamentary system with a significant role for the Supreme Court, which over the years has enhanced its powers in the system through decisions that limit parliamentary sovereignty. From the beginning, there was tolerance of peaceful dissent and a wide range of active political associations. Despite some small-scale Communist-led rebellions, the Communist Party was not banned. There was a vigorous free press.

The 1951–52 elections for national parliament and state legislatures highlighted the bold decision to adopt universal adult suffrage. Despite the high level of illiteracy and low level of education, all men and women twenty-one and older—the age limit has since been lowered to eighteen—had the right to vote. With Jawaharlal Nehru in the lead, the campaign was very lively, with literally thousands of public meetings and processions. There was no doubt that the Congress Party would win the election easily, since it was a mass movement that had brought freedom to the country. It had major responsibility for governing the country in the five years before the election, but it is significant that Nehru, as Prime Minister, had included important leaders of other parties in the cabinet, including the Law Minister, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the leader of the “untouchables,” and S. P. Mookherjee, who later founded the Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh. Even though the Congress won an overwhelming majority of seats in parliament and in every state legislature, it received less than half the vote. Thus, a mandate was given for Congress to rule, and for the opposition to legitimately hold it accountable.

Nehru continued to act as tutor for India’s democracy, making sure to attend parliament on important occasions, respecting opposition party leaders, and listening to those in power in the states, who were his comrades in the freedom struggle and Congress Party members. The next two sets of elections (held in 1957 and 1962) followed the same pattern, with the Congress surviving the major political crisis that ended with the reorganization of the states—a substantial redrawing of the map of India based on language. In the 1967 election, however, the Congress met defeat in many major states, bringing opposition coalitions to power. The defeat was one factor that caused a split in the party in 1969. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, adopting a populist electoral appeal, swept aside the other Congress splinter, and in the aftermath of India’s successful war against Pakistan in 1971, won victories in states lost in 1967 and in several other mid-term elections. Indira Gandhi’s actions seemingly re-established Congress hegemony.

A series of economic and political crises, however, resulted in Mrs. Gandhi, in June 1975, invoking a constitutional provision for declaring a national “Emergency.” She jailed opposition leaders, imposed press censorship, and rammed through constitutional amendments to reduce the autonomy of the judiciary and enhance executive powers. Despite very little popular resistance, after a year or so there was considerable disillusionment with the claimed benefits of the Emergency and disquiet with apparent abuses of power. To her everlasting credit, Mrs. Gandhi not only allowed the scheduled election of parliament, but did not interfere with its administration. The election was as free and fair as previous ones, with most opposition leaders freed from jail and the press allowed to function as before.

The unexpected and exhilarating defeat of Mrs. Gandhi and the Congress in the 1977 election constituted a second liberation from authoritarian rule. It is critical to note that Mrs. Gandhi quietly handed over power to the winners, and three years later fought successfully to return to power through democratic means. In the meantime, the constitutional powers of the judiciary had been restored, other changes repealed, and the Congress faced a credible political alternative at both national and state levels. The press rapidly changed into a more active institution, doing investigative reporting and challenging the government in ways it hadn’t before the Emergency.

In the four decades since 1977, India’s democracy has weathered other crises—the separatist movements in Punjab and the northeast states, for example—without returning to authoritarian rule. Regular elections have been held, and there has been peaceful alternation of power between parties or coalitions six times at the national level and countless times in the states. 2 A free press has become a largely free media, as the government has diluted its monopoly of TV (although it still holds complete control of the radio broadcast system), and information flows freely from abroad, as it has always done. Political parties and non-governmental organizations, ranging from local social action groups to country-wide issue-oriented movements (on the environment, for instance) continue to grow in importance. Individual freedoms of speech, association, and assembly are largely unconstrained.

Currently, the political landscape continues to feature a national parliament that meets regularly, debates openly, but in many ways is fairly weak as a legislative body. Now, twenty-eight states also have regularly elected and functioning legislatures, chief ministers, and cab inets that make policies in crucial areas mainly reserved for the states, such as law and order, education, health, and economic development. Originally, local government institutions were creatures of state government. However, local government has found a place in the constitution, with required periodic elections and a mandate for substantial transfer of resources for development purposes. Elections throughout India have produced literally millions of newly elected representatives, one-third of them women. For the most part, however, substantial financial resources have not been provided to those institutions.

A judicial system at the upper levels—the High Courts of the states and the Supreme Court in Delhi—is respected for administration of justice, though burdened by widespread inefficiency. Some cases take literally decades to decide. There is corruption at the lowest levels.

The players in the system have changed dramatically over the last sixty years. At present, in national elections, the Congress Party gets around a quarter of the vote, as does the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Parties powerful in only one state split the rest of the vote. There are hundreds of small parties and thousands of independent candidates, very few of whom win any seats.

Over time, more and more states have developed two-party systems, many of which have in fact two coalitions, but they are not necessarily the same two parties (or coalitions) that are competing. The Congress remains a force in almost all states, but the BJP’s strength is confined mostly to northern and western states. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has won every election in West Bengal since 1977, and in Tamil Nadu, the two major contestants are the two Tamil nationalist parties, the DMK and the AIADMK. Other major parties include the Socialist Party and the BSP—the party whose core is the people once considered outside and beneath the Hindu castes (the Untouchables), many of whom now use the term “dalit” (oppressed)—in Uttar Pradesh; the Akali Dal (party of the Sikhs) in Punjab; the cultural nationalist TDP in Andhra Pradesh; and the RJD (a middle-caste based party) in Bihar.

A pattern of instability in state governments after the 1967 election lasted about two decades. Now, it is not exceptional for state governments to last a full five-year term, and recently several have won re-election. This stability has helped state governments to become more active and effective promoters of programs in education and economic development; they now play the central government for resources rather than being manipulated, as in the past when their local political footing was less sure. Some instability associated with coalitions surfaced in Delhi after the 1989 election, when a coalition called the “Third Force” (i.e., neither Congress-led nor BJP-led) took power, but soon had to be rearranged. The same thing happened in 1996–98. The BJP-led coalition that won in 1998 came apart, but a new version won in 1999 and served a full term. The Congress-led coalition that won narrowly in 2004 has managed to stay together.

In sum, India appears to have a democracy that functions according to the rules. The country handles external and internal crises well, while accommodating new political leaders, movements, and patterns of political rule and opposition. The ordinary citizen has not been left out: turnout in elections has risen to a present-day figure of about fifty-five to sixty percent of eligible voters, and the percentage of women, people designated “tribal,” and other marginal groups has almost reached that of the population as a whole. Turnout percentages of poor and rural voters are significantly higher than the average Indian turnout.

Indian citizens show strong support for democracy. In the 2007 State of Democracy in South Asia report, ninety-two percent of a large survey sample believe democracy to be suitable for India; “strong democrats” outweigh “non-democrats” by forty-one to fifteen percent (with forty-three percent as “weak democrats”). 3 In Yogendra Yadav’s summation: “The idea of democracy has, above all, come to supply the only valid criterion for claims to legitimate rule and, correspondingly, the moral basis of political obligation.” 4

If this is all not an illusion, and India is indeed democratic, then it stands as a mammoth exception that tests our understanding of what makes countries democratic. India has features that most believe make democracy impossible. Although its economic growth in recent years has been high, India remains a very poor country with a per capita income well below the threshold that seemingly demarcates democracies from dictatorships. 5 It has a bewildering number of ethnic communities, separated by language, religion, and caste, with occasionally alarming incidents of inter-community violence. 6 Caste remains a major feature of the social and political landscape with its religiously-sanctioned inequality. India is usually ranked among the world’s worst countries when it comes to the prevalence of corruption. The military is strictly under civilian control, and, historically, has never been a threat to stage a coup. However, the military has been given power for significant periods and allowed to ignore normal legal processes in certain parts of the country, such as the northeastern border states, Punjab from 1984 to 1992, and Kashmir since 1989. Finally, it has a bureaucracy inherited from colonial rule that—in practice and in the attitudes of its officials—is often capricious, authoritarian, and almost impossible to hold accountable. 8

Clearly, there are also flaws, perhaps fatal flaws, in India’s democracy. Are those many elections truly free and fair, given that in each election there are reports of intimidation, forcible occupation of polling stations, and other irregularities? With literacy and significant education still at very low levels, how can citizens cast their votes effectively? Do programs and policies change meaningfully when new parties come to power? Doesn’t the weakness of the rule of law at the lowest level encourage criminalization of politics and increase the difficulty of bringing corrupt officials to justice? Are there not powerful landowning and other classes that dominate and control politics in Delhi, state capitals, and local arenas?

Let us sketch responses to these questions and link them, in general, to underlying anti-democratic features. To begin, let us consider the integrity of elections. An autonomous Election Commission, one of the most respected institutions in the country, conducts elections and its record has been remarkably good. The electoral registers the Commission compiles can be quite inaccurate, and may contain many names of those who have died or moved; other names are missing. However, political parties and ordinary citizens have ready access to the rolls and are able to challenge or add names. Currently the rolls are being computerized, and anyone with an Internet connection can check them. The Election Commission has a code of conduct for election campaigns that regulates the hours of public meetings, requires financial and criminal record disclosure by candidates, recognizes parties and assigns them symbols, and attempts to regulate expenditures. Although expenditure rules are routinely flouted, it is not clear that this affects the outcome. Early on, money to buy votes for particular leaders flowed quite freely, but as voters gained confidence that the ballot was truly secret, vote-buying produced unreliable results and became less important.

On polling days, the Election Commission has full authority to mobilize government employees, such as teachers and security forces, to conduct the election. Most elections have violent incidents, including murdering candidates and ballot box stuffing. These occurrences have declined in recent years, however, as security has tightened; polling is on multiple days for up to a month. In cases where an election has been “countermanded,” a fresh poll is held weeks later, with additional security—and invariably there is no further problem. Vote fraud still exists in a few areas, but even then affects only a small percent of the vote total. All voting is on Indian-designed and Indian-manufactured electronic machines. This has accelerated the vote count results, but even before these technological advances, elaborate procedures were in place to make sure ballot boxes were secure and votes counted fairly.

Uncontested elections are rare at national and state levels. The range in ideology, policy, and social base of the winning parties is quite large. Communists have ruled West Bengal for thirty years, and in Kerala, a Communist-led coalition has alternated with a Congress-led coalition for almost as long. There are parties with cultural nationalist agendas, religious parties, and parties centered on particular castes that have ruled solely, or in coalition, in many states and in Delhi.

Election campaigns are wide open and thoroughly reported in the press. Spirited discussions also occur on TV. Face-to-face contact of candidates with voters remains at the heart of the campaign, however, with countless speeches and snippets of discussions during the three-week, eighteen-hour day sprint to polling day. This lessens the significance of education. Male voters with little or no schooling are practiced in judging what a candidate says and remembering it. As a rule, women do not attend meetings or hear speeches, and if uneducated, they have more difficulty than peer males understanding issues. Still, considerable empirical evidence exists that regardless of gender, most people no longer vote according to the dictates of husbands, or caste leaders, or even those with economic power over them. The secret ballot makes an enormous difference.

People appear to act rationally when they vote—not wasting their vote on candidates who have no chance of winning. They frequently throw out incumbents (about fifty percent), and usually disregard boasts of accomplishments and promises of good things to come, such as roads, electricity, or fertilizer supply. Local issues count more than national issues, except in extraordinary elections like 1977. The poor value the vote as one of the very few ways they can exercise even the smallest amount of power. Typically, they are utterly dependent on their landlord or their boss in a shop, with no recourse to laws, or even public opinion, if they are made to work long hours without decent pay, let alone other benefits; they are often beaten. They have no influence when it comes to getting proper health care or other government benefits. But with the assurance of a secret ballot and usually an uncertainty about who is leading, they find rich and powerful candidates begging for their vote.

There are, of course, large numbers of poor people who vote, and in India, the voter turnout of the poor is now higher than that of the non-poor. The contrast becomes most clear when the very poor are compared to the very rich, or illiterates to college graduates. The reverse is true in developed countries, including the US.9 And they get results. The most recent example is the party that won the 2007 state assembly election in the giant state of Uttar Pradesh (185 million inhabitants), which is led by an ex-untouchable woman named Mayawati, who captured a majority of the seats—mainly with the votes of the poor. 10

India’s society is socially fragmented to a high degree. For example, even if we ignore the fact that Hindi, the national language, composed of mutually unintelligible dialects (in addition to literary and film dialogue forms), is spoken by a minority of Indians. In any given electoral constituency, with a few exceptions, no community, whether caste or religious, has a majority, so cross-caste, and often cross-religion alliances must be created to win. Some of these alliances are horizontal, with middle-level farmers uniting, while others are vertical, between landlord groups and their farm workers, for example. Caste and religious groups, especially in local arenas, are often divided into factions, which can further complicate support. In some villages, and even in larger areas, powerful men organize followers into armed gangs to intimidate the lower classes. In some areas (mainly in the tribal belt of east-central India), these oppressed people have been organized to resist by workers of a coalition of revolutionary parties. In most of India, however, politics of all kinds—including democratic electoral politics—is more a matter of shifting alliances, countervailing groups, and leader-follower relationships based on the personal characteristics of the leader.

Efforts to create class-like movements on a broader level—farmers’ movements, for example—have been unsuccessful, and the caste associations that became prominent in the early years of independence have faded from the scene. In no state, much less at the national level, are there institutions that pull together even economic interest groups for effective political action. There are multiple and competing business associations, and Communist, Congress, and BJP parties mainly control trade unions through affiliating federations. Feminist, environmental, and other social movements have some impact on politics, using such tools as demonstrations and litigation, but they usually steer clear of electoral politics. The rich, and even the urban middle classes, manage to advance and protect their interests in large measure through networks of kinship and common institutions, such as schools and colleges, social clubs, and professional associations. This form of interest group politics by well-positioned groups is typical of not only India, but of all democracies.

Corruption in the court and criminal justice systems most certainly distorts the rule of law and the implementation of government programs. Although many politicians have criminal cases pending against them, very few have been convicted and almost none have exhausted their appeals. The serious “mafias” (the word is used in India) that are involved in smuggling, illicit drugs, alcohol, and other protection or extortion rackets and that control politicians, exist in relatively few cities. In certain government departments, corruption is endemic— contractors and others pay bribes shared by officials and politicians who control their transfers and promotions. That said, the national scale or even state-level corruption in which policies are bought and sold is rare.

Democracy in India is not a façade behind which one finds dominant classes or other societal institutions that exercise power. India is not very different from other democracies in the extent to which the bureaucracy governs without much day-to-day accountability. Colonial rule was built on a very small, elite corps of administrators whose task was primarily to maintain order. When independence came, those who did not quit were allowed to continue, but they had to prove their loyalty to the new political order, and to the leaders they had put in jail just a few years before. At the same time, the tasks of government expanded enormously, as the promises in education, health care, and, most of all, economic development, required a much-enhanced bureaucratic apparatus. Unlike many Third World countries, the balance of power between elected politicians and bureaucrats in India favored the politicians, and that advantage has not been lost. 11

In contrast to most post-colonial countries—Pakistan presents a particularly vivid comparison—India’s military has been kept firmly under civilian and political control. Because the military also needed to demonstrate their loyalty to the new political leaders, when fighting erupted with Pakistan in Kashmir at independence, and a border dispute with China in 1962 ended in war, the military had an important national security mission, which it had been taught, in the British tradition, would be undermined by involvement in politics. The Indian government also was aware of the need to keep the military budget firmly under civilian control. Coups in many Third World countries have been associated with armies controlled by particular, often minority ethnic communities. Although Punjabis, particularly Sikhs, were disproportionately represented in the army at independence, they were still a small minority, which was further diluted as the navy and air force expanded.

Most important, though, was the success of the Indian democratic system in resolving crises involving states with different languages and cultures, and dealing with the economic crisis of the mid-1960s. The army faced insurgencies in peripheral states, but never had to deal with a law and order problem the government could not handle. Each time the military was not called upon for domestic purposes—notably not even during the Emergency—the less likely the chance of subsequent intervention.

The absence of a military coup, or even the threat of one, is one explanation for why India remains a democracy. It is less clear why India has maintained a democracy while remaining below the theoretical threshold of development that many political scientists see as crucial for sustained democracy. Using quantitative data, scholars have shown that almost all countries at the lowest level of development are autocracies, and almost all countries at the highest level of development are democracies. Development that breaches the threshold does not necessarily produce democracy. However, when a high development country becomes democratic, it nearly always sustains its democracy.

Carles Boix and Susan Stokes make a persuasive argument that “democracy is caused not by income [the measure of development] per se but by other changes that accompany development, in particular, income equality.” 12 As India has developed, its inequality has increased only slightly and remains at the comparatively low figure, as measured by a Gini coefficient of consumption, of 30.5 in 2004–05. 13 Smaller Gini coefficients indicate greater equality of income and wealth distribution. Significantly, in the countryside, the small farmers have increased in number and in percent of landholdings at the expense of marginal farmers and large landowners. In urban India, the middle class has expanded at the most rapid rate, especially in recent years. India is exceptional in this as well: for example, the Gini indexes of Nigeria, China, and Brazil, are, respectively, thirtyfour percent, thirty-seven percent, and seventy-eight percent larger than India’s, which indicates substantially greater inequality. 14 It is quite possible that India’s democracy helps explain the difference. When the poor can vote effectively, government is more likely to ensure that they get a more substantial share of the benefits of development.

The income equality argument does not sufficiently explain why India was able to build a democracy when others failed. The best probable explanation of why India is democratic today is that it had a functioning democracy yesterday. Particularly for a country like India that is struggling to develop and manage huge societal and cultural change at the same time, the success of democracy builds on its ability to solve those problems, as demonstrated by its earlier successes. 15 The 1977 election, or possibly the first half of 1980, when Sanjay Gandhi seemed to be leading the Congress Party towards a more authoritarian program, marked crucial “roads not taken” moments. Before then, although democratic institutions had been established and worked effectively, there was a good chance democracy would break down. 16

Nehru’s personal role in setting India firmly on a democratic path has been noted, but Nehru himself got his opportunity from being the “first among equals” in the Congress movement that transformed itself into a party of governance. That nationalist movement is unique in the colonial era for its longevity, the depth and breadth of its roots in the populace, and the general extent to which it was internally democratic. Founded in 1885, for thirty-five years the Congress was essentially an annual gathering of the elite of India’s educated class who had petitioned the British to grant rights to their citizens in India. As the British resisted change, the Congress debated among themselves and demanded rights from the Raj. Then Gandhi transformed the Congress into a mass movement with a permanent governing body and a revolutionary constitution. He then led movements of civil disobedience in the early 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Each of these drew in larger and larger numbers of followers. The new Congress organization ensured that they were represented in the highest councils by leaders with local support, as well as by Gandhian or other nationalist credentials. As a movement for independence, the Congress was inclusive and included rich and poor, socialists, and Hindu nationalists. Only those who rejected nonviolence were excluded. Gandhi’s respect for the rule of law was such that while he claimed to be the judge of which laws he would follow, he insisted that he be condemned in court for breaking those laws. Although Gandhi and his trusted lieutenants effectively ran the Congress from above, the annual sessions and the debates on policies were exercises in free speech.

The second leadership generational transfer brought Jawaharlal Nehru in, with Gandhi’s support, even though Nehru’s views on socialism and modernist development contradicted Gandhi’s own ideas favoring village-level economic self-sufficiency and the belief that the rich should hold property as “trustees” for the poor. Over generations, the Congress developed a style of leadership and internal functioning that fit well with democracy. It developed momentum derived from effective action with an unrivalled network of support that reached minorities, women, and the rural poor. These political attributes served India well when independence came in 1947.

If India had not begun with that precious inheritance, it is doubtful that its democracy would be the reality it is today. That reality is clear in the unwavering commitment to democratic practices, especially in elections, and in the effective control of the military and bureaucrats. With the exception of the Emergency of 1975–77, the crises in the federal system, the ethnic and revolutionary insurgencies, and wars with India’s neighbors have been handled without damaging the democratic system, although the government has been responsible for severe violations of civil rights in the localities concerned, some of them quite substantial states, like Punjab and Kashmir.

As in all democracies, groups and some individuals wield a very wide range of power vis-à-vis government, but even at the local level there are only a few places where landlords or dominant castes can consistently get their way. In state and national government, it is the political party system that shapes most policy—not big business, or external powers, or a religious institution. In recent decades, there has been an impressive mobilization of the poor and previously marginalized groups, including the lower castes and women, which has been reflected in voting, in participation in local government, and in the leadership that has come to power. If India continues to grow economically at a rapid pace, the final foundation piece for a stable democracy will soon be put in place.

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• See Lee Siegel, Net of Magic: Wonders and Deceptions in India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991) for a discussion of the magicians’ “rope trick.”
• Not counting the rearrangement of coalitions in 1990 and 1997, and with a fresh election in 1999.
• In Pakistan “non–democrats” (forty-one percent) outweigh “strong democrats” (ten percent), with “weak democrats” at forty-nine percent.
• Yogendra Yadav, “Politics,” in Marshall Bouton and Philip Oldenburg, eds., India Briefing: A Transformative Fifty Years (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1999), 31.
• See: Axel Hadenius and Jan Teorell, “Cultural and Economic Prerequisites of Democracy: Reassessing Recent Evidence,” Studies in Comparative International Development 39, 4 (Winter 2005), 87–106.
• See: D. L. Sheth, “Society,” in Marshall Bouton and Philip Oldenburg, eds., India Briefing: A Transformative Fifty Years (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1999).
• See: Transparency International India, India Corruption Study 2005; To Improve Governance , http://www.cmsindia.org/cms/events/corruption.pdf, (accessed July 7, 2007).
• See Myron Weiner, The Child and the State in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).
• See the Wikipedia entry on “voter turnout” (accessed September 20, 2007): “In developed countries, non-voters tend to be concentrated in particular demographic and socioeconomic groups, especially the young and the poor. However, in India, which boasts an electorate of more than 670 million people, the opposite is true. The poor, who comprise the majority of the demographic, are more likely to vote than the rich and the middle classes.” For representative India data, see the important chapter by Yogendra Yadav, “Understanding the Second Upsurge: Trends of Bahujan [“majority”] participation in electoral politics in the 1990s,” (Francine R. Frankel et al., eds., Transforming India: Social and Political Dynamics of Democracy (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), 120–145.
• See Yogendra Yadav and Sanjay Kumar, “Poor Man’s Rainbow over U.P.,” Indian Express (online edition), May 18, 2007; the data show that forty-one percent of the poor, and only fifteen percent of the rich, voted for the Bahujan Samaj Party.
• For an important argument on this issue, see Fred W. Riggs, “Bureaucrats and Political Development: A Paradoxical View,” in Joseph LaPalombara, ed., Bureaucracy and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 120–167.
• Carles Boix and Susan Carol Stokes, “Endogenous Democratization,” World Politics 55, 4 (July 2003), 540.
• See Surjit S. Bhalla, “Misconceived Ideas—Income Inequality,” Business Standard (New Delhi), July 7, 2007, http://www.business–standard.com/economy/storypage.php? tab=r&autono=290320&subLeft=3&leftnm=3 (accessed July 7, 2007).
• UNDP, Human Development Report 2006, Table 15, http://hdr.undp.org/ hdr2006/pdfs/report/HDR06–complete.pdf (accessed July 7, 2007). The report does not note precisely what the Gini index is measuring (income, consumption, wealth?).
• See Atul Kohli, ed., The Success of India’s Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
• For the general analysis of democratic breakdowns (and “reequilibration,” which is what happened in India in 1977), see Juan J. Linz, Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Crisis, Breakdown, and Reequilibration . (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978). For a pessimistic view of the survival of India’s democracy even after 1977, see Ainslie Embree, “The Emergency as a Signpost to India’s Future,” in Peter Lyon and James Manor, eds., Transfer and Transformation: Political Institutions in the New Commonwealth (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1983), 59–67.
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Why India’s Democracy Is Dying

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India exemplifies the global democratic recession. India’s recent downgrade to a hybrid regime is a major influence on the world’s autocratization. And the modality of India’s democratic decline reveals how democracies die today: not through a dramatic coup or midnight arrests of opposition leaders, but instead, it moves through the fully legal harassment of the opposition, intimidation of media, and centralization of executive power. By equating government criticism with disloyalty to the nation, the government of Narendra Modi is diminishing the very idea that opposition is legitimate. India today is no longer the world’s largest democracy.

This is one of five essays in a special package on the state of India’s democracy.

N o country is a better exemplar of our global democratic recession than India. Most unlikely at its founding, India’s democracy confounded legions of naysayers by growing more stable over its first seven decades. India’s democratic deepening happened in  formal  ways, through the consolidation of civilian rule over the military as well as decades of vibrant multiparty competition, and  informal  ways, through the strengthening of norms around Electoral Commission independence and the increasing participation of women and other social groups in formal political life.

India has also witnessed two significant democratic declines: the 21-month period from June 1975 to March 1977 known as the Emergency and a contemporary decline beginning with Narendra Modi’s election in 2014. During Modi’s tenure, key democratic institutions have remained formally in place while the norms and practices underpinning democracy have substantially deteriorated. This informal democratic decline in contemporary India stands in stark contrast to the Emergency, when Indira Gandhi formally eliminated nearly all democratic institutions—banning elections, arresting political opposition, eviscerating civil liberties, muzzling independent media, and passing three constitutional amendments that undermined the power of the country’s courts.

About the Author

Maya Tudor is associate professor of politics and public policy at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford. She is the author of The Promise of Power: The Origins of Democracy in India and Autocracy in Pakistan (2013) and Varieties of Nationalism: Communities, Narratives, Identities (with Harris Mylonas, 2023).

View all work by Maya Tudor

Yet democracy watchdogs agree that today India resides somewhere in a nether region between full democracy and full autocracy. While democracy-watching organizations categorize democracies differently, they all classify India today as a “hybrid regime”—that is, neither a full democracy nor a full autocracy. And this is new. In 2021, Freedom House dropped India’s rating from Free to Partly Free (the only remaining category is Not Free). That same year, the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project relegated India to the status of “electoral autocracy” on its scale of closed autocracy, electoral autocracy, electoral democracy, or liberal democracy. And the Economist Intelligence Unit moved India into the “flawed democracy” category on its scale of full democracy, flawed democracy, hybrid regime, and authoritarian regime. India’s democratic downgrading moved 1.4 billion of the world’s 8 billion people into the category of autocratizing countries. Its drop from Free to Partly Free fully halved the share of the world living in a Free country. 1  Wherever you draw the conceptual lines between the land of democracy, the sea of autocracy, and the marshlands marking the hybrid regions, our democratic world is considerably less populous without India among its ranks. The question of whether India is a democracy today is not just pivotal to our analysis of the country’s political future but to our understanding of democratic trends more broadly. India, this year the world’s most populous country, is where the global battle for democracy is being fought.

Some disagree that India has substantively deteriorated into hybrid-regime territory. Unsurprisingly, the Indian government has reacted with accusations of Western bias, calling India’s democratic downgrade “misleading, incorrect and misplaced.” 2  In August 2022, the Economic Advisory Council to India’s prime minister released a working paper calling out inconsistencies in democracy rankings. Yet there is reason why regime assessments, like a central bank’s interest rates, are best made by independent organizations. Notably, democracy watchdogs have not been shy about critiquing the quality of Western democracies.

But a minority of independent voices also resist India’s recategorization as a hybrid regime. In the article “Why India’s Democracy Is Not Dying,” Akhilish Pillalamarri writes that “cultural and social trends [in India today] are not necessarily evidence of democratic backsliding, but are rather evidence of social norms in India that are illiberal toward speech, individual expression, and criticism.” 3  So has India really departed the shores of democracy? And if so, is India’s transition into a hybrid regime reversible? The answer to both questions is yes.

What ’ s in a Name?

To evaluate India’s democratic downgrading, it is first necessary to define democracy, both because adjudicating the debate over India’s democratic decline rests on conceptual clarity and because democracy undoubtedly connotes normative legitimacy. Democracy is a concept that instantiates a system of government that is “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” to quote Abraham Lincoln. Clarity on the non-normative dimensions of democracy that operationalize this idea points us toward the criteria we can use to assess the state of India’s democracy.

Scholars mostly agree that five institutions are central to a country’s designation as democratic. Of these five institutions,  elections  for the chief executive and legislature are the first and most important. The second institutional pillar of democracy is thus the presence of genuine political  competition . Countries where individuals have the right to vote in elections, but where incumbents make it difficult for the opposition to organize are not generally considered democracies. Democracy also requires governmental  autonomy  from other forces—such as a colonial ruler or powerful military elites—that can halt or wholly subvert democratic elections; this autonomy is the third institutional pillar.

Two more institutions are also conceptually crucial to democracy because they enable both citizens and independent branches of government to evaluate the government’s performance:  civil liberties  (both de jure and de facto), the fourth pillar, and  executive checks,  the fifth pillar. Many prominent scholars have correctly argued that definitions of democracy which do not include basic civil liberties are inadequate. 4  An independent press that enables the formation of critical public opinion is increasingly understood as being part of this civil-liberties pillar. The final institutional pillar of democracy,  executive checks,  is what prevents an elected head of government from declaring  l’état, c’est moi.  Democracy is a set of institutions that embed a practice of government accountability. This accountability takes two forms: vertical accountability between the people and the highest levels of elected government, typically elections and alternative political forces; and horizontal accountability between the executive and independent institutions, typically independent legislatures and courts that can constrain an elected executive from trampling on civil liberties.

Two important points follow from this five-pillar conceptualization of democracy that are germane to our assessment of India’s contemporary democratic decline. The first is that the scholarly definition of democracy has rightly expanded over time. In the past half-century, as authoritarian leaders have learned to adopt the window-dressing of democracy while quashing those institutions essential to its functioning, democracy watchdogs have wisely adapted by seeking to better assess whether government institutions embody accountability and whether institutional rights exist not just in law but in practice.

One specific way in which scholarly conceptions of democracy have expanded is a newfound understanding of the importance of institutional norms in buttressing democracy. As Nancy Bermeo prophetically wrote in these pages in 2016, we are living in an age of democratic backsliding characterized by the decline of overt democratic breakdown. Coup d’états are being replaced by promissory coups (presenting “the ouster of an elected government as a defense of democratic legality”); executive coups are being replaced by executive aggrandizement (“elected executives weaken checks on executive power one by one, undertaking a series of institutional changes that hamper the power of opposition forces to challenge executive preferences”); and election-day vote fraud is being replaced by preelection strategic manipulation (reflecting “a range of actions aimed at tilting the electoral playing field in favor of incumbents”). In other words, democratic decline is assuming the form of an incremental undermining of democratic institutions wherein “troubled democracies are now more likely to erode than shatter.” 5

And the clearest signs of such democratic erosion are that elected leaders question the legitimacy of all opposition and use every available legal tool to undermine it. Drawing on a broad range of historical cases, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue that unwritten rules and norms of behavior toward political opposition are the key to preventing such democratic deterioration. They argue that the two most important norms are  opposition tolerance,  meaning that political opponents are not treated as enemies but simply as political rivals, and  forbearance,  that is, limited use of the legal methods to steamroll opposition, such as executive orders, vetoes, and filibusters. 6  Contemporary democratic backsliders tend  not  to transform overnight to autocracies. Instead, democracies slowly die when opposition is no longer tolerated and when elected politicians use the full might of the law to quash rather than compromise with political opposition.

India’s contemporary democratic decline is a paradigmatic case of these crucial democracy-supporting norms sharply eroding. The formal institutions of India’s democracy (largely reflected in Freedom House’s political-rights category and corresponding to the elections, competition, and autonomy pillars of democracy) have remained relatively stable over the past decade. India’s civil-liberties ranking, in contrast, has eroded year on year since 2019, dropping from 42 (out of a possible 60) points in 2010 to 33 in 2023. It is this nine-point drop in Freedom House’s civil-liberties index that has moved India from the category of democracy (those generally score above 70) to the terrain of a hybrid regime (generally scoring between 35 and 70). And, as I detail below, the downgrade is warranted.

A second, related point is that the same regime can become autocratic in decidedly different ways at different points in time. And different regimes can be equally undemocratic, but for different reasons. Democratic recessions need not assume a dramatic form, like military coups or the kind of  autogolpe  that India witnessed under Indira Gandhi’s Emergency. In 2023, Freedom House classified both Iraq and Mali as Not Free and gave them the exact same score of 29—but for radically different reasons. Mali ranks low on political rights (8 out of 40 possible points) because the country has not yet returned to having regular elections after military coups. But Mali ranks high among full autocracies for civil liberties (21 out of 60 possible points) because its media are relatively independent and it has broad rights to dissent and free speech. By contrast, Iraq scores relatively high among full autocracies on political rights (16 out of 40 possible points) because it holds regular, competitive elections, and its various religious and ethnic groups maintain representation within the political system. Yet Iraq does less well on civil liberties (13 out of 60 possible points) because of frequently documented cases of militias depriving citizens and journalists of liberties. Countries can dip below the democratic threshold by declining sharply in some domains. But they can also dip into hybrid-regime territory by declining only somewhat across a broad range of indicators—and this is what we see in contemporary India.

Stable Rights and Declining Liberties

India’s democracy was never very high-quality. The formal exercise of autonomous, competitive elections with a broad range of civil liberties—while it did translate into a mass poverty-alleviation program and the world’s largest affirmative-action program—always had plenty of shortcomings. But democracy also had a built-in autocorrect feature, which allowed incumbents to be turned out of power. That autocorrect feature is endangered today in mostly  informal  ways. In terms of Freedom House’s political-rights score (encompassing the pillars of elections, competition, and autonomy), India’s average for the nine years before Modi came to power was the same as for the nine years since 2014. Incumbent turnover remains electorally possible but improbable because the Modi government has substantially eroded the de facto protection of civil liberties and executive constraints—the fourth and fifth pillars of democracy. It is the drop in India’s civil-liberties rating that accounts for its contemporary democratic decline.

The legal right to dissent, historically only erratically protected in Indian courts, remains legally in place while the practical possibility of vocal dissent free from overwhelming harassment has virtually disappeared. To be sure, India’s media, while generally vibrant and free, were sometimes censored before Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government came to power in 2014. But today, while the media remain legally free to dissent, widespread harassment of independent journalism and concentrating ownership structures have meant that journalists and individuals practice a high degree of self-censorship. Checks on executive power, while formally in place, are rapidly falling away.

Radically constrained civil liberties.  Since 2016, civil liberties have been curtailed, to some extent legally and to a significant extent practically. CIVICUS, an international organization that tracks global civil liberties in 197 countries, now classifies India as “repressed” on its declining scale of open, narrowed, obstructed, repressed, and closed. The downgrade from “obstructed,” which happened in 2019, meant that India’s civic space was, according to the organization’s website, one where “civil society members who criticise power holders risk surveillance, harassment, intimidation, imprisonment, injury and death.” Among its neighbors, India is now in the same ratings category as Pakistan and Bangladesh, and in a lower category than Nepal and Sri Lanka.

The Modi government has increasingly employed two kinds of laws to silence its critics—colonial-era sedition laws and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). Authorities have regularly booked individuals under sedition laws for dissent in the form of posters, social-media posts, slogans, personal communications, and in one case, posting celebratory messages for a Pakistani cricket win. Sedition cases rose by 28 percent   between 2010 and 2021. Of the sedition cases filed against citizens for criticizing the government, 96 percent were filed after Modi came to power in 2014. One report estimates that over the course of just one year, ten-thousand tribal activists in a single district were charged with sedition for invoking their land rights. 7

The Unlawful Activities Prevention Act was amended in 2019 to allow the government to designate individuals as terrorists without a specific link to a terrorist organization. There is no mechanism of judicial redress to challenge this categorization. The law now specifies that it can be used to target individuals committing any act “likely to threaten” or “likely to strike terror in people.” Between 2015 and 2019, there was a 72 percent increase in arrests under the UAPA, with 98 percent of those arrested remaining in jail without bail. 8

The frequent invocation of these strengthened laws is substantively new and has significantly chilled dissent.   The state has intimidated opposition by broadly labeling criticisms of government policy as contrary to the national interest, or “anti-national,” and by employing an army of volunteers to identify problematic online dissent. BJP politicians have popularized the term “anti-national” in patterns that target individuals, causes, and organizations. 9  Academics were first to be targeted, with university administrators and faculty investigated, disciplined, or compelled to step down owing to their perceived political views. But such tactics were quickly broadened to include any high-profile dissenters.

India’s Muslim community, comprising 14 percent of the population, has suffered a particularly marked decline in civil liberties. Acts of anti-Muslim violence, including lynchings or mob killings, have risen sharply. According to IndiaSpend, bovine-related mob-lynching deaths (involving rumors of those handling beef, typically Muslims) have substantially risen as a proportion of violence in India since 2010, with 97 percent of bovine-related attacks between 2010 and 2017 occurring after Modi came to power in 2014. A majority of the victims of public killings are believed to have been Muslim. India’s largest minority now lives in a “widespread climate of fear” according to most independent international organizations reporting on such matters, including Human Rights Watch and the U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom. 10  With Parliament’s passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2019, discrimination against Muslims assumed legal form, specifically excluding Muslim refugees from a streamlined citizenship process. Observers believe this Act, together with a planned national register of citizens, will be used in tandem to disenfranchise Muslim voters who lack the paperwork to prove they are citizens. India’s only Muslim-majority state, Jammu and Kashmir, is experiencing a shutdown of its civil liberties that is in every major respect similar to India’s Emergency—a fact reflected in Freedom House’s separate categorization of Indian Kashmir as Not Free.

Constrained individual freedom to dissent is compounded by legal constraints on the freedom of assembly. A 2021 International Center for Not-For-Profit Law report assessing freedom of assembly in India found: “A punitive, security-focused approach has been increasingly deployed, amidst a growing trend of demonizing and criminalizing public protests, including the vilification of assembly organizers.” 11

The government has frequently barred access to the internet, the de facto means of coordinating protest. India not only leads the world in government-directed internet shutdowns, with 84 government-directed shutdowns in 2022, but these blackouts are typically imposed before and during protests to impede effective public coordination, often without clear criteria for suspension. 12  The report finds that while de jure protections for speech and assembly have eroded only marginally, de facto protections have significantly decreased.

The government’s critics in civil society are frequent targets of administrative harassment. In 2020, the Modi government tightened the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) to choke civil society independence, targeting the logistics of foreign-fund transfers, limiting the nature of spending and the sharing of funds between NGOs, giving the central and state governments the right to suspend NGOs at discretion, and forbidding public servants from joining organizations. Government authorities have systematically used financial audits and tax-related raids on technical but fully legal grounds against a wide range of civil society groups, including Amnesty International, Greenpeace, the Centre for Policy Research, the Ford Foundation, the Lawyers Collective, and Oxfam. 13

Over the last decade, Indian media have radically circumscribed their criticism of government due to outright intimidation and structural changes. Since 2014, India has fallen to 161st out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, ranking below Afghanistan, Belarus, Hong Kong, Libya, Pakistan, and Turkey. According to the organization, Indian journalists sometimes receive death threats and are frequent targets of social-media hate campaigns driven by troll farms affiliated with the government. Major media networks do not feel free to criticize the Modi government. One study analyzing prime-time television debates on the channel Times Now over three months in 2020 found  not a single   episode  in which a debate criticized the Modi government in any form. A separate study of RepublicTV from 2017 through 2020 found coverage to be “consistently biased in favour of the Modi government and its policies.” 14  Modi himself has limited his interactions with the media, holding not a single press conference in the last nine years.

Practices such as selective licensing, the acquisition of independent networks by Modi-affiliated businessmen, and harassment of the few remaining independent outlets further undermine media independence. The government must grant a license to broadcast television, for example, and will deny licenses to critical domestic organizations. The government withheld a license from the founder of the news website Quint, Raghav Bahl (working in partnership with Bloomberg), for so long that he closed the company’s television division. Bahl was investigated and charged with money laundering in 2019 .

While the sheer number of news organizations in India would seem to indicate a thriving media, scrutiny of the functional ownership structure indicates otherwise. The independent Media Ownership Monitor finds in India “a significant trend toward concentration and ultimately control of content and public opinion.” 15  Mukesh Ambani, a businessman with close ties to Modi, directly controls media outlets followed by at least 800 million Indians. Another close Modi associate, Gautam Adani, acquired India’s last major independent television network, NDTV, in December 2022. 16  According to analysts, Adani’s acquisition of NDTV “marks the endgame for independent media in India, leaving the country’s biggest television news channels in the hands of billionaires who have strong ties to the Indian government.” 17  While there are a handful of smaller, determined sources of independent news left, they have faced tax raids and lawsuits for their reporting since 2013.

The government also targets international news organizations for their criticism, typically portraying critical foreign news reports as part of a plot to hold back India’s global ascendance.   The Indian offices of the British Broadcasting Corporation were raided in February 2023, just weeks after the news organization released a documentary critical of the Modi government. Laws used under the Emergency were invoked just months ago to ban both the BBC documentary and any clips from circulating within India. As the raids occurred, BJP spokesman Gaurav Bhatia called the BBC the “most corrupt organisation in the world.” 18  When a few of the dozen Indian students I teach organized a private screening of this documentary at Oxford University, the fear among them was palpable. Invitees were asked to refrain from posting on social media and from exchanging WhatsApp messages, since videos have documented police asking individuals to unlock their phones during routine stops. 19

The loss of horizontal accountability.  Legislative scrutiny of executive action has been waning in real terms during Modi’s government. Committees of India’s primary parliamentary bodies   serve as a key check on the executive, closely examining and debating the merits of all bills. Committees scrutinized 71 percent of bills in the 2009–14 parliament before Modi came to power and just 25 percent of bills in the 2014–19 parliament under Modi’s first term. Since 2019, such scrutiny has declined to 13 percent, with not a single legislative bill sent to a committee during the 2020 pandemic. Some of India’s most important laws and political decisions in recent years—the imposition of a national lockdown with four hours’ notice, demonetization, farm laws—were passed without parliamentary consultation and over opposition protest. The Modi government also introduced a raft of legal amendments to weaken whistleblower protection. 20

The growing lack of executive accountability to Parliament is exacerbated by an increasingly quiescent judiciary. The Supreme Court is  the  custodian of India’s constitution and through it, of civil liberties. During the two decades before 2014, the independence of the Supreme Court was seen to grow mightily, earning it the moniker of the “most powerful apex court in the world.” 21  This has notably changed, with the central government controversially transferring independent-minded justices and minimizing norms that checked executive power. 22  Such moves prompted the four most senior members of India’s Supreme Court to hold an unprecedented press conference in 2018, warning that the chief justice’s unusual assigning of cases could be a sign of political interference. One of those four justices, Jasti Chelameswar, also penned an open letter to the chief justice, admonishing that the “bonhomie between the Judiciary and the Government in any State sounds the death knell to Democracy.” 23  The Supreme Court’s rulings on every major political issue that has come before it—the Ayodha temple, the Aadhar biometric ID system,  habeas corpus  in Kashmir, electoral bonds, the Prevention of Money Laundering Act—have gone in favor of the Modi government. This marks a break from the past. The practical difference between the Supreme Court during the Emergency and today is minimal. Some even argue that, today, an Emergency is simply “undeclared.” 24

Can Indian Democracy Be Saved?

Democracy in India, as elsewhere in the world, is not today dying through a military coup or the dramatic, coordinated mass arrests of opponents. Instead, autocrats have learned to talk democratically and walk autocratically, maintaining a legal façade of democracy while harassing opposition and shrinking space for loyal dissent. While India’s formal institutions of democracy are also under pressure—Modi’s most prominent political rivals have recently been disqualified from running in elections—it is primarily the inability of the ordinary citizen to read critical appraisals of government policy, to speak and assemble freely without fear of harassment as well as the absence of substantive checks on executive power that have transitioned India into a hybrid regime.

Although India’s democratic slide is real, it is not irreversible. While hybrid regimes are often stable, elections remain real moments of accountability, so long as the ballots remain secret and elections fairly monitored. Even wholly autocratic regimes with thoroughly honed policies of surveillance are subject to moments of effective protest because the very structures of autocratic power also prevent such regimes from gaining an accurate understanding of citizens’ concerns—what democracies do best. Recent protests against China’s zero-covid strategy, Iran’s morality police, and India’s farm laws have all highlighted the enduring possibilities of mass dissent.

1. Freedom House,  Freedom in the World 2022 ,  https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/FIW_2022_PDF_Booklet_Digital_Final_Web.pdf .

2. “‘Misleading, Incorrect, Misplaced’: Centre Reacts to India’s Downgrading in Think Tank Report,”  The Wire,  5 March 2021,  https://thewire.in/government/freedom-house-partly-free-government-reaction ..

3. Akhilesh Pillalamarii. “Why India’s Democracy Is Not Dying,” The Diplomat , 14 June 2021,  https://thediplomat.com/2021/06/why-indias-democracy-is-not-dying/ .

4. Marc F. Plattner, “Globalization and Self-Government,”  Journal of Democracy 13 (July 2002), 56–57.

5. Nancy Bermeo, “On Democratic Backsliding,”  Journal of Democracy 27 (January 2016): 8–14.

6. Steve Levitksy and Dan Ziblatt,  How Democracies Die  (New York: Crown 2018).

7. On the cricket sedition charge, see “UP Invokes Sedition Against Kashmiri Students; Families, Activists Urge for Release,”  The Wire.  October 2021,  https://thewire.in/rights/up-invokes-sedition-against-kashmiri-students-families-activists-urge-for-release ; on the rise in cases, seeKunal Purohit, “Our New Database Reveals Rise in Sedition Cases in the Modi Era.” Article 14, 2 February 2021,  www.article-14.com/post/our-new-database-reveals-rise-in-sedition-cases-in-the-modi-era ; Supriya Sharma, “10,000 People Charged With Sedition in One Jharkhand District. What Does Democracy Mean Here?”  Scroll.in,  19 November 2019,  https://scroll.in/article/944116/10000-people-charged-with-sedition-in-one-jharkhand-district-what-does-democracy-mean-here .

8. “UAPA: 72% Rise in Arrests Between 2015 and 2019,”  The Wire, 10 March 2021,  https://thewire.in/government/uapa-72-rise-in-arrests-between-2015-and-2019 .

9. Meenakshi Ganguly, “Dissent Is ‘Anti-National’ in Modi’s India,” Human Rights Watch, 13 December 2019, www.hrw.org/news/2019/12/13/dissent-anti-national-modis-india ; A. Sharma and J. Pal, “Indian Twitter and Its Anti-Nationals,” University of Michigan unpubl. ms., 2020,  http://joyojeet.people.si.umich.edu/antinationals .

10. Sandipan Baksi and Aravindhan Nagarajan, “Mob Lynchings in India: A Look at Data and the Story Behind the Numbers,”  Newslaundry,  4 July 2017,  www.newslaundry.com/2017/07/04/mob-lynchings-in-india-a-look-at-data-and-the-story-behind-the-numbers ; “Uttar Pradesh: India’s Muslims Victims of Hate Crimes Live in Fear,” BBC News,21 February 2022,  www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-60225543 .

11. Vrinda Grover, “Assessing India’s Legal Framework on the Right to Peaceful Assembly,” International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, December 2021,  www.icnl.org/post/report/assessing-indias-legal-framework-on-the-right-to-peaceful-assembly .

12. Murali Krishnan, “India: ‘Internet Shutdown Capital of the World,’”  Deutsche Welle , 15 March 2023,  www.dw.com/en/india-internet-shutdown-capital-of-the-world/a-64997062 .

13. Aakar Patel,  Price of the Modi Years (Delhi: Vintage, 2022), ch. 5; Ganguly, “Dissent Is ‘Anti-National’ in Modi’s India.”

14. Christophe Jaffrelot and Vihang Jumle, “One-Man Show,”  Caravan, 15 December 2020,  https://caravanmagazine.in/media/republic-debates-study-shows-channel-promotoes-modi-ndtv .

15. Media Ownership Monitor, India, 2023,  http://india.mom-gmr.org/en/ .

16. “BloombergQuint Gives Up After Three Years, Suspends TV Division,” 20 April, 2020,  Newslaundry, www.newslaundry.com/2020/04/22/bloombergquint-gives-up-after-three-years-suspends-tv-division ; Reports Without Borders, India Country Report 2023,  https://rsf.org/en/country/india .  Anjana Krishnan, Reuters Institute, Oxford University, India Report 2022,  https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2022/india .

17. Astha Rajvanshi, “India’s Richest Man Is Buying a Major TV Channel. It’s a Blow to Independent Media in the Country,” Time,  1 December 2022,  https://time.com/6238075/india-ndtv-gautam-adani-narendramodi/ .

18. Hannah Ellis-Petersen, “Indian Journalists Say BBC Raid Part of Drive to Intimidate Media,”  Guardian, 18 February 2023, www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/18/indian-journalists-bbc-raid-media .

19. Umang Poddar, “Can the Police in India Force Someone to Hand Over Their Phone and Check Their Messages?”  Scroll.in, 4 November 2021,  https://scroll.in/article/1009529/can-the-police-in-india-force-someone-to-hand-over-their-phone-and-check-their-messages .

20. Sani Ali and Amber Sharma, “In Modi Era, the Role of Parliamentary Committees Is Getting Diminished,”  Scroll.in , 16 September 2020; Zoya Hasan, “Indian Parliament Is Diminished by Official Disruption,”  The Wire,  9 April 2023; “80 RTI Activists Killed Since 2014, Yet Modi Govt ‘Refuses’ to Implement Whistleblowers Act,”  The Counterview , 12 December 2019.

21. S.P. Sathe,  Judicial Activism in India: Transgressing Borders and Enforcing Limits (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 249.

22. Manu Sebastian. “ How Has the Supreme Court Fared During the Modi Years?”  The Wire,  12 April 2019,  https://thewire.in/law/supreme-court-modi-years .

23. J. Chelameswar, “Bonhomie Between Judiciary, Government Sounds Death Knell to Democracy,”  Scroll.in, 29 March 2018,  https://scroll.in/article/873787/full-text-bonhomie-between-judiciary-and-government-sounds-the-death-knell-to-democracy .

24. Arvind Narrain,  India’s Undeclared Emergency: Constitutionalism and the Politics of Resistance  (Delhi: Westland Publications, 2021).

25. Ashutosh Varshney, “Democratic Unclogging,”  Indian Express,  18 May 2023.

Copyright © 2023 National Endowment for Democracy and Johns Hopkins University Press Image Credit: Money Sharma/AFP via Getty Images

Further Reading

Volume 8, Issue 1

India: Fragmentation Amid Consensus

• Pratap Bhanu Mehta

Volume 25, Issue 4

India’s Watershed Vote: The Risks Ahead

• Šumit Ganguly

Will the Modi government focus on the economy, or will it seek to implement a transformational Hindu-nationalist agenda?

Volume 28, Issue 3

India’s Democracy at 70: The Disputed Role of the Courts

• Ronojoy Sen

Read the full essay here . India’s Supreme Court has played the role of a countermajoritarian check but has also flirted with populism. This essay examines three aspects of India’s higher…

Democracy Essay

Democracy is derived from the Greek word demos or people. It is defined as a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people. Democracy is exercised directly by the people; in large societies, it is by the people through their elected agents. In the phrase of President Abraham Lincoln, democracy is the “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” There are various democratic countries, but India has the largest democracy in the world. This Democracy Essay will help you know all about India’s democracy. Students can also get a list of CBSE Essays on different topics to boost their essay-writing skills.

500+ Words Democracy Essay

India is a very large country full of diversities – linguistically, culturally and religiously. At the time of independence, it was economically underdeveloped. There were enormous regional disparities, widespread poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, and a shortage of almost all public welfare means. Since independence, India has been functioning as a responsible democracy. The same has been appreciated by the international community. It has successfully adapted to challenging situations. There have been free and fair periodic elections for all political offices, from the panchayats to the President. There has been a smooth transfer of political power from one political party or set of political parties to others, both at national and state levels, on many occasions.

India: A Democratic Country

Democracy is of two, i.e. direct and representative. In a direct democracy, all citizens, without the intermediary of elected or appointed officials, can participate in making public decisions. Such a system is only practical with relatively small numbers of people in a community organisation or tribal council. Whereas in representative democracy, every citizen has the right to vote for their representative. People elect their representatives to all levels, from Panchayats, Municipal Boards, State Assemblies and Parliament. In India, we have a representative democracy.

Democracy is a form of government in which rulers elected by the people take all the major decisions. Elections offer a choice and fair opportunity to the people to change the current rulers. This choice and opportunity are available to all people on an equal basis. The exercise of this choice leads to a government limited by basic rules of the constitution and citizens’ rights.

Democracy is the Best Form of Government

A democratic government is a better government because it is a more accountable form of government. Democracy provides a method to deal with differences and conflicts. Thus, democracy improves the quality of decision-making. The advantage of a democracy is that mistakes cannot be hidden for long. There is a space for public discussion, and there is room for correction. Either the rulers have to change their decisions, or the rulers can be changed. Democracy offers better chances of a good decision. It respects people’s own wishes and allows different kinds of people to live together. Even when it fails to do some of these things, it allows a way of correcting its mistakes and offers more dignity to all citizens. That is why democracy is considered the best form of government.

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Essay on Democracy in India

Students are often asked to write an essay on Democracy in India in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Democracy in India

Introduction.

India, the world’s largest democracy, is a shining example of a democratic nation. Democracy in India ensures the participation of citizens in the country’s governance.

Democratic Principles

India follows democratic principles such as equality, freedom, and secularism. These principles are enshrined in the Indian Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land.

Democratic Processes

Democratic processes like elections allow citizens to choose their representatives. The Election Commission ensures free and fair elections in India.

Challenges to Democracy

Despite its successes, Indian democracy faces challenges such as corruption, illiteracy, and social inequality. These issues need to be addressed for a stronger democracy.

Democracy in India is a living process, constantly evolving and improving. It is the responsibility of every citizen to contribute to this process.

Also check:

• Paragraph on Democracy in India

250 Words Essay on Democracy in India

India, the world’s largest democracy, is a shining example of the democratic process. The essence of democracy, “of the people, by the people, for the people,” is deeply ingrained in the Indian psyche.

Democratic Structure

India’s democratic structure is a federal one with a President as the head of state and a Prime Minister as the head of government. The Indian democracy is characterized by a multi-party system, where political parties compete for power in elections held every five years.

However, the Indian democracy is not without its challenges. The most prominent among these are corruption, political instability, and the lack of education among the masses. These issues often lead to a distortion of the democratic process and hinder its smooth functioning.

Role of Judiciary

The judiciary in India plays a crucial role in upholding the principles of democracy. It acts as the guardian of the constitution, ensuring that the rights and freedoms of citizens are protected against any infringement.

Despite its challenges, democracy in India remains strong and vibrant. The resilience of its institutions and the commitment of its people to democratic ideals ensure that India continues to shine as a beacon of democracy in a world often marred by autocracy and dictatorship. The journey is arduous, but the spirit of democracy in India remains undeterred.

500 Words Essay on Democracy in India

India, often hailed as the largest democracy in the world, has a rich history of democratic governance that dates back to its independence in 1947. Democracy in India is not just a political system but a way of life, embodying the values of equality, justice, and freedom.

Historical Background

The roots of democracy in India can be traced back to the ancient times, where village assemblies known as ‘Sabhas’ and ‘Samitis’ were operational. However, the modern form of democracy was introduced by the British during the colonial period. Post-independence, India adopted a democratic republic model with a President as the head of state and a Prime Minister as the head of government.

Constitution: The Pillar of Democracy

The Constitution of India, adopted in 1950, is the backbone of India’s democratic structure. It guarantees fundamental rights to every citizen, irrespective of their religion, caste, creed, or gender. It also provides for a parliamentary system of government which is federal in structure with unitary features.

Democratic Institutions

India’s democratic framework is supported by various institutions like the Parliament, Judiciary, and the Election Commission. The Parliament, consisting of two houses, is responsible for law-making. The Judiciary, independent of the executive and legislature, safeguards the rights of citizens and upholds the constitution. The Election Commission ensures free and fair elections, the heart of the democratic process.

Despite its robust democratic framework, India faces several challenges. These include political corruption, lack of transparency, and the misuse of power. The criminalization of politics and the role of money power in elections are major concerns. Additionally, social issues like casteism, communalism, and regionalism often disrupt the democratic process.

Democracy and Development

Democracy in India has played a significant role in its socio-economic development. It has ensured the representation of diverse groups in the decision-making process, leading to inclusive growth. However, the pace of development has often been slow due to bureaucratic red-tape and policy paralysis.

Future of Democracy in India

The future of democracy in India looks promising but challenging. The rise of information technology and social media has made the democratic process more transparent and participative. However, the misuse of these platforms for spreading fake news and hate speech is a concern. Strengthening democratic institutions, promoting political literacy, and ensuring greater transparency can help in deepening democracy in India.

Democracy in India is an evolving process. It has successfully withstood the test of time and has been instrumental in upholding the country’s unity in diversity. However, to ensure its continued success, it is crucial to address the challenges it faces and strive towards a more inclusive and participatory democracy. Democracy in India is not just about periodic elections, but about ensuring justice, liberty, and equality for all its citizens.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Dalit Movement in India
• Essay on Crime in India
• Essay on Changing Face of India

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Indian Democracy: A Reflection of Aspirations and Achievements | Essay Writing for UPSC by Vikash Ranjan Sir | Triumph ias

Table of Contents

Indian Democracy: A Voyage of Aspirations and Triumphs

(relevant for essay writing for upsc civil services examination).

Indian Democracy is a vibrant, complex tapestry that reflects the diverse aspirations of its people. This post explores the achievements that have marked this democratic journey and the aspirations that continue to shape its path.

Aspirations: A Beacon for Democracy

Indian Democracy’s aspirations are a guiding light, reflecting the dreams of inclusivity, transparency, and sustainable development.

Achievements: Milestones Along the Way

From universal adult suffrage to remarkable economic growth, Indian Democracy’s achievements are many. They stand as testament to the nation’s commitment to its democratic principles.

Challenges: The Road Ahead

Despite its triumphs, Indian Democracy faces challenges. Political, social, and economic disparities continue to be areas of concern.

Conclusion: Democracy’s Ongoing Journey

Indian Democracy is an evolving journey of aspirations and achievements. Embracing its triumphs and addressing its challenges, India marches forward in its democratic voyage.

To master these intricacies and fare well in the Sociology Optional Syllabus , aspiring sociologists might benefit from guidance by the Best Sociology Optional Teacher and participation in the Best Sociology Optional Coaching . These avenues provide comprehensive assistance, ensuring a solid understanding of sociology’s diverse methodologies and techniques

Indian Democracy, Aspirations, Achievements, Inclusivity, Transparency, Sustainable Development, Universal Adult Franchise, Economic Progress, Political Polarization, Social Inequalities.

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Study Material:

• A set of printed booklets will be provided for each topic. These materials are succinct, thoroughly updated, and tailored for examination preparation.
• A compilation of previous years’ question papers (spanning the last 27 years) will be supplied for answer writing practice.
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Syllabus of Sociology Optional

FUNDAMENTALS OF SOCIOLOGY

• Modernity and social changes in Europe and emergence of sociology.
• Scope of the subject and comparison with other social sciences.
• Sociology and common sense.
• Science, scientific method and critique.
• Major theoretical strands of research methodology.
• Positivism and its critique.
• Fact value and objectivity.
• Non- positivist methodologies.
• Qualitative and quantitative methods.
• Techniques of data collection.
• Variables, sampling, hypothesis, reliability and validity.
• Karl Marx- Historical materialism, mode of production, alienation, class struggle.
• Emile Durkheim- Division of labour, social fact, suicide, religion and society.
• Max Weber- Social action, ideal types, authority, bureaucracy, protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism.
• Talcott Parsons- Social system, pattern variables.
• Robert K. Merton- Latent and manifest functions, conformity and deviance, reference groups.
• Mead – Self and identity.
• Concepts- equality, inequality, hierarchy, exclusion, poverty and deprivation.
• Theories of social stratification- Structural functionalist theory, Marxist theory, Weberian theory.
• Dimensions – Social stratification of class, status groups, gender, ethnicity and race.
• Social mobility- open and closed systems, types of mobility, sources and causes of mobility.
• Social organization of work in different types of society- slave society, feudal society, industrial /capitalist society
• Formal and informal organization of work.
• Labour and society.
• Sociological theories of power.
• Power elite, bureaucracy, pressure groups, and political parties.
• Nation, state, citizenship, democracy, civil society, ideology.
• Protest, agitation, social movements, collective action, revolution.
• Sociological theories of religion.
• Types of religious practices: animism, monism, pluralism, sects, cults.
• Religion in modern society: religion and science, secularization, religious revivalism, fundamentalism.
• Family, household, marriage.
• Types and forms of family.
• Lineage and descent.
• Patriarchy and sexual division of labour.
• Contemporary trends.
• Sociological theories of social change.
• Development and dependency.
• Agents of social change.
• Education and social change.
• Science, technology and social change.

INDIAN SOCIETY: STRUCTURE AND CHANGE

Introducing indian society.

• Indology (GS. Ghurye).
• Structural functionalism (M N Srinivas).
• Marxist sociology (A R Desai).
• Social background of Indian nationalism.
• Modernization of Indian tradition.
• Protests and movements during the colonial period.
• Social reforms.

SOCIAL STRUCTURE

• The idea of Indian village and village studies.
• Agrarian social structure – evolution of land tenure system, land reforms.
• Perspectives on the study of caste systems: GS Ghurye, M N Srinivas, Louis Dumont, Andre Beteille.
• Features of caste system.
• Untouchability – forms and perspectives.
• Definitional problems.
• Geographical spread.
• Colonial policies and tribes.
• Issues of integration and autonomy.
• Social Classes in India:
• Agrarian class structure.
• Industrial class structure.
• Middle classes in India.
• Lineage and descent in India.
• Types of kinship systems.
• Family and marriage in India.
• Household dimensions of the family.
• Patriarchy, entitlements and sexual division of labour
• Religious communities in India.
• Problems of religious minorities.

SOCIAL CHANGES IN INDIA

• Idea of development planning and mixed economy
• Constitution, law and social change.
• Programmes of rural development, Community Development Programme, cooperatives,poverty alleviation schemes
• Green revolution and social change.
• Changing modes of production in Indian agriculture.
• Problems of rural labour, bondage, migration.

3. Industrialization and Urbanisation in India:

• Evolution of modern industry in India.
• Growth of urban settlements in India.
• Working class: structure, growth, class mobilization.
• Informal sector, child labour
• Slums and deprivation in urban areas.

4. Politics and Society:

• Nation, democracy and citizenship.
• Political parties, pressure groups , social and political elite
• Regionalism and decentralization of power.
• Secularization

5. Social Movements in Modern India:

• Peasants and farmers movements.
• Women’s movement.
• Backward classes & Dalit movement.
• Environmental movements.
• Ethnicity and Identity movements.

6. Population Dynamics:

• Population size, growth, composition and distribution
• Components of population growth: birth, death, migration.
• Population policy and family planning.
• Emerging issues: ageing, sex ratios, child and infant mortality, reproductive health.

7. Challenges of Social Transformation:

• Crisis of development: displacement, environmental problems and sustainability
• Poverty, deprivation and inequalities.
• Violence against women.
• Caste conflicts.
• Ethnic conflicts, communalism, religious revivalism.
• Illiteracy and disparities in education.

Mr. Vikash Ranjan, arguably the Best Sociology Optional Teacher , has emerged as a versatile genius in teaching and writing books on Sociology & General Studies. His approach to the Sociology Optional Syllabus / Sociology Syllabus is remarkable, and his Sociological Themes and Perspectives are excellent. His teaching aptitude is Simple, Easy and Exam Focused. He is often chosen as the Best Sociology Teacher for Sociology Optional UPSC aspirants.

About Triumph IAS

Innovating Knowledge, Inspiring Success We, at Triumph IAS , pride ourselves on being the best sociology optional coaching platform. We believe that each Individual Aspirant is unique and requires Individual Guidance and Care, hence the need for the Best Sociology Teacher . We prepare students keeping in mind his or her strength and weakness, paying particular attention to the Sociology Optional Syllabus / Sociology Syllabus , which forms a significant part of our Sociology Foundation Course .

Course Features

Every day, the Best Sociology Optional Teacher spends 2 hours with the students, covering each aspect of the Sociology Optional Syllabus / Sociology Syllabus and the Sociology Course . Students are given assignments related to the Topic based on Previous Year Question to ensure they’re ready for the Sociology Optional UPSC examination.

Regular one-on-one interaction & individual counseling for stress management and refinement of strategy for Exam by Vikash Ranjan Sir , the Best Sociology Teacher , is part of the package. We specialize in sociology optional coaching and are hence fully equipped to guide you to your dream space in the civil service final list.

Specialist Guidance of Vikash Ranjan Sir

The Best Sociology Teacher helps students to get a complete conceptual understanding of each and every topic of the Sociology Optional Syllabus / Sociology Syllabus , enabling them to attempt any of the questions, be direct or applied, ensuring 300+ Marks in Sociology Optional .

Classrooms Interaction & Participatory Discussion

The Best Sociology Teacher, Vikash Sir , ensures that there’s explanation & DISCUSSION on every topic of the Sociology Optional Syllabus / Sociology Syllabus in the class. The emphasis is not just on teaching but also on understanding, which is why we are known as the Best Sociology Optional Coaching institution.

Preparatory-Study Support

Online Support System (Oss)

Get access to an online forum for value addition study material, journals, and articles relevant to Sociology on www.triumphias.com . Ask preparation related queries directly to the Best Sociology Teacher , Vikash Sir, via mail or WhatsApp.

Strategic Classroom Preparation

Comprehensive Study Material

We provide printed booklets of concise, well-researched, exam-ready study material for every unit of the Sociology Optional Syllabus / Sociology Syllabus , making us the Best Sociology Optional Coaching platform.

Why Vikash Ranjan’s Classes for Sociology?

Proper guidance and assistance are required to learn the skill of interlinking current happenings with the conventional topics. VIKASH RANJAN SIR at TRIUMPH IAS guides students according to the Recent Trends of UPSC, making him the Best Sociology Teacher for Sociology Optional UPSC.

At Triumph IAS, the Best Sociology Optional Coaching platform, we not only provide the best study material and applied classes for Sociology for IAS but also conduct regular assignments and class tests to assess candidates’ writing skills and understanding of the subject.

Choose T he Best Sociology Optional Teacher for IAS Preparation?

At the beginning of the journey for Civil Services Examination preparation, many students face a pivotal decision – selecting their optional subject. Questions such as “ which optional subject is the best? ” and “ which optional subject is the most scoring? ” frequently come to mind. Choosing the right optional subject, like choosing the best sociology optional teacher , is a subjective yet vital step that requires a thoughtful decision based on facts. A misstep in this crucial decision can indeed prove disastrous.

Ever since the exam pattern was revamped in 2013, the UPSC has eliminated the need for a second optional subject. Now, candidates have to choose only one optional subject for the UPSC Mains , which has two papers of 250 marks each. One of the compelling choices for many has been the sociology optional. However, it’s strongly advised to decide on your optional subject for mains well ahead of time to get sufficient time to complete the syllabus. After all, most students score similarly in General Studies Papers; it’s the score in the optional subject & essay that contributes significantly to the final selection.

“ A sound strategy does not rely solely on the popular Opinion of toppers or famous YouTubers cum teachers. ”

It requires understanding one’s ability, interest, and the relevance of the subject, not just for the exam but also for life in general. Hence, when selecting the best sociology teacher, one must consider the usefulness of sociology optional coaching in General Studies, Essay, and Personality Test.

The choice of the optional subject should be based on objective criteria, such as the nature, scope, and size of the syllabus, uniformity and stability in the question pattern, relevance of the syllabic content in daily life in society, and the availability of study material and guidance. For example, choosing the best sociology optional coaching can ensure access to top-quality study materials and experienced teachers. Always remember, the approach of the UPSC optional subject differs from your academic studies of subjects. Therefore, before settling for sociology optional , you need to analyze the syllabus, previous years’ pattern, subject requirements (be it ideal, visionary, numerical, conceptual theoretical), and your comfort level with the subject.

This decision marks a critical point in your UPSC – CSE journey , potentially determining your success in a career in IAS/Civil Services. Therefore, it’s crucial to choose wisely, whether it’s the optional subject or the best sociology optional teacher . Always base your decision on accurate facts, and never let your emotional biases guide your choices. After all, the search for the best sociology optional coaching is about finding the perfect fit for your unique academic needs and aspirations.

To master these intricacies and fare well in the Sociology Optional Syllabus , aspiring sociologists might benefit from guidance by the Best Sociology Optional Teacher and participation in the Best Sociology Optional Coaching . These avenues provide comprehensive assistance, ensuring a solid understanding of sociology’s diverse methodologies and techniques. Sociology, Social theory, Best Sociology Optional Teacher, Best Sociology Optional Coaching, Sociology Optional Syllabus. Best Sociology Optional Teacher, Sociology Syllabus, Sociology Optional, Sociology Optional Coaching, Best Sociology Optional Coaching, Best Sociology Teacher, Sociology Course, Sociology Teacher, Sociology Foundation, Sociology Foundation Course, Sociology Optional UPSC, Sociology for IAS,

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Essay on Democracy in 100, 300 and 500 Words

• Updated on  
• Jan 15, 2024

The oldest account of democracy can be traced back to 508–507 BCC Athens . Today there are over 50 different types of democracy across the world. But, what is the ideal form of democracy? Why is democracy considered the epitome of freedom and rights around the globe? Let’s explore what self-governance is and how you can write a creative and informative essay on democracy and its significance. 

Today, India is the largest democracy with a population of 1.41 billion and counting. Everyone in India above the age of 18 is given the right to vote and elect their representative. Isn’t it beautiful, when people are given the option to vote for their leader, one that understands their problems and promises to end their miseries? This is just one feature of democracy , for we have a lot of samples for you in the essay on democracy. Stay tuned!

Can you answer these questions in under 5 minutes? Take the Ultimate GK Quiz to find out!

What is Democracy? 

Democracy is a form of government in which the final authority to deliberate and decide the legislation for the country lies with the people, either directly or through representatives. Within a democracy, the method of decision-making, and the demarcation of citizens vary among countries. However, some fundamental principles of democracy include the rule of law, inclusivity, political deliberations, voting via elections , etc. 

Did you know: On 15th August 1947, India became the world’s largest democracy after adopting the Indian Constitution and granting fundamental rights to its citizens?

Must Explore: Human Rights Courses for Students 

Must Explore: NCERT Notes on Separation of Powers in a Democracy

Sample Essay on Democracy (100 words)

Democracy where people make decisions for the country is the only known form of governance in the world that promises to inculcate principles of equality, liberty and justice. The deliberations and negotiations to form policies and make decisions for the country are the basis on which the government works, with supreme power to people to choose their representatives, delegate the country’s matters and express their dissent. The democratic system is usually of two types, the presidential system, and the parliamentary system. In India, the three pillars of democracy, namely legislature, executive and judiciary, working independently and still interconnected, along with a free press and media provide a structure for a truly functional democracy. Despite the longest-written constitution incorporating values of sovereignty, socialism, secularism etc. India, like other countries, still faces challenges like corruption, bigotry, and oppression of certain communities and thus, struggles to stay true to its democratic ideals.

Did you know: Some of the richest countries in the world are democracies?

Must Read : Consumer Rights in India

Must Read: Democracy and Diversity Class 10

Sample Essay on Democracy (250 to 300 words)

As Abraham Lincoln once said, “democracy is the government of the people, by the people and for the people.” There is undeniably no doubt that the core of democracies lies in making people the ultimate decision-makers. With time, the simple definition of democracy has evolved to include other principles like equality, political accountability, rights of the citizens and to an extent, values of liberty and justice. Across the globe, representative democracies are widely prevalent, however, there is a major variation in how democracies are practised. The major two types of representative democracy are presidential and parliamentary forms of democracy. Moreover, not all those who present themselves as a democratic republic follow its values.

Many countries have legally deprived some communities of living with dignity and protecting their liberty, or are practising authoritarian rule through majoritarianism or populist leaders. Despite this, one of the things that are central and basic to all is the practice of elections and voting. However, even in such a case, the principles of universal adult franchise and the practice of free and fair elections are theoretically essential but very limited in practice, for a democracy. Unlike several other nations, India is still, at least constitutionally and principally, a practitioner of an ideal democracy.

With our three organs of the government, namely legislative, executive and judiciary, the constitutional rights to citizens, a multiparty system, laws to curb discrimination and spread the virtues of equality, protection to minorities, and a space for people to discuss, debate and dissent, India has shown a commitment towards democratic values. In recent times, with challenges to freedom of speech, rights of minority groups and a conundrum between the protection of diversity and unification of the country, the debate about the preservation of democracy has become vital to public discussion.

Did you know: In countries like Brazil, Scotland, Switzerland, Argentina, and Austria the minimum voting age is 16 years?

Also Read: Difference Between Democracy and Dictatorship

Sample Essay on Democracy for UPSC (500 words)

Democracy originated from the Greek word dēmokratiā , with dēmos ‘people’ and Kratos ‘rule.’ For the first time, the term appeared in the 5th century BC to denote the political systems then existing in Greek city-states, notably Classical Athens, to mean “rule of the people.” It now refers to a form of governance where the people have the right to participate in the decision-making of the country. Majorly, it is either a direct democracy where citizens deliberate and make legislation while in a representative democracy, they choose government officials on their behalf, like in a parliamentary or presidential democracy.

The presidential system (like in the USA) has the President as the head of the country and the government, while the parliamentary system (like in the UK and India) has both a Prime Minister who derives its legitimacy from a parliament and even a nominal head like a monarch or a President.

The notions and principle frameworks of democracy have evolved with time. At the core, lies the idea of political discussions and negotiations. In contrast to its alternatives like monarchy, anarchy, oligarchy etc., it is the one with the most liberty to incorporate diversity. The ideas of equality, political representation to all, active public participation, the inclusion of dissent, and most importantly, the authority to the law by all make it an attractive option for citizens to prefer, and countries to follow.

The largest democracy in the world, India with the lengthiest constitution has tried and to an extent, successfully achieved incorporating the framework to be a functional democracy. It is a parliamentary democratic republic where the President is head of the state and the Prime minister is head of the government. It works on the functioning of three bodies, namely legislative, executive, and judiciary. By including the principles of a sovereign, socialist, secular and democratic republic, and undertaking the guidelines to establish equality, liberty and justice, in the preamble itself, India shows true dedication to achieving the ideal.

It has formed a structure that allows people to enjoy their rights, fight against discrimination or any other form of suppression, and protect their rights as well. The ban on all and any form of discrimination, an independent judiciary, governmental accountability to its citizens, freedom of media and press, and secular values are some common values shared by all types of democracies.

Across the world, countries have tried rooting their constitution with the principles of democracy. However, the reality is different. Even though elections are conducted everywhere, mostly, they lack freedom of choice and fairness. Even in the world’s greatest democracies, there are challenges like political instability, suppression of dissent, corruption , and power dynamics polluting the political sphere and making it unjust for the citizens. Despite the consensus on democracy as the best form of government, the journey to achieve true democracy is both painstaking and tiresome. 

Did you know: Countries like Singapore, Peru, and Brazil have compulsory voting?

Must Read: Democracy and Diversity Class 10 Notes

Democracy is a process through which the government of a country is elected by and for the people.

Yes, India is a democratic country and also holds the title of the world’s largest democracy.

Direct and Representative Democracy are the two major types of Democracy.

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Democracy in India Essay

India is the largest democracy in the world. Ruled by various kings and emperors and colonized by the Europeans for centuries, India became a democratic nation post its independence in the year 1947. Thereafter, the citizens of India were given the right to vote and elect their leaders. The second most populous country and the seventh largest country by area, India is the largest democracy in the world. Indian democratic government was formed after the nation attained independence in 1947. The parliamentary and state assembly elections are held every 5 years to elect the Central and state governments.

Long and Short Essay on Democracy in India in English

Here are long and short essays on Democracy in India in English of varying lengths to help you with the topic in your exams/school assignments. You can select any Democracy in India essay as per your need:

Democracy in India Essay 1 (200 words)

Democracy is a system of government that allows the citizens to cast vote and elect a government of their choice. India became a democratic state after its independence from the British rule in 1947. It is the largest democratic nation in the world.

Democracy in India gives its citizens the right to vote irrespective of their caste, colour, creed, religion and gender. It has five democratic principles – sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic and republic.

Various political parties stand for elections at the state as well as national level periodically. They propagate about the tasks accomplished in their previous tenure and also share their future plans with the people. Every citizen of India, above the age of 18 years, has the right to vote. The government is making continuous efforts to encourage more and more people to cast their vote. People must know everything about the candidates standing for the elections and vote for the most deserving one for good governance.

India is known to have a successful democratic system. However, there are certain loopholes that need to be worked on. Among other things, the government must work on eliminating poverty, illiteracy, communalism, gender discrimination and casteism in order to ensure democracy in true sense.

Democracy in India Essay 2 (300 words)

Democracy is said to be the best form of government. It allows every citizen of the country to cast vote and choose their leaders irrespective of their caste, colour, creed, religion or gender. The government is elected by the common people of the country and it won’t be wrong to say that it is their wisdom and awareness that determines the success or failure of the government.

Many countries have a democratic system. However, India is the largest democracy in the world. It runs on five democratic principles including sovereign, socialist, secular, and democratic and republic. India was declared a democratic nation after it attained freedom from the colonial rule of the British in 1947. Not only the largest, Indian democracy is also known to be one of the most successful ones.

India has a federal form of democracy with a government at the centre that is responsible to the parliament and state governments that are equally accountable for their legislative assemblies. Elections are held at regular intervals in the county and several parties compete to get to the centre and also to make their place in the states. People are encouraged to exercise their right to vote to elect the most deserving candidate, though caste is also a big factor in Indian politics.

Campaigns are carried out by different political parties to emphasize on the work they have done for the development of people as well on their future agenda to benefit people.

Democracy in India does not only means providing the right to vote but also ensuring social and economic equality. While the democratic system of the country has received worldwide appreciation there are many areas that require improvement so that democracy can be formed in true sense. The government must work upon eradicating illiteracy, poverty, communalism, casteism and gender discrimination among other things.

Democracy in India Essay 3 (400 words)

Democracy is government by the people, for the people and of the people. The citizens in a democratic nation enjoy the right to vote and elect their government.

India is the largest democracy in the world. After being ruled by the Mughals, Mauryas, British and various other rulers for centuries, India finally became a democratic state after its independence in 1947. The people of the country, who had suffered at the hands of foreign powers, finally got the right to choose their own ministers by casting vote. Democracy in India is not limited to just providing the right to vote to its citizens, it is also working towards social and economic equality.

Democracy in India works on five democratic principles. These are:

• Sovereign: This means free from the interference or control of any foreign power.
• Socialist: This means providing social and economic equality to all the citizens.
• Secular: This means freedom to practice any religion or reject all.
• Democratic: This means the government of India is elected by its citizens.
• Republic: This means the head of the country is not a hereditary king or queen.

Working of Democracy in India

Every Indian citizen, above 18 years of age, can exercise the right to vote in India. There is no discrimination based on a person’s caste, creed, religion, gender or education when it comes to providing the right to vote.

Candidates from several national and regional parties including Indian National Congress (INC), Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP), Communist Party of India (CPI), Communist Party of India -Marxist (CPI -M), All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) fight for the elections. Candidates evaluate their work during the last tenure of these parties or their representatives and also the promises made by them in order to decide whom to vote.

Scope for Improvement

There is a lot of scope of improvement in the Indian democracy. Steps must be taken to:

• Eradicate poverty
• Promote literacy
• Encourage people to vote
• Educate people on choosing the right candidate
• Encourage intelligent and educated people to take up leadership roles
• Eradicate communalism
• Ensure impartial and responsible media
• Monitor the working of the elected members
• Form responsible opposition

Though democracy in India has been appreciated worldwide for its working there is still a lot of scope for improvement. The aforementioned steps must be taken to ensure smooth functioning of democracy in the country.

Democracy in India Essay 4 (500 words)

A democratic nation is one where the citizens have the right to elect their government. It is sometimes also said to be the “rule of the majority”. Several countries around the world run democratic government but India takes pride in being the largest democracy.

History of Democracy in India

India had been ruled by several rulers from Mughals to Mauryas. Each of them had their own style of governing the people. It was only after the country got independence from the colonial rule of the Britishers in 1947 that it became a democratic nation. It was then that the people of India, who had suffered tyranny at the hands of the British, attained the right to vote and elect their government for the first time.

Democratic Principles of India

Sovereign refers to an entity that is free from the control of any foreign power. The citizens of India enjoy sovereign power to elect their ministers.

Socialist means providing social and economic equality to all the citizens of India irrespective of their caste, colour, creed, gender and religion.

Secular means the freedom to practice the religion of one’s choice. There is no official state religion in the country.

This means the government of India is elected by its citizens. The right to vote is given to all the Indian citizens without any discrimination.

The head of the country is not a hereditary king or queen. He is elected by an electoral college.

The Working of Democracy in India

Every citizen of India, above the age of 18 years, has the right to vote. The Constitution does not discriminate anyone on the basis of their caste, colour, creed, gender, religion or education.

There are seven national parties in the country namely, Indian National Congress (INC), Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP), Communist Party of India (CPI), Communist Party of India -Marxist (CPI-M), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Besides these, there are a number of regional parties that fight the elections to state legislatures. Elections are held periodically and people exercise their right to vote to elect their representatives. The government is continually making efforts to encourage more and more people to use their right to vote to choose good governance.

Democracy in India is not merely about giving people the right to vote but ensuring equality in all the spheres of life.

Hindrances in the Working of Democracy in India

While the elections have been happening at the right time and a systematic approach is followed to conduct the same ever since the concept of democracy came into being in India there are many hindrances in the smooth functioning of democracy in the country. These include illiteracy, gender discrimination, poverty, cultural disparity, political influence, casteism and communalism. All these factors adversely affect democracy in India.

While democracy in India has been appreciated worldwide, there are still miles to go. Factors such as illiteracy, poverty, gender discrimination and communalism that impact the working of democracy in India need to be eradicated in order to allow the citizens to enjoy democracy in true sense.

Democracy in India Essay 5 (600 words)

Democracy in India was formed after the nation was freed from the clutches of the British rule in 1947. It led to the birth of the world’s largest democracy. Under the effective leadership of the Indian National Congress, the people of India attained the right to vote and elect their government.

There are a total of seven national parties in the country – Indian National Congress (INC), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP), Communist Party of India (CPI), Communist Party of India -Marxist (CPI-M), All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Apart from these, many regional parties come forward for elections to state legislatures. Elections to the parliament and state assemblies are held every 5 years.

Here are the Democratic Principles of India:

Sovereign means independent – free from interference or control of any foreign power. The country has a government directly elected by the citizens of the country. Indian citizens have the sovereign power to elect their leaders by elections conducted for the parliament, local bodies as well as the state legislature.

Socialist means social as well as economic equality for all the citizens of the country. Democratic socialism means attaining socialistic goals by way of evolutionary, democratic and non-violent means. The government is making continual efforts to lessen the economic inequality by decreasing the concentration of wealth.

This means the right and freedom to choose one’s religion. In India, one has the right to practise any religion or reject them all. The Government of India respects all the religions and does not have any official state religion. It does not disgrace or promote any religion.

This means the government of the country is elected democratically by its citizens. The people of the country have the right to elect its government at all the levels (Union, State and local) by way of universal adult franchise also known as ‘one man one vote’. The right to vote is given without any discrimination on the basis of the colour, caste, creed, religion, gender or education. Not just political, the people of India also enjoy social and economic democracy.

The head of the state here is not a heredity king or queen but an elected person. The ceremonial head of the state, that is, the President of India is elected by an electoral college for a period of five years, while executive powers are vested in the Prime Minister.

Challenges Faced by Indian Democracy

While the constitution promises a democratic state and the people of India have been entitled to all the rights a person should enjoy in a democratic state, there are a lot of factors that impact its democracy and pose a challenge to it. Here is a look at these factors:

Illiteracy among people is one of the biggest challenges the Indian democracy has faced ever since its inception. Education enables the people to exercise their right to vote wisely.

People belonging to the poor and backward classes are usually manipulated by the political parties. They are often bribed to acquire their vote.

Apart from these, casteism, gender discrimination, communalism, religious fundamentalism, political violence and corruption are among other factors that are a challenge for democracy in India.

Democracy in India has received appreciation from world over. The right to vote to every citizen of the country has been given without any discrimination on the basis of their caste, colour, creed, religion, gender or education. However, the huge cultural, religious and linguistic diversity in the country is a major challenge for its democracy. The differences sought to be created out of it, are a cause of serious concern. There is a need to curb these divisive tendencies in order to ensure the smooth functioning of democracy in India.

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Essay on Democracy in India in English for Children and Students

Table of Contents

Essay on Democracy in India: India is the largest democracy in the world. Ruled by various kings and emperors and colonized by the Europeans for centuries, India became a democratic nation post its independence in 1947. Thereafter, the citizens of India were given the right to vote and elect their leaders. The second most populous country and the seventh-largest country by area, India is the largest democracy in the world. Indian democratic government was formed after the nation attained independence in 1947. The parliamentary and state assembly elections are held every 5 years to elect the Central and state governments.

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Target Exam ---

India’s democracy is built on the idea of political equality. This means that all citizens are treated the same under the law, regardless of their religion, caste, creed, race, or any other differences. As a result, every Indian citizen has the same political rights and opportunities.

Long and Short Essay on Democracy in India in English

Here are long and short essays on Democracy in India in English to help you with the topic in your exams/school assignments. You can select any Democracy in India essay as per your need:

Essay on Democracy in India Essay 200 words

Democracy is a system of government that allows the citizens to cast a vote and elect a government of their choice. India became a democratic state after its independence from British rule in 1947. It is the largest democratic nation in the world.

Democracy in India gives its citizens the right to vote irrespective of their caste, colour, creed, religion and gender. It has five democratic principles – sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic, and republic.

Various political parties stand for elections at the state and national levels periodically. They propagate about the tasks accomplished in their previous tenure and also share their future plans with the people. Every citizen of India, above the age of 18 years has the right to vote. The government is making continuous efforts to encourage more and more people to cast their votes. People must know everything about the candidates standing for the elections and vote for the most deserving one for good governance.

India is known to have a successful democratic system. However, certain loopholes need to be worked on. Among other things, the government must work on eliminating poverty, illiteracy, communalism, gender discrimination, and casteism in order to ensure democracy in the true sense.

Essay on Democracy in India Essay 300 words

Democracy is said to be the best form of government. It allows every citizen of the country to vote and choose their leaders irrespective of their caste, colour, creed, religion, or gender. The government is elected by the common people of the country and it won’t be wrong to say that it is their wisdom and awareness that determines the success or failure of the government.

Many countries have a democratic system. However, India is the largest democracy in the world. It runs on five democratic principles: sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic, and republic. India was declared a democratic nation after it attained freedom from British colonial rule in 1947. Not only the largest, but Indian democracy is also known to be one of the most successful ones.

India has a federal form of democracy with a government at the center responsible to the parliament and state governments equally accountable for their legislative assemblies. Elections are held at regular intervals in the county, and several parties compete to get to the center and make their place in the states. People are encouraged to exercise their right to vote to elect the most deserving candidate, though caste is also a big factor in Indian politics.

Campaigns are carried out by different political parties to emphasize the work they have done for the development of people as well as their future agenda to benefit people.

Democracy in India does not only means providing the right to vote but also ensuring social and economic equality. While the democratic system of the country has received worldwide appreciation, many areas require improvement so that democracy can be formed in true sense. The government must work on eradicating illiteracy, poverty, communalism, casteism, and gender discrimination.

Essay on Democracy in India Essay 400 words

Democracy is government by the people, the people, and the people. The citizens in a democratic nation enjoy the right to vote and elect their government.

India is the largest democracy in the world. After being ruled by the Mughals, Mauryas, British and various other rulers for centuries, India finally became a democratic state after its independence in 1947. The people of the country, who had suffered at the hands of foreign powers, finally got the right to choose their own ministers by casting vote. Democracy in India is not limited to just providing the right to vote to its citizens, it is also working towards social and economic equality.

Democracy in India works on five democratic principles. These are:

• Sovereign: This means free from the interference or control of any foreign power.
• Socialist: This means providing social and economic equality to all the citizens.
• Secular: This means freedom to practice any religion or reject all.
• Democratic: This means the government of India is elected by its citizens.
• Republic: This means the head of the country is not a hereditary king or queen.

Working of Democracy in India

Every Indian citizen, above 18 years of age can exercise the right to vote in India. There is no discrimination based on a person’s caste, creed, religion, gender, or education when providing the right to vote.

Candidates from several national and regional parties, including Indian National Congress (INC), Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP), Communist Party of India (CPI), Communist Party of India -Marxist (CPI -M), All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) fight for the elections. Candidates evaluate their work during the last tenure of these parties or their representatives and also the promises made by them in order to decide whom to vote.

Scope for Improvement:

There is a lot of scope for improvement in the Indian democracy. Steps must be taken to:

• Eradicate poverty
• Promote literacy
• Encourage people to vote
• Educate people on choosing the right candidate
• Encourage intelligent and educated people to take up leadership roles
• Eradicate communalism
• Ensure impartial and responsible media
• Monitor the working of the elected members
• Form responsible opposition

Though democracy in India has been appreciated worldwide for its working there is still a lot of scope for improvement. The aforementioned steps must be taken to ensure smooth functioning of democracy in the country.

Essay on Democracy in India Essay 500 words

A democratic nation is one where the citizens have the right to elect their government. It is sometimes also said to be the “rule of the majority”. Several countries around the world run democratic governments, but India takes pride in being the largest democracy.

History of Democracy in India

India had been ruled by several rulers from Mughals to Mauryas. Each of them had its own style of governing the people. It was only after the country got independence from the colonial rule of the Britishers in 1947 that it became a democratic nation. It was then that the people of India, who had suffered tyranny at the hands of the British, attained the right to vote and elect their government for the first time.

Democratic Principles of India

Sovereign refers to an entity free from any foreign power’s control. The citizens of India enjoy sovereign power to elect their ministers.

Socialism means providing social and economic equality to all the citizens of India irrespective of their caste, colour, creed, gender, and religion.

Secular means the freedom to practice the religion of one’s choice. There is no official state religion in the country.

This means the government of India is elected by its citizens. The right to vote is given to all Indian citizens without any discrimination.

The head of the country is not a hereditary king or queen. An electoral college elects him.

The Working of Democracy in India

Every citizen of India above the age of 18 years has the right to vote. The Constitution does not discriminate against anyone on the basis of their caste, colour, creed, gender, religion, or education.

There are seven national parties in the country, namely, Indian National Congress (INC), Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP), Communist Party of India (CPI), Communist Party of India -Marxist (CPI-M), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Besides these, a number of regional parties fight the elections to state legislatures. Elections are held periodically, and people exercise their right to vote to elect their representatives. The government is continually making efforts to encourage more and more people to use their right to vote to choose good governance.

Democracy in India is not merely about giving people the right to vote but ensuring equality in all the spheres of life.

Hindrances in the Working of Democracy in India

While the elections have been happening at the right time and a systematic approach is followed to conduct the same ever since the concept of democracy came into being in India there are many hindrances in the smooth functioning of democracy in the country. These include illiteracy, gender discrimination, poverty, cultural disparity, political influence, casteism, and communalism. All these factors adversely affect democracy in India.

While democracy in India has been appreciated worldwide, there are still miles to go. Factors such as illiteracy, poverty, gender discrimination and communalism that impact the working of democracy in India need to be eradicated in order to allow the citizens to enjoy democracy in true sense.

Essay on Democracy in India Essay 600 words

Democracy in India was formed after the nation was freed from British rule in 1947. It led to the birth of the world’s largest democracy. Under the effective leadership of the Indian National Congress, the people of India attained the right to vote and elect their government.

There are a total of seven national parties in the country – Indian National Congress (INC), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP), Communist Party of India (CPI), Communist Party of India -Marxist (CPI-M), All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Apart from these, many regional parties come forward for elections to state legislatures. Elections to the parliament and state assemblies are held every 5 years.

Here are the Democratic Principles of India:

Sovereign means independent – free from interference or control of any foreign power. The country has a government directly elected by the citizens of the country. Indian citizens have the sovereign power to elect their leaders by elections conducted for the parliament, local bodies, and the state legislature.

Socialist means social and economic equality for all the country’s citizens. Democratic socialism means attaining socialistic goals by way of evolutionary, democratic, and non-violent means. The government is making continual efforts to lessen economic inequality by decreasing the concentration of wealth.

This means the right and freedom to choose one’s religion. In India, one has the right to practise any religion or reject them all. The Government of India respects all religions and does not have any official state religion. It does not disgrace or promote any religion.

This means the government of the country is elected democratically by its citizens. The people of the country have the right to elect its government at all the levels (Union, State and local) by way of universal adult franchise, also known as ‘one man, one vote.’ The right to vote is given without any discrimination on the basis of the colour, caste, creed, religion, gender, or education. Not just political, the people of India also enjoy social and economic democracy.

The head of the state here is not a heredity king or queen but an elected person. The ceremonial head of the state, that is, the President of India, is elected by an electoral college for a period of five years, while executive powers are vested in the Prime Minister.

Challenges Faced by Indian Democracy

While the constitution promises a democratic state and the people of India have been entitled to all the rights a person should enjoy in a democratic state, there are a lot of factors that impact its democracy and pose a challenge to it. Here is a look at these factors:

Illiteracy among people is one of the biggest challenges the Indian democracy has faced since its inception. Education enables people to exercise their right to vote wisely.

The political parties usually manipulate people belonging to the poor and backward classes. They are often bribed to acquire their vote.

Apart from these, casteism, gender discrimination, communalism, religious fundamentalism, political violence, and corruption are among other factors that are a challenge to democracy in India.

Democracy in India has received appreciation from world over. The right to vote to every citizen of the country has been given without any discrimination on the basis of their caste, colour, creed, religion, gender, or education. However, the country’s huge cultural, religious, and linguistic diversity is a major challenge for its democracy. The differences sought to be created out of it are a cause of serious concern. There is a need to curb these divisive tendencies in order to ensure the smooth functioning of democracy in India.

Essay on Democracy in India FAQs

What is a short paragraph about indian democracy.

Indian democracy ensures equal rights for all citizens and operates on the principle of fairness and inclusion, allowing people to elect their leaders and have a say in the country's governance.

What is democracy 250 words?

Democracy is a system of government where people choose their leaders through voting. It values equality, freedom, and participation, allowing citizens to voice their opinions and make decisions collectively.

How do you write a democracy essay?

To write a democracy essay, begin with an introduction explaining democracy's principles, discuss its importance and challenges in the main body, and conclude by emphasizing its role in shaping a just society.

What is Indian democracy essay?

An essay on Indian democracy explores how India's diverse population participates in governance, emphasizing the importance of equality, diversity, and representation in its democratic system.

What is democracy short speech?

Democracy is a system where people have a voice in their government. It promotes fairness, freedom, and cooperation among citizens for a better society.

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Democracy Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on democracy.

Democracy is known as the finest form of government. Why so? Because in a democracy, the people of the country choose their government. They enjoy certain rights which are very essential for any human being to live freely and happily. There are various democratic countries in the world , but India is the largest one. Democracy has withstood the test of time, and while other forms have the government has failed, democracy stood strong. It has time and again proved its importance and impact.

Significance of a Democracy

Democracy is very important for human development . When people have free will to live freely, they will be happier. Moreover, we have seen how other forms of government have turned out to be. Citizens are not that happy and prosperous in a monarchy or anarchy.

Furthermore, democracy lets people have equal rights. This ensures that equality prevails all over the country. Subsequently, it also gives them duties. These duties make them better citizens and are also important for their overall development.

Most importantly, in a democracy, the people form the government. So, this selection of the government by the citizens gives everyone a chance to work for their country. It allows the law to prevail efficiently as the rules are made by people whom they have selected.

In addition, democracy allows people of various religions and cultures to exist peacefully. It makes them live in harmony with one another. People of democracy are more tolerant and accepting of each other’s differences. This is very important for any country to be happy and prosper.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

India: A Democratic Country

India is known to be the largest democracy all over the world. After the rule of the British ended in 1947 , India adopted democracy. In India, all the citizens who are above the age of 18 get the right to vote. It does not discriminate on the basis of caste, creed, gender, color, or more.

Although India is the largest democracy it still has a long way to go. The country faces a lot of problems which do not let it efficiently function as a democracy. The caste system is still prevalent which hampers with the socialist principle of democracy. Moreover, communalism is also on the rise. This interferes with the secular aspect of the country. All these differences need to be set aside to ensure the happiness and prosperity of the citizens.

In short, democracy in India is still better than that in most of the countries. Nonetheless, there is a lot of room for improvement which we must focus on. The government must implement stringent laws to ensure no discrimination takes place. In addition, awareness programs must be held to make citizens aware of their rights and duties.

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Essay on Democracy in India ( 150, 200, and 500 Words )

By Vijay Gupta

Updated on: September 21, 2023

In this article, I’m going to write an essay on democracy in India. That means those who are looking for it have come to the right place.

It’s a very important topic from the exam point of view, so I thought why I shouldn’t write an article on it. I wrote this essay in 200, 300, and 500 words. Now, you can choose one as per your suitability or preference.

Without wasting your time, let’s start the article.

Table of Contents

Essay on Democracy in India ( 200, 300, and 500 Words )

Essay on democracy in india ( 500 words ), 1. introduction.

Earlier, when India was not independent, it was ruled by the British. The British had occupied the country. They used to exploit its people by bringing whomever they wanted to power.

But, ever since India was freed from the clutches of the British, there was established democracy in India. It gave a new dimension to the country.

It not only made India a strong nation but also gave its people an opportunity to choose who would rule India. Today, the situation is such that the people of India can either bring anyone into the government or topple anyone’s government every five years.

There are many political parties in today’s India, but it only depends on its people who would power. All that is possible only because of its democracy.

2. Features of Indian Democracy

There are a lot of features of Indian democracy, and only because of them, It’s the largest democracy in the world. When India became independent, the biggest challenge in the country was who would lead the country and how he/she would do that.

Remembering that point, with the help of the constitution, democracy was established in India, in which the people of India became able to elect their leader.

They were given the freedom to use their votes to hand over the reins of India’s power to someone who would save the country from all problems and take it on the path of progress.

Democracy in India has many other principles and features such that no foreign power can interfere in any kind of incident happening in India, the Government of India can be selected only by the Indian people, the citizen is completely free to adopt or abandon any religion and many other features are there.

3. The effects of Indian Democracy

The effects of Indian democracy dominate India widely. In fact, democracy has affected India in many ways. Whatever is happening in India today is only because of its democracy.

Indian democracy has not only taught the people of India to use their powers properly but has also made them aware of many things.

Due to Indian democracy, today in India, different types of castes like scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, and other backward castes have got their rights and reservation in many areas.

It also hoisted the flag of equality among the people. Today, people of any religion in India are equal to each other and there is no discrimination here.

4. Conclusion

In conclusion, Indian democracy allows its citizens to vote without any discrimination or coercion to choose the government of their choice.

Indian democracy is discussed all over the world, and it’s highly appreciated, but still many people in our country don’t know how to use it, nor are they well aware of it, that’s why we need to scatter its values to every person of India.

As a result, they can enjoy its fruit properly in the coming times.

Essay on Democracy in India ( 200 Words )

Indian democracy is divided into three parts, Executive, Legislature, and Judiciary where the judiciary is completely independent. In other words, no pressure can be made on it.

Here, the powers are divided among the individuals from top to bottom.

It’s a very big democratic country where people live without any discrimination. Actually, it’s such a country where it completely depends on its people who they will elect as their leader.

The democratic nature of this country allows its citizens to freely choose anyone irrespective of caste, color, appearance, gender, and religion. Apart from this, every person has the right to speak here and has equal rights.

Its democratic system not only allows the people here to elect a new government every five years but also strengthens the country in many ways. It means that here the public is easily able to replace the government if it doesn’t meet the needs of the citizens.

The sting of this system of India rings in the whole world.

Essay on Democracy in India ( 150 Words )

Indian democracy is one of the largest democracies in the world. As time passed, it became stronger. Various challenges changed its form.

In today’s time, it has many principles like equality, justice, liberty, and many others. In the democratic system of the country, the full right to choose their government has been given to its citizens. This system allows a fair and free election process throughout the whole country.

Apart from this, there is a provision in Indian democracy that the division of powers has been done from top to bottom. That means it’s fully federal.

Democracy should spread in India or the tasks under them should be conducted properly that’s why many non-governmental organizations and media are engaged in this protecting the rights of its citizens.

It’s getting stronger with the passage of time. The governments of our country are trying their best to keep it alive so that the rights of anyone may not violate.

Final words

Eventually, I hope that the article has proved to be very helpful for you. Here, the essay has been written in many formats after deep research. Now, you can pick one as per your need.

If you really liked this article, please share it with those who actually need it.

Vijay Gupta

Hello everyone, My name is Vijay Gupta and I belong to a very small town that is situated in district Hardoi, which is in Uttar Pradesh. 1. Education – I’ve completed my primary education from a private school that is situated in my hometown and upper primary, matric and higher secondary education have been completed from a government college. Well, I was an average student till class 5th, but I accelerated my preference towards studies from class six. Consequently, I passed out many classes with good positions. Even I passed out 12th with good marks ( 405/500 ) and topped my college. Due to getting good marks, I got a cheque of 500 rupees and was rewarded by the Principal of my college. After completing my 12th, I prepared twice for IIT ( Indian Institute of Technology ) from Aakash institute, but unfortunately, I failed to get selected into the best IIT colleges. But during the preparation, I was being graduated from CSJMU Kanpur. I completed my graduation in 2016 and now I’m pursuing an educational degree ( B.Ed. ). 2. Profession – Although I love teaching, but I also do blogging. Both are my favorite jobs.

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Guest Essay

Modi’s India Is Where Global Democracy Dies

By Debasish Roy Chowdhury

Debasish Roy Chowdhury is a Hong Kong-based Indian journalist and a co-author of “To Kill a Democracy: India’s Passage to Despotism.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi stood last month atop India’s nearly completed new Parliament building, built to mark the country’s 75 years of independence, and pulled a lever. A sprawling red curtain fell back to reveal the structure’s crowning statue. Many across India gasped.

The 21-foot-tall bronze figure — four lions seated with their backs to one another, facing outward — is of India’s revered national symbol. The beasts are normally depicted as regal and restrained, but these looked different: Their fangs bared, they seemed angry, aggressive.

To Mr. Modi’s critics, the refashioned image atop the Parliament building— a project that was rammed through without debate or public consultation — reflects the snarling “New India” he is creating.

In his eight years in power, Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party government has profaned Indian democracy, espousing an intolerant Hindu supremacist majoritarianism over the ideals of secularism, pluralism, religious tolerance and equal citizenship upon which the country was founded after gaining independence on Aug. 15, 1947.

Drawing comparisons to Nazi Germany , the regime uses co-opted government machinery , disinformation and intimidation by partisan mobs to silence critics while dehumanizing the large Muslim minority, fanning social division and violence. Civil liberties are systematically violated.

India, the world’s largest democracy, is where the global battle between liberalism and tyranny is being lost. Yet Western democracies like the United States refuse to call out Mr. Modi , instead courting him to maintain access to India’s huge market and for the nation’s utility as a strategic bulwark against China.

Last year Sweden’s V-Dem Institute downgraded India to an “ electoral autocracy ,” and the Washington-based Freedom House lowered it to “partly free.” The demotion of India, with its 1.3 billion people, tipped the global balance of freedom firmly in favor of tyranny, Freedom House said, with less than 20 percent of the world’s population now living in “free” countries.

Though India’s descent toward tyranny has accelerated under Mr. Modi, it would be unfair to put all the blame on him. Weak government institutions and social inequality — problems that have festered since India’s early years — have sapped its democracy and provided fertile ground for the politics of Hindu supremacy to take root.

Despite widespread poverty, illiteracy and extreme ethnic, religious and social diversity, India has blazed a trail since independence as what has been called an improbable democracy. It adopted a progressive Constitution but also retained highly centralized British colonial administrative structures that give elected state and national executives nearly unfettered control over institutions such as the police and other law enforcement agencies. Combined with draconian security and sedition laws, this allows elected state and national leaders to curb dissent with impunity.

Mr. Modi’s party has turbocharged these tools of repression, but it’s hardly the first to weaponize them.

I grew up in West Bengal. After independence, the state was led by the Congress Party, which freely deployed goons and the police to stifle opposition. It was followed by the Communist Party, which held power for 34 years and thoroughly emasculated state institutions. West Bengal is now ruled by a party whose leader projects herself as a national alternative to Mr. Modi’s authoritarianism but has likewise been accused of relying on brute force , cronies and a cult of personality . Such despotic trends have long been widespread at the state level. Mr. Modi himself ruled the western state of Gujarat with an iron hand for nearly 13 years and was accused of encouraging anti-Muslim rioting in 2002.

Arbitrary power is entrenched in the reality that most political parties are personality-centered and dynastic, and India is the rare democracy where political parties are not themselves democratic and do not conduct internal elections .

Money — and often criminal links — has become paramount in politics. Legislators are bought and sold. Many are ill equipped for lawmaking, instead rubber-stamping the policies of a top executive who is often beholden to special interests that are far removed from the people, like agricultural laws that stirred farmer protests until they were repealed last year.

But a deeper and much older hindrance to the development of a healthy, resilient democracy has been India’s historical failure to ensure the welfare of its poorest citizens. Hundreds of thousands of children die each year from hunger , and more than a third are stunted even as Indian billionaires race up the global wealth charts.

Neoliberal policies have compounded inequality, with the state retreating from fundamental responsibilities such as health and education. This breeds a life of indignity and powerlessness for millions who take refuge in group identity, gravitate toward strong leaders promising to defend them against other groups and easily become hooked on the mass opioid of religious hatred now being used to redefine secular India as a Hindu state.

Parliament’s composition already reflects this majoritarianism. At 200 million, India’s Muslim population is the third largest in the world, after Indonesia’s and Pakistan’s, accounting for about 15 percent of Indians. (Hindus make up around 80 percent.) But Muslims hold just 5 percent of Parliament seats. The B.J.P. is the first governing party in India’s 75-year history without a single Muslim member of Parliament .

Laws and rights are applied unevenly. Muslims can now be arrested for praying in public , while Hindu pilgrims are congratulated by state officials. The state celebrates the Hindu religion , while protests are orchestrated against Muslim customs like the wearing of the hijab and the call to prayer . Hindu vigilante groups attack Muslims and their businesses.

A high-ranking B.J.P. leader called Muslim refugees from Bangladesh “ termites ” eating away the country’s resources. Emboldened by state support, Hindu extremists now openly threaten the genocide and rape of Muslims, while the government arrests journalists who call out acts of hate. On Aug. 15, Independence Day, the government released 11 convicts serving life sentences for gang-raping a Muslim woman and murdering 14 members of her family during the 2002 Gujarat pogrom that occurred on Modi's watch.

Weakened institutions can do little to push back. The inefficient court system — there is a backlog of some 40 million pending cases — breeds popular disdain for the rule of law. Once known for its activism and independence, the higher judiciary now mostly works in lock step with the government , and Supreme Court judges fawn over Mr. Modi . India’s press, which once played a key role in protecting democracy, is pressured to serve his regime .

At 75, after decades of institutional abuse, India’s democracy is too frail to withstand a strongman taking a sledgehammer to its weak foundations. Mr. Modi calls the Parliament building a “ temple of democracy .” But the institution’s new premises in New Delhi are instead a monument to the demi-democracy he is building — a hollowed-out facade that exists to legitimize authoritarian rule.

Debasish Roy Chowdhury (@Planet_Deb) is a Hong Kong-based Indian journalist and an author, with John Keane, of “ To Kill a Democracy: India’s Passage to Despotism .”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram .

Is India an Autocracy?

The erosion of democratic norms didn’t begin with Narendra Modi.

Updated at 2 p.m. ET on April 26, 2024.

Last October, Indian authorities revived legal proceedings against the novelist and activist Arundhati Roy. In a case first registered against her in 2010, Roy stood accused of “provocative speech” that aroused “enmity between different groups” for having said that Kashmir was not an “integral” part of India . The charge carries a maximum sentence of seven years and kept her from traveling to Germany to deliver the opening address at the 2023 Munich Literature Festival.

The assault on expression, and on virtually every other mainstay of democracy, has become commonplace under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, and it is the backdrop against which Indians have begun voting to elect their next Parliament and prime minister. Of the nearly 1 billion eligible voters , perhaps more than 600 million will cast their votes over a six-week-long process. Modi, who heads the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is widely expected to win a third term as prime minister in his bitter contest against a motley alliance of opposition parties, the Indian National Development Inclusive Alliance (INDIA).

Read: What has happened to the rule of law in India?

The spectacle of hundreds of millions of Indians—many suffering severe material deprivation—performing their civic duty arouses both hope and wonder, often winning India the title of “world’s largest democracy.” But Indian democracy did not just begin to degrade under Modi: It has been eroding since the first years of independence. Modi has put that process on steroids and today presides over an autocracy in all but name.

For decades, the Indian state has used coercive legal powers to suppress dissent and constitutional mechanisms to delegitimize votes. The judiciary has largely acquiesced, money has gushed into Indian politics, and Hindu nationalism has cast a dark shadow of division. What are treated now as anomalies have been the trajectory all along.

Nonetheless, world leaders, including President Joe Biden, often describe India as a vibrant democracy . Even more nuanced analyses hold that Indian democracy will withstand the current crisis because Indians respect diversity and pluralism, the country’s democratic institutions are strong, and recovery is inevitable.

This romantic view of an inherently democratic India is a fairy tale. According to the Swedish think tank V-Dem, India was never a liberal democracy , and today it is sliding ever more decisively toward autocracy. Even under its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s impressive electoral apparatus did not guarantee equality before the law or ensure essential liberties to citizens. Subsequent leaders, rather than plugging the cracks in India’s constitutional foundation, expanded them, not least by using the state’s coercive power to circumvent democratic processes for personal or partisan advantage. Fraying democratic norms rendered free speech, dissent, and judicial independence casualties from the start.

The constitution that independent India adopted in 1950 defined the country as a democratic republic committed to justice, equality, and fraternity for its people . But the democratic conception of the state suffered its first blow when the constitution was just 18 months old. Nehru, frustrated that Indian courts were upholding the free-speech rights of his critics , amended the constitution in June 1951 to make seditious speech a punishable offense . Only one person was actually convicted of sedition before Nehru’s prime ministership ended with his death. But several suffered for extended periods after lower courts found them guilty and before higher ones reversed the verdicts. That long legal limbo had a chilling effect on speech.

The Indian constitution had other undemocratic features that Nehru deployed. It evinced a preoccupation with integrity and security , and emphasized the union, rather than autonomy, of the states it federated. If India’s central government deemed a state’s politics to be dysfunctional, it could place the state under a kind of federal receivership called President’s Rule, essentially disenfranchising the state’s electorate. Nehru imposed President’s Rule eight times during his tenure. The constitution had other significant gaps: It didn’t furnish social and economic equality to women, for example. Nehru tried to pass a bill that would override traditional Hindu patrimonial practices, but even in the postindependence glow of national unity, organized Hindu forces asserted their identity and political power. They stymied Nehru’s legislative efforts in 1951 and then the implementation of the laws that did pass later.

Nehru, for all his faults, valued tolerance and fairness. The same could scarcely be said of his daughter, Indira Gandhi, who followed soon after as prime minister and initiated a steep decline from such democratic norms as existed under Nehru. In 1967, she responded to a peasant protest in Naxalbari, West Bengal, by passing the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, which allowed the police to arrest and hold people without trial, bail, or explanation. This legislation would become an instrument of repression for decades to come. She also placed West Bengal under President’s Rule, and her chosen governor used the police and armed forces to wipe out a generation of idealistic students who supported the peasants. In fact, Gandhi imposed President’s Rule nearly 30 times from 1966 to 1975, when she declared an internal emergency and assumed dictatorial powers. Gandhi called for elections in early 1977, hoping to legitimize her autocratic rule. But when a frustrated Indian populace threw her out, the University of Chicago political scientists Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph—echoing a commonly held view—happily concluded , “Democracy has acquired a mass base in India.”

From the April 1940 issue: India’s demand and England’s answer

That proved wishful thinking. Upon reelection as prime minister in 1980, Gandhi accelerated the erosion of democratic norms. She imposed President’s Rule more than a dozen times in her second stint in power, from 1980 to 1984. She also began pandering to the sentiments of Hindus to win their votes, opening the door to the hard-line Hindu-nationalists who have since become an overpowering force in Indian politics.

Perhaps Gandhi’s most pernicious legacy was the injection of “black” money—unaccounted-for funds, accumulated through tax evasion and illegal market operations—into Indian politics. In 1969, she banned corporate donations to political parties. Soon after, her campaigns became extremely expensive, ushering in an era of “ briefcase politics ,” in which campaign donations came in briefcases full of cash, mostly filling the coffers of her own Congress Party. Criminals became election financiers, and as big-money (and black-money) politics spread, ideology and public interest gave way to politics for private gain. Legislators in state assemblies frequently “defected,” crossing party lines to bag ministerial positions that generated corrupt earnings.

And yet, for all the damage done to it, many analysts and diplomats still cleaved to the romantic view of Indian democracy. Upon Gandhi’s assassination in 1984, a former U.S. foreign-service officer, writing in Foreign Affairs , described the monarchical-style handover of power to her son, the political neophyte Rajiv, as proof of the “strength of the republic and its democratic constitutional system.”

Rajiv’s stewardship could rightly be seen in an entirely different light. He was the prime minister who let the gale force of Hindu nationalism blast through the door his mother had opened. He commissioned for the state-owned television network, Doordarshan, the much-loved Ramayana epic , which spawned a Rambo-like iconography of Lord Ram as Hindutva’s avenger. And he reignited a contest between Hindus and Muslims over the site of a 16th-century mosque called the Babri Masjid, which had been sealed since 1949 to contain communal passions. Hindu zealots claimed that the structure was built on Lord Ram’s birthplace, and Rajiv opened its gates . Then, in December 1992, Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao’s Congress Party–led government dithered as frenzied Hindu mobs demolished Babri Masjid, triggering bloody riots and further advancing the Hindu-nationalist cause.

The decade from 1989 to 1998 saw a series of coalition governments govern India—a development that the historian Ramachandra Guha has described as “a manifestation of the widening and deepening of democracy” because “different regions and different groups had acquired a greater stake in the system.” Democratic norms were, in fact, degrading at a quickening pace during this period. Big-money politics had bred mercenary politicians, who at the unseemly edge were gangster s providing caste representation, protection, and other services that the state could not supply. Politicians paid little attention to the public good—such as creating more jobs and improving education and health services, especially in the eastern states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh—and learned that they could use plausible corruption charges against one another as a weapon.

Hindu nationalism swelled. From 1998 to 2003, the BJP led a coalition government that began aligning school textbooks with a Hindu-nationalist agenda. A Congress-led government from 2004 to 2014 arrested this trend but presided over a steep descent into corruption: During that decade, the share of members of the lower house of Parliament charged with serious crimes—including murder, extortion, and kidnapping— reached 21 percent, up from 12 percent .

Read: India’s democracy is the world’s problem

Both the BJP and the Congress Party embraced a model of economic growth driven by the very rich, and both dismissed the injury to the economic interests of the weak and vulnerable, as well as to the environment, as necessary collateral damage. In Chhattisgarh, a Congress Party leader, with the support of the state’s BJP government, sponsored a private vigilante army to protect business interests, which included the exploitation of minerals and the mowing down of pristine forests in the tribal areas. When the supreme court declared the private vigilante army unconstitutional, Indian authorities responded in the manner of Andrew Jackson, who famously waved off the United States’ chief justice with the statement, “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”

The anti-terrorism and anti-sedition provisions that earlier governments had supplied came in handy when the Congress-led coalition sought to suppress protests and intimidate opponents. The government also introduced and steadily widened the ambit of a new law, ostensibly for the prevention of money laundering, and it used the investigative powers of the state to its own benefit in whitewashing corruption: In 2013, a justice of the supreme court described the Central Bureau of Investigation as a “caged parrot” singing in “its master’s voice.”

India, on the eve of the election that brought Modi to power in May 2014, could thus hardly be described as a robust democracy. Rather, all the instruments for its demolition had already been assembled and politely passed along from one government to the next. In the hands of a populist demagogue such as Modi, the demolition instruments proved to be a wrecking ball.

As a candidate, Modi promised to right India’s feckless economic policy and countervail against the Congress Party’s corruption. These claims were not credible. Worse, as chief minister of Gujarat in 2002, Modi had failed to stop a bloody massacre of Muslims, thereby establishing himself as an avatar of Hindu-nationalist extremism. He couldn’t even get a visa to enter the United States.

Nonetheless, many of India’s public intellectuals were sanguine. Antidemocratic forces could be no match for the pluralistic disposition of India’s people and the liberal institutions of its state, some insisted. The political scientist Ashutosh Varshney noted that Modi had eschewed anti-Muslim rhetoric in his campaign—because, Varshney inferred, Indian politics abhorred ideological extremism. Another political scientist, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, asked the BJP’s political opponents to reflect on their own fascist tendencies. The Congress Party, Mehta wrote, “had done its best” to instill fear in citizens and corrode the institutions that protected individual rights; Modi would pull India out of the economic stagnation that Congress had induced.

Anti-Muslim violence spread quickly after Modi came to power. Prominent critics of Hindu nationalism were gunned down on their doorsteps: M. M. Kalburgi in Dharwad, Karnataka, in August 2015, and Gauri Lankesh in Bangalore in July 2017. And India was tumbling in global indicators of democracy. V-Dem has classified India as an electoral autocracy since 2018: The country conducts elections but suppresses individual rights, dissent, and the media so egregiously that it can no longer be considered a democracy in any sense of the word. Even the word “electoral,” though, in V-Dem’s designation, has become dubious since then.

Samanth Subramanian: Indian democracy is fighting back

Under Modi’s rule, India has taken a sharp turn toward autocracy, but to get there, the BJP had only to drive a truck through the fissures in the state’s democratic foundations that earlier governments had already widened. The government has seized the coercive powers of the state to fearsome ends, arresting activists and human-rights defenders under various provisions of the law. Successive Washington Post investigations have concluded that at least some of these arrests were based on planted evidence. One of those arrested, a Jesuit priest and human-rights activist, died in prison for want of medical attention when suffering from complications of COVID-19. Income and wealth inequalities have grown, in tandem with extraordinary expenditures even in state election campaigns. Demands for the demolition of more mosques have mounted. Inevitably, to woo Hindu voters, even opposition parties, including the Congress Party, have adopted a softer version of Hindu-nationalist ideology.

The BJP government regularly brings charges against its critics in the media for tax lapses or anti-nationalism, among other pretexts. Reporters Without Borders describes India as one of the most dangerous countries for journalists . In 2023, it ranked India 161 out of 180 countries in press freedom, citing the takeover of media outlets by oligarchs close to Modi and the “horrific” online harassment by Modi’s “army of online supporters.”

Can Indians really be said to vote freely under such circumstances? Even if the answer is yes, the government seems to have found the means to disenfranchise citizens after the fact. In August 2019, the government withdrew the constitutional provision that gave Kashmir special autonomy. It also downgraded Kashmir from a state to a territory, placing it under the direct control of the central government without consulting the people of Kashmir. Because the supreme court has refused to reverse this move, future central governments might similarly downgrade other states.

The chief ministers of Jharkhand and Delhi are both in jail, awaiting trial on money-laundering charges, and the government has frozen the bank accounts of the Congress Party on allegations of tax evasion. Many opposition-party members who face criminal charges join the BJP, effectively giving the ruling party greater political power in exchange for the dismissal of the charges against them. A recent supreme-court directive requiring transparency in a segment of campaign financing revealed signs of extensive corruption primarily benefiting BJP politicians but also opposition leaders in charge of state governments.

Nevertheless, after Prime Minister Modi’s visit to the United States last June and his address to a joint session of Congress, the White House’s joint U.S.-India statement read : “The United States and India reaffirm and embrace their shared values of freedom, democracy, human rights, inclusion, pluralism, and equal opportunities for all citizens.” In January, Secretary of State Antony Blinken referred to India as the “world’s largest democracy” and a vital partner, a position that the State Department continues to hold .

Such statements are at odds with the Indian reality. Over the seven decades since independence, Indian democracy has betrayed its people, leaving the majority without dignified jobs, foundational education, public health, or clean air and water. Alongside that betrayal, the death by a thousand cuts of democratic norms raises the troubling question: Is India now an autocracy?

If Modi wins this election, his victory will surely strengthen autocratic tendencies in India. But in the unlikely event that he loses, the erosion of democracy will merely have paused. Democracy is a fragile construct. When deviation from democratic norms persists for as long as it has in Indian politics, deviance becomes the norm. Reversing it becomes a monumental task. Especially if a winning opposition coalition fails to improve the quality of Indian lives, an electorally resurgent Modi and his Hindutva supporters could potentially seal democracy’s fate.

This article previously misstated which Indian state’s chief minister is in jail.

Is democracy at stake in India's election?

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The single biggest election in the history of democracy is happening right now in India. Just shy of one billion people are eligible voters, but it's not just big from a numbers perspective. It's also being called one of the most pivotal elections in Indian history.

Incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi is projected to win. But Modi's commitment to Hindu nationalism has many questioning what a third term might mean for the future of India's democracy, and the idea of a pluralistic Indian society.

Salimah Shivji is the CBC's South Asia correspondent. She's also working on a new CBC podcast about Modi and the fundamental ways he's changing his country. It'll be part of our Understood feed, you can subscribe here .

Salimah spoke to host Jayme Poisson about why the stakes of this election are so high.

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Ahead of India’s ongoing general election, selfie points appeared at railway stations and airports across the country — cardboard cut-outs of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other icons of national pride. They featured the Indian tricolour; the Vikrant, the country’s first fully domestically built aircraft carrier, commissioned in 2022; and the Chandrayaan-3 rocket, which last year undertook a successful mission to the Moon.

Modi is seeking a third term in office, campaigning on his role as a champion of majority Hindus, his record of raising India’s global standing and his skill at managing one of the world’s fastest-growing economies and its largest democracy. Amid signs of an economic take-off — the IMF forecasts GDP growth of 6.8 per cent in 2024-25 — India is also enjoying international goodwill because the world is seeking both a democratic counterweight and a commercial alternative to Xi Jinping’s authoritarian, increasingly obstreperous China.

At the same time, another narrative about India has gained currency over Modi’s decade in power: according to international observers and the prime minister’s critics, its democracy is in steep decline. As the six-week-long voting process unfolds, Modi’s opponents have cried foul over the recent imprisonment of two state leaders and unrelenting pressure on opposition parties, civil society groups and independent journalists.

The need for clarity on the state of India has rarely been greater. For Modi’s new western friends — who not long ago were betting on closer partnership with China — a pressing question is what kind of friend India might be. More, will it remain a democracy at all?

Much of this is captured in a series of new books that seek to shed light on the country since Modi first took office in 2014. Three in particular take a critical perspective: Christophe Jaffrelot’s Gujarat Under Modi , Alpa Shah’s The Incarcerations , and Kunal Purohit’s H-Pop . Although Jaffrelot and Shah are based outside India, critics would dismiss these books as the product of liberal “Lutyens Delhi” — shorthand for the capital’s Indian National Congress party-affiliated political and social elite, which ruled the country for most of its post-independence period until Modi’s Hindu nationalist BJP party swept it aside. So it is also worth absorbing the Modi government’s own views on itself: Jaishankar’s new book Why Bharat Matters is helpful here.

Jaffrelot’s work is a dense if rewarding read, examining Modi’s time as chief minister in Gujarat (2001-14), the western state where he developed his base of entrepreneurial supporters. The time is most widely remembered for the gruesome religious riots of 2002, in which more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed in what has been called a pogrom.

Gujarat Under Modi covers the violence, but the author’s focus is on what happened next, when Modi pioneered the practices and policies that he would later take to the national stage. In the aftermath, lengthy inquiries were launched, and Modi was temporarily barred from visiting the US. But the violence also won him political points as a saviour of Hindus. According to Jaffrelot, what Indians call “fake encounters” (police killings of suspected jihadis) proliferated and turbocharged his popularity. “The Gujarat riots,” asserts Jaffrelot, “demonstrated that polarisation could help him politically on a large scale.”

Among the measures identified by the author that Modi developed as chief minister are the politicisation of the police and the judiciary, combined with policies favouring big business. The latter often involved large-infrastructure projects pioneered by tycoons such as Gautam Adani, the Gujarati businessman who built one of India’s top conglomerates in the same years that Modi was rising in politics.

‘Why Bharat Matters’ is worth reading for insights on how India sees China, Russia and the west, and how it views its own record

There are few writers with the rigour and knowledge of Modi’s career like Jaffrelot, a professor at King’s College London and Sciences Po in Paris and author of Modi’s India (2021) . His new book is a demanding but essential read about how one of the world’s most effective politicians built his political base and brand.

One alarming feature of Modi’s India has been the increasingly long reach of the national security apparatus, which has used anti-terrorism and money-laundering laws to hold suspects for long periods without bail.

This is the subject of Shah’s book, which tells a compulsively readable story — although every bit as bleak as Jaffrelot’s — about a cluster of arrests of prominent leftists. Between 2018 and 2020, some 16 people, including journalists, poets, lawyers and a Jesuit priest, were detained and held under the terrorism law and other criminal offences; many remain behind bars. The Bhima Koregaon case (named after a monument in Maharashtra where scuffles between lower-caste Dalits and Hindu nationalists triggered a police investigation in 2018) has become a cause célèbre in human rights circles. The activists are known as the BK-16.

They were agitating on a range of causes, including the rights of Dalits and Adivasi, tribal people whose forested lands in central and eastern India are home to rich mineral deposits and a long-running Naxalite-Maoist insurgency. This put them in the sights of both the police and conglomerates looking to exploit the land’s wealth. Activists Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira were, according to Shah, conducting research that exposed “the injustices of the state regime”. This included fact-finding into the 2019 killing of 40 Maoists, which the pair claimed was “cold-blooded mass murder” by the state.

The Incarcerations is an unsettling indictment of Modi’s India, and alleges grave miscarriages of justice, including the planting of a letter found by Maharashtra police on the computer of activist Rona Wilson, outlining a plot to assassinate Modi. An American digital forensics company concluded that it and other documents were planted, but Wilson remains in jail. Another activist, Father Stan Swamy, who suffered from Parkinsons, failed to secure bail on medical grounds and died in prison in 2021.

Unusually for an academic — she is a professor at the London School of economics — Shah has a gift for non-fiction narrative, and the book, enlivened by photos and maps of the Indian states where the action unfolds, is almost cinematic. The fact that the author (who previously wrote a study of the Naxalite insurgency, 2018’s Nightmarch ), knows many of the dramatis personae no doubt helps.

But it’s worth remembering that much of the groundwork for what is often called Modi’s India was actually laid during earlier Congress-led governments, including earlier versions of the sweeping anti-terrorism law and strict curbs on foreign funding for civil society groups that were put in place in 2010.

Shah makes the contentious assertion — which many Indians, including even some government critics, would disagree with — that Modi’s India is “fascist”, and suggests that the international community is partly to blame. “A modern Indian fascism has thus arisen in India under which large-scale elections are likely to continue,” she writes, because of “the pressures of an international world order” in which Indian democracy has been counterpoised to Chinese and Russian authoritarianism.

As powerful as Modi is, it is worth remembering that Hindu nationalism is a cultural phenomenon, not just a political one. Purohit’s H-Pop is a vivid and richly reported account of the world of Hindutva pop stars and other influencers who spread the message of Hindu supremacy, often with BJP support. Some of these artists voice extreme views on Muslims, the use of violence and other issues that are beyond the pale even by the standards of India’s intemperate political debate. According to Purohit, they serve the BJP’s purposes by saying the unsayable.

At a packed recital in Ghaziabad in BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh in 2017, Kamal Agney, a Hindutva poet, read a poem glorifying Nathuram Godse, Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin:

Had Godse not pumped that bullet into Gandhi, Every Hindu would have been praying at Mecca and Medina today.

On another occasion, H-Pop singer Kanhiya Mittal sang a duet with a BJP lawmaker whose lyrics read “the saffron is getting deeper”, a reference to the colour of Hinduism and the BJP’s own party colours, hailing the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, built at the site of a mosque destroyed by Hindu nationalists in 1992, whose consecration in January Modi presided over. Congress politicians boycotted the ceremony and liberal Indians decried the prime minister’s priest-like presence (he had spent days fasting and in prayer) as a defining moment in the decline of their secular state. Filled with vivid scenes from India’s unsettling current moment, H-Pop attests to the fact that incisive and fearless journalism is not dead in India.

Needless to say, the prime minister’s circle see India’s current moment as one of triumph. Jaishankar, who is widely tipped to continue his role as foreign minister in Modi’s next cabinet in the likely event of a BJP win, is an eloquent, urbane spokesman for his worldview. In Why Bharat Matters (“Bharat” is the Modi-favoured Hindi word for India, and he uses it throughout), Jaishankar makes a compelling case that the world needs an economically growing, diplomatically nimble and digitally connected India, not least at a time of US decline. “The combination of changes in India’s political standing, economic weight, technological capabilities, cultural influence and the successes of the diaspora is moving the nation into a higher orbit,” he writes.

Jaishankar is in his element when writing about Washington’s unseemly exit from Afghanistan in 2021 and its former cosying up to China. “The western world found that the Islamic card that it played against the USSR came back to haunt them within a decade,” he writes. “And when it comes to strategic understandings, the economic benefits that China obtained became the foundation for the upturning of the global order and the contemporary competition that we witness now.”

Jaishankar frequently suggests that 2014 was a clean break between an old, poorly run India and the new, highly competent one. In fact, the roots of many of the Modi era’s failings and achievements alike — from entrenched inequality and religious discord to its mass welfare schemes and multipolar foreign policy — have their roots in policies that predate his rise. Yes, Modi is India’s strongest leader in decades. But he has built on the legacy — good and bad — of his predecessors.

Nonetheless, Why Bharat Matters is worth reading for Jaishankar’s insights on how India sees China, Russia and the west, and — certainly for this reader — how it views its own record. This includes, for example, its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Modi supporters, Jaishankar included, describe the crisis as one in which an invigorated state delivered food to millions of people and developed pioneering vaccines that were used abroad. Independent journalists also remember oxygen shortages, bodies floating in the Ganges, and millions of unemployed informal workers suddenly sent to their villages on foot.

The prime minister’s critics say that the Modisphere is a closed world, an echo chamber of accepted truths. But the Modi camp says the same holds true of those who criticise the prime minister, whether from overseas or inside that Lutyens bubble. Answers can be elusive, but they’re not impossible to find. For anyone assembling a first draft of India’s history at this pivotal time, it pays to read widely.

Gujurat Under Modi: Laboratory of Today’s India by Christophe Jaffrelot Hurst £30, 416 pages

The Incarcerations: BK-16 and the Search for Democracy in India by Alpa Shah William Collins £30, 672 pages

H-Pop: The Secretive World of Hindutva Pop Stars by Kunal Purohit HarperCollins £17.50, 306 pages

Why Bharat Matters by S Jaishankar Rupa Publications India £18, 248 pages

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Casi election conversations 2024: pavithra suryanarayan on the bjp, “social status,” and anti-redistributive politics.

Questions over redistribution and social justice politics versus religious fault-lines seem front and center once again in India’s ongoing general elections. How is the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party—which has historically been ambivalent about social justice politics—mobilizing poorer voters, especially among the upper castes? What role does “social status” play in how voters choose their candidates? And when do anti-redistributive politics become salient?

In the fourth interview of the casi election conversations 2024, casi consulting editor rohan venkat speaks to pavithra suryanarayan (assistant professor in the government department at the london school of economics and political science) about her research into the awakening of “social status” as an identity category, when social justice politics leads to a backlash that ends up hollowing out the state, and what other big questions about indian politics she would like to see studied. .

Rohan: Could you tell us what you’ve been seeking to understand in your research?

Pavithra: I broadly work on three topics. First, I study how people's identities shape vote choice and their attitudes toward redistribution. Second, I study the politics of building state capacity. The third is an area of research that I have developed with a co-author, Francesca Jensenius, which focuses on party organization and party systems in the Indian states. I believe our conversation today will focus a lot on the first research agenda, which is how do people's identities shape their worldview and by extension, their political behavior?

Rohan: Quoting from one of your other papers, “scholars of the world’s most populous democracy invariably agree that elements of identity are central to Indian politics, but there have been few efforts to assess empirically which dimensions of identity are most important to understanding electoral choice, or to understand how the economic attributes of groups might be related to the salience of group identity in elections.” I want to get a sense of what is already out there in the field on these questions before we get to your work.

Pavithra: India is a country teeming with multiple identities—religion, language, caste. Of these identities, caste is what I focus on. On an everyday level, people don't just experience their caste as upper caste or lower caste, they also experience it as a localized jati or biradari, which then shapes a whole range of socio-economic outcomes—what jobs they do, who they marry, what they eat, how they dress, to even the dialect they speak. Caste is interesting because it has many attributes. In American political science, there was a recent paper called “ Race as a Bundle of Sticks ,” because race in the American context is a bundle of many attributes. We can think about caste in a similar way. Caste endows a person social rank, occupation, phenotype, a linguistic dialect, and caste can be a bundle of cultural or religious rituals you practice as a consequence of the local jati that you inhabit.

If we think about caste as an identity that matters to politics, we have to ask, “ which attribute of caste is playing on people's views on what they want from politics?" I've tried to tease out a few of those threads, most notably how the rank that people inherit from caste shapes political behavior.

Rohan: We’ve always understood that caste is important, with the old cliché about not casting your vote, but “voting your caste.” What you’re trying to do is get to what, within caste, is important. What do you mean by “rank” here?

Pavithra: Now we come to the part of my research that tries to put some structure and shape to how to think about this. I'm going to use the phrase “social status,” which is quite loaded because it can mean very different things to different people depending on what trajectory of social science research they follow. But here, when I say social status, I mean an inherited rank that comes through descent. Social status is relatively sticky; you cannot get rid of that inherited status that you have received as you go through your life. You may become richer or poorer but your inherited rank stays with you. What makes this a relatively new conceptualization of social status is that rank is not an attribute, it is the constitutive attribute of the identity. If you lose the social status distinction, the identity category ceases to exist.

In my work, I theorize caste as a social status identity, which is different from viewing it as an ethnic category or a class category. We have extensive research on caste as an ethnic category and how it shapes politics, voting, and political parties. Much of this research, however, doesn’t consider what constitutive attribute of a particular caste might be the key factor in increasing caste salience.

Thinking about caste as a social status identity, where rank is the chief constitutive attribute of the identity, allows us to then think about when, why, and for which castes social status emerges as a salient identity cleavage in politics. It allows us to more clearly understand the factors that come into people's utility functions when they think about caste and politics.

Rohan: To clarify for those unfamiliar with social science terminology, “rank” here is the perceived idea of where you are situated in society on a hierarchical scale.

Pavithra: That's right. Thank you for pointing that out, because it might not just be for people who don't understand social science. There might be people who don't understand how caste as an identity is structured. Historically, a central organizing feature of the caste system was hierarchy. We can think about it as the classic Varna categories of Brahmin, Kshatriya, Shudra, and so on. Or we can just think about it in contemporary terms as the agglomerations that social scientists in India use as upper caste, peasant proprietary caste, the upper creamy layer other backward classes (OBCs), lower OBCs, scheduled caste, scheduled tribes (SC/ST), and so on.

When you face challenges to your social status—ie, your inherited rank in the caste system—what you're fighting tooth and nail for is to maintain rank as the organizing principle in a society. What you're, in fact, afraid of is a state of the world where caste is merely ethnicity or caste is merely class, which takes away the utility that people get from inheriting rank in a caste system.

Rohan: I wanted to focus on the paper titled, “ When do the poor vote for the right-wing and why: Hierarchy and vote choice in the Indian states. ” Can you tell us what you set out to do in the paper and what it finds?

Pavithra: In this paper, I do something that we don't regularly see in Indian politics. I theorize that upper caste Brahmins hold a distinct set of motivations for politics. There is a graph in that paper that caught my attention when I first made it using survey data from 2004 National Election Surveys. We don't have much information on castes enumeration or the economic location of castes in contemporary India because we haven't done a caste census since independence. The NES surveys that document jati-level data are some of the best measures of the economic and social location of caste groups across the Indian state.

If we look at the distribution of wealth across India's caste groups, we see something intriguing. One, that Brahmins, who are India's upper castes, are more heterogeneous in their economic profiles than scheduled castes and tribes. While on average, they tend to be the wealthiest group across the country, there are a number of poor Brahmins in India. What also caught my attention is that intra-Brahmin inequality looks a lot like intra-upper OBC or intra-other upper caste inequality. I wanted to understand: do poor Brahmins then think about politics in the same way as poor backward castes?

Here, what do I mean by politics? I mean redistributive politics—what do they want from their government in terms of redistribution? Are poor Brahmins like other poor backward castes in that they want the government to do more welfare, more tax-and-transfer, and to do more in poverty alleviation? Or are poor Brahmins similar to wealthier Brahmins in that they hold more circumspect redistributive preferences where they want the government to limit its role in the economy and get out of managing welfare? What grew out of this chart was an interest in understanding India's upper castes, particularly Brahmins.

This is quite new because historically, much of social science work has gone into understanding how lower castes, particularly marginal castes like SC/ST and lower OBCs, have made claims on the state or on politics. I'm focusing the attention on upper castes and making the claim that this group has expressed very distinctive political preferences in different time periods in history.

Rohan: What do you find? What are poor Brahmins expressing in terms of preference?

Pavithra: This particular paper makes use of the time period before and after Prime Minister V.P. Singh's speech around implementing the recommendations of the Mandal Commission (introducing reservations for OBCs in government jobs and higher education). It argues that there was a shift in voting away from the Congress and toward the BJP in the state elections that were held right after the Mandal announcement in 1990. The paper argues that the Mandal speech by Prime Minister Singh awakened a social status identity that was somewhat dormant in upper castes in the previous period, because government policy in India until that point hadn't overtly gone into arenas that disturbed upper caste privilege. And here, a central feature of upper caste, particularly Brahmin privilege, historically, has been their control of education. It's a central aspect of Brahminical identity, intertwined with their role as priests. The prospect of desegregating higher education institutions, and by extension, the bureaucracy that comes with having held access to education historically, was interpreted as a status threat amongst India's upper caste Brahmins.

This catalyzed a shift away from supporting parties like the Congress in a previous era and toward the BJP, which, in this time period, started to explicitly speak the language of de-bureaucratizing and anti-affirmative action policies. And so, this moment allows you to understand how an identity like social status, which derives from rank, shapes people's voting preferences.

If this argument is right, would we see the effects most sharply in some places over others? This involved actually going back to the most comprehensive census we have of local caste groupings and caste inequality around status, which is the 1931 census. I digitized the 1931 census data at the taluk-level in order to then be able to make claims that that same underlying structure of caste and status inequality suddenly came alive as a key predictor of voting after the Mandal announcement precisely in places where that inequality around rank was greater.

Rohan: What you discover is that, based on this data from the 1920s and 1930s, Brahmin-dominated spaces corresponded to preferences for the BJP after reservations were announced in 1990. And this holds up specifically for poor Brahmins?

Pavithra: Part one of the paper allowed me to first illustrate that places which had more Brahmin dominance [in 1930] had a greater rise in voting for the BJP in the period after the Mandal announcement. The second part of the paper gets into the individual level dynamics of who these people are who support the BJP. I used data from the 2004 National Election Surveys. I was able to show that upper castes, particularly Brahmins, who lived in historically Brahmin-dominated areas, were more likely to vote for the BJP. Importantly, poor Brahmins living in Brahmin-dominated areas were more likely to vote for the BJP.

I also explored a series of questions on redistributive politics, which ask voters things like, is it the government's role to care for poverty? I find that poor Brahmins are more anti-redistributive if they live in historically Brahmin-dominated areas. There's something about the context where rank and social status is more salient that it turns the poor members of a high rank group against state-led welfare and redistribution. It links the support for the BJP to the evolution of anti-redistributive politics amongst high status groups.

Rohan: Since this is also the time of the Ayodhya movement and the Babri Masjid demolition, couldn’t that explain the upper-caste support for the BJP? How do you conclude that it was specifically a response to Mandal?

Pavithra: In the paper, just like I created measures of Brahmin dominance, I also create measures of Muslim size and population. I rely on the intuitions of other scholars of ethnic politics who have argued that, "you might perceive the threat of out-groups more if you're more equally sized to them." If it is Babri Masjid and the rise of Hindutva politics that was doing this and not Mandal, then either controlling for size of Muslims in a constituency should take away the effects of the historic Brahmin dominance measure or the measures should work through Brahmin dominance in that, what they're doing is picking up more upper caste support for Hindutva politics. And neither of those two things are what happens when I examine the data.

The data shows there is an effect of Muslim populations in the assembly constituencies in rallying support for the BJP, but that doesn't take away the independent role of Brahmin dominance in those districts. Second, the effect of the Hindutva ideology seems to be greater in low-Brahmin-dominant areas than high-Brahmin-dominant areas, which means two things are happening simultaneously in India in this moment. One, the reverberating effects of Mandal that are shaping the behavior of India's upper castes and the effects of mobilization around a Hindu identity, which might be allowing the BJP to seek votes from non-upper caste groups against their political competitors. The strongest version of my claim would be that Hindutva itself was, in some ways, a reaction to the fallout of Mandal, that the BJP needed a strategy that could both bring Brahmins and upper castes on board, while also rallying non-upper castes into the fold. But a different empirical paper needs to be written to push that claim.

Rohan: The BJP no longer seems quite as anti-reservations or anti-redistributive in the way it was in the 1990s…

Pavithra: I will say two things. I still think the BJP is one of the few parties that does not believe in affirmative action. It doesn't overtly act on it, but if you engage with its party platforms and what its leaders have been saying, it has a very non-affirmative action policy bench. And that has stayed quite consistent over the last 40 years, since Mandal. The other thing I will say is that we have to ask, what sort of redistribution is the current BJP doing? A central argument in my paper and my ongoing book project is that broad strokes redistribution may not threaten upper caste status identity. This is why India's upper caste were quite comfortable with the redistributive policies of the Grand Old Party Congress.

The kinds of policies that upset upper caste enclaves are attempts to genuinely integrate institutions. This is why Mandal was such a pivotal moment, because here was a prime minister who said, "There are limitations to political power. Political power means nothing unless institutions themselves are run by lower castes." Explicit in Prime Minister V.P. Singh's speech was this idea that lower castes not only needed political representation, they needed to control the state. They genuinely needed to be part of key enclaves of upper caste dominance.

And you don't see the BJP doing much of that. The BJP in its current form is toeing the line between appeasing its upper caste interests of institutional control while also providing redistribution of the form that doesn't disturb these enclaves. The current BJP is a good manifestation of how an ideal upper caste party wants to function. And this is also reflected in findings by Tariq Thachil who discusses how BJP and its allied organizations provide social welfare to marginal groups while allowing policy and institutions to remain in the hands of their upper caste core constituents.

Rohan: There’s a complex interplay there, given that the BJP always embraced anti-reservation thought, but also has had to embrace other strains of political culture, so much that its big move ahead of the 2019 elections was to bring in reservations for upper castes in the form of the EWS quota. To come back to the paper and book project, what are the implications of your findings, not just for India but this research at large?

Pavithra: The book project develops the idea that if you want to understand redistributive politics in some countries, you need to take two things seriously. The first is that the contestation in politics doesn’t only hinge on material redistribution, it can hinge on rank or social status.

The second is that we focus overtly on representation in the political arena, which is fighting elections and putting an MLA or an MP into office, and then we say, “job done." But in fact, the arena that might truly matter is the state itself. Control of the bureaucracy and bureaucratic capacity might be important to certain groups in a society.

Historically in many places like India, the United States, South Africa, etc., the state has been key to not only providing security and taxes, but has been key to social organization. In these countries, the state was central in allowing segregation to continue. Integrating the state can create a backlash that reverberates in politics.

I have a paper on the American South on how the end of the Civil War produced this backlash as African Americans were emancipated and made claims on redistribution, and many of them made claims through becoming part of the state. African Americans became not just voters and representatives, they became census enumerators and local bureaucrats. What followed was a period of backlash against the state, which led to weakened state capacity and a deliberate attempt to keep the state weak in order to limit its welfare ability.

The book spells out how the increased salience of a social status identity leads to anti-redistributive politics. We observe anti-redistributive politics in three ways. First, at the micro level, it lowers individual level support for redistribution amongst high status groups. Second, at a meso level, it weakens state capacity, particularly bureaucratic capacity. Third, at a macro level, it changes coalitions of voters in the political landscape, making it possible now for right-wing parties to gain new constituents who are worried about protecting their social status and not just their income or their ethnicity.

Rohan: How do we see that backlash in the Indian context?

Pavithra: I use three different methods to get through this micro, meso, macro. At the micro level, we have just completed a series of survey experiments in Uttar Pradesh with a colleague, Simon Chauchard, where we examine upper caste versus middle caste—which is upper OBC—preferences for redistribution once they're experimentally informed about who controls the state. Tentatively, what we find is that upper castes turn more anti-redistributive when exposed to information about a more integrated state. We see no such trend amongst either the wealthy or the poor upper OBCs in the survey experiment.

For meso-level institutional findings, I go back a hundred years to what happens to tax collections and tax capacity in colonial India after the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms. I focus on two provinces in colonial India—Madras and Bombay—where the status threat was very high because in the pre-Montagu world, the bureaucracies of these provinces were almost entirely dominated by upper caste Brahmins. I show that Brahmin-dominant areas experienced a greater weakening of taxation and tax collections after Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms are announced because again, the threat of integrating the state weighs very heavily on upper-castes, who, in these places, have historically consumed key goods like education that were central to their caste identity.

Historic upper caste dominance, particularly Brahmin dominance, is associated with an anti-tax backlash, even while controlling for other factors that could explain the same phenomenon like land-based fights and land inequality or simply ethnic fragmentation or ethnic competition at the local level. And then you have the macro level findings, which is where we started this conversation—the BJP paper that shows the same thing in contemporary India before and after Mandal.

Thinking about these at the micro, the meso, and the macro gives us a fuller picture of how the same impulses shape an anti-redistributive politics, but only when the status is threatened. These are groups that were very pro-bureaucracy, very pro-redistribution, much more comfortable in welfarist politics. But they shift to an anti-redistributive mindset when their status is threatened. And that's what the survey experiment shows, that's what that moment of Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms shows, and then again, Mandal. And I'm hard-pressed to think if this is totally wrong, what alternative explanation could explain all three of those findings in exactly the same direction or way.

Rohan: There is often this idea that poorer voters who support anti-redistributive parties are making irrational choices—voting against their interest by going against redistributive politics. This could work to explain that, and it also made me think immediately about whether it explains efforts to make white communities in America, or Hindus in general, feel threatened in their rank.

Pavithra: In my book manuscript and my papers, I push back against the notion that poor whites or upper castes are “irrational.” Instead, what they are attempting to maximize are a rank-based set of goods. Losing rank means they no longer belong to that exclusive club that allows them a whole range of material goods, not just psychological wages, as Du Bois called, "wages of whiteness." Yes, there are some psychological or psychic goods that people get, but they also get a very specific set of goods that has been so important to reifying rank in the first place. This is why I started with education because this was the domain of Brahmins for centuries, and one that allowed them to then become such a key part of the state through both the pre-colonial and colonial era.

This particular good—education—was key to the rank in social life. Your local priest or your teacher is the one with the words, the one who knows how to read the religious text and gets a great deal of social status bestowed on them as a function of that, and then becomes a key player within the state and gets to set policy and rules again, based on that rank attribute of education being so central to Brahminical social status. What I want to say is that it's rational for voters in different contexts to try and defend these segregated goods because it's a form of inheritance that they give to their children, this rank, and they fight tooth and nail to maintain it and prevent the world becoming about an ethnic group one versus ethnic group two or rich versus poor dynamic. This defense of rank, it's fully rational if what you're trying to maximize here is your social status.

Then comes the second question—“When we see Hindu-Muslim dynamics in contemporary India, would this be similar?" Maybe. I don't want to do too much concept-stretching. Maybe we are in a hundred-year process by which Muslims in India are being relegated to a certain social rank, which over time might start to resemble what we are seeing with upper versus lower castes in India. But I'm not comfortable making that conceptual stretch. I think a different analogy might work, and this is gender. Here too, you see status differences because of a function of birth, and is gender a form of rank, and can the concepts of defending status and rank apply to gender politics? Possibly. And this is something that's on my mind as I explore future research.

Rohan: Have there been critiques or responses to the work that you have found useful?

Pavithra: I think the first critique people make is that it's hard to think about status without its material underpinnings. How can you imagine that somebody has social status without also having wealth or some form of capital or income or sources of power that social status needs? I think this is why the study of the Indian caste system has been so illuminating. It allows me, both historically and in the contemporary moment, to find groups that are relatively evenly placed on their economic attributes, but differ on their birthplace rank and how it's here that you see the difference. That's a criticism I face a lot, and I think a lot about. The second criticism comes from ethnic politics scholars who say, "Well, you've just defined ethnic group A versus B, of which maybe what they're fighting over is rank. So, how is this different?"

And to them I say, well, rank is a very central and constitutive feature of the identity. This is not a case that just because Brahmins lose rank, they'll go on to just being happy about their cultural group and become one other ethnic group in India's many ethnic groups. No. I think here we need to understand what game it is that upper castes want to play versus what game it is that other groups are playing. And if they're not even playing the same game, you cannot expect that they will behave like the other group. And so, if one group wants to maximize wealth and income and the other group wants to maximize social status and rank, well, these are different games. That's another area for which I get criticism.

The third is the kind that comparative politics scholars give, which is, "Oh, is this all about caste? How far does this carry?" This is why it was important for me to think about, well, where else can I show this at play? I wrote the paper with Stephen White on the American South to show that actually the defense of rank carries very nicely to other contexts like America where the defining feature is race, not caste, but it's the same inherited social status that poor whites are defending. So, I think these are roughly my critics and I hope to keep doing work to rally to the challenge.

Rohan: Has it been difficult to make the case that the study of India cannot be translated or compared to the rest of the world?

Pavithra: Well, much less so now than when I first started my Ph.D. I remember I had to always prepare in every presentation a little slide about, "Why should you care after learning X about India?" And I think we are living in a moment where there are so many amazing social scientists across political science, economics, sociology, anthropology, demonstrating how the study of India's social, economic, and political structures is meaningful and valuable to compare to politics and social science as a whole. I get that question a lot less. I think that's growth in the field.

Rohan: Are there big questions about Indian politics that you want to see studied?

Pavithra: One is, I think we should constantly test our assumptions of how politics work. If you think about some of the most interesting recent works on Indian politics, Francesca Jensenius questioning " Have reservations really mattered ?" Tariq Thachil asking, " Why are STs voting or in support of the BJP ?" Or Milan Vaishnav asking, " Why do voters, knowing people are corrupt and criminals, still vote for them? " And more recently, someone like Feyaad Ali questioning the idea that there is such a thing as a uniform Muslim vote . All of these are going back to some first principles questions on, does politics work the way we think our inherited wisdom tells us it works? And if not, why is politics the way it is? I think we should keep doing that, go back to pushing the what-we-think-we-know questions.

But more broadly, I think India is at this funny crossroads of the North-South divide, which I'm intrigued by. And I want to understand more about the institutional, economic, and social dynamics of why that divide is so clearly emerging. This is all to say, I hope more people will study Tamil politics and Bengali politics and Malayali politics, because I think there's a lot to be learned from why politics look so different in one part of the country versus another.

Rohan: Are there recommendations for those interested in this space?

Pavithra: I have learned a great deal from American politics scholars within the course of my Ph.D. Ira Katznelson was the one who started getting me on this path of thinking about the relationship between identity and the stage. If people haven't heard of him or read his work, Ira Katznelson is a giant and his book, When Affirmative Action Was White , was really influential for me. And more recently, the US too is on a journey to understanding why social status is key to how we think about politics. Kathy Cramer’s The Politics of Resentment and Ashley Jardina’s White Identity Politics , I'd very strongly recommend.

Going back to what I was saying earlier, we need more scholarship questioning the first fundamental premise of things. So, I can't recommend highly enough Jennifer Bussell's book, Clients and Constituents , which pushes us to get away from this thinking that India's MLAs and MPs are not doing much, but instead they actually are doing a lot of constituency service. And what that looks like doesn't again conform to our preconceived notions of Indian politics. I think gender and gender's intersection with caste is a recently growing important part of research on Indian politics. Please read anything by Francesca Jensenius and more recently, Tanushree Goyal, Rachel Brulé, and Soledad Prillaman, who are pushing the envelope on thinking through why and how gender matters in Indian politics.

Pavithra Suryanarayan is an Assistant Professor in the Government Department at the London School of Economics and Political Science. In August 2024, she will be an Associate Professor in the Government Department at the LSE.

Rohan Venkat is the Consulting Editor for India in Transition and a CASI Spring 2024 Visiting Fellow.

As millions of Indians set out to vote over the next two months, India in Transition brings you CASI Election Conversations 2024, an interview series featuring renowned scholars reflecting on the factors and dimensions of politics, political economy, and democracy that will define India’s 2024 election. Earlier in the series, we featured Louise Tillin on federalism in India , Yamini Aiyar on the BJP’s “Techno-Patrimonial” welfare model and Rachel Brulé on the promises and pitfalls of gender quotas .

India in Transition ( IiT ) is published by the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI) of the University of Pennsylvania. All viewpoints, positions, and conclusions expressed in IiT are solely those of the author(s) and not specifically those of CASI.

© 2024 Center for the Advanced Study of India and the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania. All rights reserved.

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India votes in second phase of national elections with Modi’s BJP as front-runner

Millions of Indians began voting Friday in the second round of multi-phase national elections as polarization grows with Prime Minister Narendra Modi whipping up an assertive brand of Hindu nationalist politics in his campaign. The outcome of Friday’s voting across 88 constituencies in 13 states with 160 million voters will be crucial for Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party as it includes some of its strongholds in states like Uttar Pradesh. (AP video: Shonal Ganguly)

Millions of Indians began voting on Friday in the second round of multi-phase national elections as Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought to galvanize voters with his assertive brand of Hindu nationalist politics. The outcome of Friday’s voting will be crucial for Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, as the 88 constituencies up for grabs across 13 states include some of its strongholds in states like Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. (AP video Piyush Nagpal/Shonal Ganguly)

A voter puts his hand on a classroom desk covered in marks as a polling officer applies indelible ink mark on his index finger at a polling station situated inside a school during the second round of voting in the national election, near Palakkad, in Indian southern state of Kerala, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

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Elderly voters sit as others stand in a queue to vote during the second round of voting in the six-week-long national election near Palakkad, in Indian southern state of Kerala, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

People queue up to vote behind a statue of the Hindu goddess of learning, Saraswati, during the second round of voting in the six-week long national election outside a polling booth in Kochi, southern Kerala state, India, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/R S Iyer)

A policeman stands guard as people queue up to vote during the second round of voting in the six-week long national election outside a polling booth in Kochi, southern Kerala state, India, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/R S Iyer)

Tangkhul Nagas stand in a queue to cast their votes in Shangshak village, in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Yirmiyan Arthur)

People queue up to vote during the second round of voting in the six-week-long national election near Palakkad, in Indian southern state of Kerala, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

A person drinks water to beat thirst and humidity as he queues up to vote during second phase of national election, near Palakkad, in southern state of Kerala, India, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

An elderly woman arrives at a polling station to cast her vote in Shangshak village, in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Yirmiyan Arthur)

A voter shows her identity papers and signs her name in the polling register before casting her vote during the second round of voting in the six-week-long national election near Palakkad, in Indian southern state of Kerala, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

People check for their names in the voters’ list as they arrive to vote during the second round of voting in the six-week-long national election in Nahal village near Meerut, in Uttar Pradesh, India, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

A security person walks past queues of voters in a polling station on the bank of the Brahmaputra river during the second round of voting in the six-week-long national election in Morigaon district, Assam, India, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

An elderly couple arrive as others wait in a queue to cast their vote during the second phase of national election in Palakkad, Kerala, India, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

A police official instructs an elderly couple take rest sitting on a bench during the second round of voting in the six-week-long national election in Morigaon district, Assam, India, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

People walk to a polling station after crossing the Brahmaputra river in a boat during the second round of voting in the six-week-long national election in Morigaon district, about 77km (48 miles) from Guwahati, India, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

People queue up to vote during the second round of voting in the six-week-long national election in Jammu, India, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Channi Anand)

A woman leaves after casting her vote at a polling booth during the second round of voting in the six-week-long national election in Nahal village near Meerut, in Uttar Pradesh, India, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

A man squats to rest as he waits with others in a queue to vote during the second round of voting in the six-week-long national election near Palakkad, in Indian southern state of Kerala, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

People vote during the second phase of national election in Palakkad, Kerala, India, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

A man displays his index finger marked with indelible ink a sign that he voted as he rides on a two wheeler after voting during second phase of national election, near Palakkad, southern state of Kerala,India, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

An elderly man puts his thumb impression before casting his vote during the second round of voting in the six-week-long national election in Sunanda village near Meerut, in Uttar Pradesh, India, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

People stand in a queue to vote during the second round of voting in the six-week-long national election in Nahal village near Meerut, in Uttar Pradesh, India, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

Voters line up to vote in a polling station during the second round of voting in the six-week-long national election in Morigaon district, Assam, India, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

A woman shows the indelible ink mark on her finger after casting vote in a polling station on the bank of the Brahmaputra river during the second round of voting in the six-week-long national election in Morigaon district, India, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

Women stand on queue to cast their votes in a polling station on the bank of the Brahmaputra river during the second round of voting in the six-week-long national election in Morigaon district, Assam, India, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

Tangkhul Nagas wait to cast their votes during the second round of voting in the six-week long national election in Ukhrul, in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Yirmiyan Arthur)

Women pose with their identity cards as they walk to cast their vote during the second phase of polling in the six-week long national election in the desert village Jaiisindhar, Barmer district, western Rajasthan state, India, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Deepak Sharma)

Women queue up to cast their vote during the second phase of polling in the six-week long national election in Barmer district, western Rajasthan state, India, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Deepak Sharma)

Women walk to cast their vote during the second phase of polling in the six-week long national election in the desert village Akli in western Rajasthan state, India, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Deepak Sharma)

Women arrive to cast their vote during the second phase of polling in the six-week long national election in Barmer district, western Rajasthan state, India, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Deepak Sharma)

Indian men gather outside a polling station after casting their votes during the second phase of polling in the six-week long national election in Barmer district, western Rajasthan state, India, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Deepak Sharma)

A paramilitary soldier stands guard as people queue up to vote during the second round of voting in the six-week-long national election in Jammu, India, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Channi Anand)

An elderly voter waits to cast his vote as an election official checks for his name in the voters list during the second round of voting in the six-week-long national election in Jammu, India, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Channi Anand)

Tangkhul Nagas rest outside a polling station in Ukhrul, in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Yirmiyan Arthur)

NEW DELHI (AP) — Millions of Indians voted Friday in a moderate turnout in the second round of multi-phase national elections as Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought to galvanize voters with his assertive brand of Hindu nationalist politics .

People lined up outside polling stations as voting opened at 7 a.m. local time and braved hot summer weather with temperatures soaring up to 42 degrees Celsius (107 Fahrenheit) in the afternoon.

The election authority said in a statement that approximately 60.96% of 160 million eligible voters exercised their right to cast a ballot in the second round.

The outcome of Friday’s voting will be crucial for Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, as the 88 constituencies up for grabs across 13 states include some of its strongholds in states like Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra.

Most polls predict a win for Modi and the BJP, which is up against a broad opposition alliance led by the Indian National Congress and powerful regional parties .

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Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi is running in Wayanad constituency in southern Kerala state for a second time, after he was defeated in 2019 elections by Smriti Irani, a BJP leader, in the northern Indian city of Amethi — a traditional stronghold for the Nehru-Gandhi family.

Other prominent candidates in the second phase of voting include Shashi Tharoor of the Congress party, popular BJP Bollywood star Hema Malini and actor Arun Govil, who played the role of Hinduism’s revered Lord Ram in a 1987 television adaptation of the ancient epic Ramayana.

Prime Minister Modi urged people to vote in record numbers to strengthen democracy.

“I especially urge our young voters and women voters to turn out in great numbers. Your vote is your voice!” Modi said in a message on the social media platform X before voting began Friday.

The BJP has already won one parliamentary seat from Surat in Gujarat state, where the Congress party candidate was disqualified Monday. Election officials said they found discrepancies in the signatures on the nomination and other candidates pulled out of the contest, leaving BJP nominee Mukesh Dalal as the winner by default.

Nearly 970 million voters — more than 10% of the world’s population — will elect 543 members to the lower house of Parliament for five years during the staggered election, which runs until June 1 . The votes will be counted on June 4. There are a total of 28 states in India.

The turnout in the first phase of polling on April 19 was estimated at around 62% of 166.3 million eligible voters.

By comparison, India’s 2019 national election registered the highest-ever voter turnout — 67.11% — in the history of Indian parliamentary elections. The turnout is expected to increase for five more rounds of voting.

Voters’ relative apathy has surprised some political analysts, but they say that the BJP remains a front-runner.

“You could argue that the listlessness is a consequence of a foregone conclusion,” said Pratap Bhanu Mehta, an Indian political scientist.

“But for Modi’s party which is expecting to win 400 of the 543 seats the joyous surge is missing,” he said in an article in the Indian Express daily.

People stand in a queue to vote in Nahal village near Meerut, in Uttar Pradesh, India, Friday, April 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

However, Prime Minister Modi said “Phase Two (voting) has been too good!”

Critics of the prime minister, an avowed Hindu nationalist , say India’s tradition of diversity and secularism has come under attack since the BPJ won power a decade ago. They accuse the party of fostering religious intolerance and sometimes even violence. The party denies the accusation and says its policies benefit all Indians.

Modi stirred a huge controversy over the weekend when he said that the Congress party, if voted to power, would distribute the country’s wealth among “infiltrators” and “those who have more children,” in an apparent reference to the Muslim community.

Hindus make up 80% of India’s 1.4 billion people, while Muslims account for 14% and Christians and Sikhs 2% each.

The Congress party leaders met with election officials and urged them to investigate whether Modi’s comments violated the body’s code of conduct that bars politicians from appealing to voters based on caste and religious feelings.

The BJP also filed a complaint against Congress’s Gandhi, accusing the opposition leader of falsely asserting that poverty was increasing and driving a wedge between the North and South of India based on language and region to disrupt the electoral environment.

The election authority recognized the complaints on Thursday and asked the presidents of the two parties to file their responses by Monday. The authority is expected to give its ruling next week.

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Critics of Narendra Modi barred from entering India after speaking out against government

British academic Nitasha Kaul has long researched the changing social and political landscape in India.

It's led her to a dire conclusion about the world's most populous democracy.

"What we're witnessing post-2014 is a democratic erosion in India — that is undeniable," Professor Kaul told the ABC.

More than 950 million Indians are eligible to vote in this year's general election which began last week , and is held in seven phases until June 1.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to easily win a third term in office after first coming to power in 2014.

But ahead of the critical poll, Professor Kaul was shocked when she was barred from entering the country.

In February, she was detained and then deported after being invited to speak at a conference on the country's constitution, despite holding a valid lifelong visa.

She said no reason had ever been given for the decision.

"If you are critical of a political project, or a political party or their policies, it should be very straightforward that you're not against the country," she said.

"What … these kinds of actions do is label people as anti-national for being critical of a party or of its policies or a leader."

Professor Kaul held an Overseas Citizens of India (OCI) card.

Indian citizens can only hold one passport, but the OCI card acts as a lifelong visa, allowing foreign nationals of Indian origin to reside and work in India.

Professor Kaul's experience isn't an isolated one.

Research by the pro-democracy group Article 14 found at least 102 people have had their OCI cards revoked since 2014 under a clause of the country's citizenship laws.

The clause allows the government to cancel an OCI for several reasons, including if they have "shown disaffection towards the Constitution of India".

A Human Rights Watch report found several high-profile academics — who had published research critical of Indian government policy, Mr Modi or had commented on big issues affecting the country — were among those barred from entering India.

The report noted that in addition to cancelling OCI cards, the Indian government downgraded the privileges of 4.5 million OCI cardholders in 2021.

That move meant they needed to seek special permission to carry out tasks like research and journalism or visit areas in India listed as "protected".

Reducing public debate in India

Professor Kaul is the chair of the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster and has written extensively on how India's political landscape has changed since Mr Modi came to power.

She has also written about rising authoritarianism in the country.

After going public about her experience, she said other academics expressed concern their work would be a barrier to them getting home to see family.

She said the government's aim was to ultimately reduce the size of the public sphere in which to debate policy and publish academic work.

"This is a classic kind of authoritarian thing to be doing," she said.

Professor Kaul also received "violent, vicious, extremist, misogynistic, graphic sexual trolling" and death threats online.

"The idea for people who do that to people who are in the public domain is to try and intimidate and silence them," she said.

At the time Professor Kaul was denied entry, India's Ministry of External Affairs said "entry of foreign nationals into our country is a sovereign decision".

'Grossly unfair' 

London-based writer and activist Amrit Wilson's OCI card was cancelled two years ago.

She was born in India but moved to the United Kingdom when she was in her 20s, keeping close ties to her home nation.

Ms Wilson said the government attributed the cancellation to an article she wrote about protesting Indian farmers  and a social media post about the Muslim-majority region of Kashmir.

She's challenging the cancellation.

"It seemed grossly unfair," Ms Wilson told the ABC.

"The government can't handle dissent of any type. It locks dissenters up and if they're abroad it tries to target them in other ways."

The Indian government was contacted for comment on why it was cancelling OCIs. 

Opposition MPs have been arrested , protesters have been detained and internet shutdowns have targeted anti-government commentary in the lead-up to the national election. 

Reporters Without Borders ranked India 161st of 180 countries and territories in its latest World Press Freedom Index.

Human Rights Watch's Asia director Elaine Pearson said other countries should hold India to account.

"These governments should press the Modi administration to interact with its critics to bring about reform, instead of intimidating them into silence," Ms Pearson said.

Rising Hindu nationalism

Mr Modi's grip on political power is intricately connected with religion and a rising anti-Muslim sentiment in India.

India is still officially a secular nation, and while Hinduism is the biggest religion, the country is home to 200 million Muslims.

Despite that, Mr Modi hasn't hidden his Hindu nationalist ideals.

In January, he inaugurated a Hindu temple built on the site of a demolished mosque, delivering on one of his earlier poll promises.

His government has also moved to enact a law that fast-tracks naturalisation for people who have fled from religious persecution in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan but excludes Muslims from those countries.

In 2019, he stripped the Muslim-majority region Kashmir of its special status, bringing it under Delhi's control.

Ms Wilson said there was a concerted attack on Muslims, aiding the government and Mr Modi's political agenda.

"Modi plays to the Hindu majority by creating a fear of Muslims," she said.

"He concocts all kinds of lies about the Muslim population, and people do fall for it."

Last week, India's main opposition party accused Mr Modi of using hate speech after he called Muslims "infiltrators" at an election rally .

Mr Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party denies accusations of fostering religious intolerance and says its policies benefit all Indians.

India Hate Lab, a website tracking hate speech in India, found a steep rise in hate speech targeting Muslims in the second half of 2023. 

It documented 413 incidents, a 62 per cent rise compared to the first six months of the year.

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