Roll no: 23140

Div: A
Class: FY B.M.S

Subject: Foundation Course-1

Topic: Democratic System In India

 Index
Introduction
Governance & Administration
Why India’s Democracy Is Dying
Feature Of Democracy In India
Bibliography & Refrence
Conclusion
 INTRODUCTION

This article examines the challenges faced by India’s democracy, commonly referred to as the
largest in the world, and its future at a time of increased political polarization.
India’s government is loosely modelled on the British Westminster system. It consists of a
president as head of state; an executive headed by the prime minister; a legislature consisting of
a parliament with an upper and lower house (the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha); and a judiciary
with a supreme court at its head.
543 members are elected to the Lok Sabha through a first-past-the-post general election, held
every five years. State representatives are indirectly elected to the Rajya Sabha on staggered
six–year terms, so every two years around one-third are changed, elected by state legislatures.
India’s constitution sets out the country’s political code, federal structure, powers of
government and guarantees Indians’ rights, including to equality before the law and freedoms
of speech, assembly, movement and others.

The system is complicated by India’s caste system, a hierarchical social structure that divides the
Hindu majority into groups, with ‘Brahmins’ at the top and ‘Dalits’ at the bottom of society. Last
names often indicate to which caste a person belongs.
India’s constitution banned caste discrimination and early governments introduced quotas to
provide fairer allocation of jobs and education, but caste remains a powerful factor in politics. In
some regions political parties still court voters according to castes, who tend to vote as a block.
Jawaharlal Nehru was prime minister from independence and served for 17 years. Congress’
electoral dominance would last for the next four decades.

India is an incredibly diverse nation with many regional variations, religions and languages.
Some external observers of India expected the country would break up as a result. In fact,
Congress managed these differences effectively, redrawing state boundaries along linguistic
lines and forming a coalition of regional powerbrokers, rather than attempting to.
In the 1970s Indira Gandhi broke with this successful formula and attempted to concentrate
power in the central government. When these efforts were resisted, she declared a state of
emergency in 1975, arresting journalists, politicians and other opponents. In 1977 she lifted the
emergency, held elections, and was defeated by a coalition, giving India its first non-Congress
government.

Though that government quickly failed, the election fractured the Congress coalition that had
held since independence, creating regional Congress breakaway parties. It also empowered
parties like the communists, whose Left Front would go on to rule the state of West Bengal,
bordering Bangladesh, for three decades.

Support for Congress gradually eroded over the decades, but the party has remained reliant on
the Gandhi dynasty – Indira and her descendants. (It is worth noting that Indira was Nehru’s
daughter and was not related to Mahatma Gandhi. She was married to Feroze Gandhi – who
was not related to Mahatma either).

Rajiv Gandhi led Congress to power again in the 1985 election, which followed the assassination
of his mother Indira in 1984. But this proved a one-off rather than a return to the dominance of
old.

25 years of coalition governments followed, sometimes led by Congress and some by other
parties, from 1989 up until 2014. The 2009-2014 Congress-led coalition, led by Manmohan
Singh, was increasingly portrayed by political opponents as representing a decadent, English-
speaking elite lacking vision for India.

India grew relatively strongly during the period, but the sense that a more authoritarian form of
government
 GOVERNANCE & ADMINISTRATION

AdministrationIndia is a Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic with a Parliamentary

form of government which is federal in structure with unitary features. There is a Council of
Ministers with the Prime Minster as its head to advice the President who is the constitutional
head of the country.

Similarly in states there is a Council of Ministers with the Chief Minister as its head, who
advices the Governor. This section provides insight of Indian governance and administration at
the Central, state as well as local level. Information about the Constitution of India, Parliament
and Legislature, Union administration, state, district and local administration.
 WHY INDIA’S DEMOCRACY IS DYING

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

No 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.

Democracy is defined as a form of government in which the citizens of that country have direct power to
participate in the election and elect the representatives for forming a government body called a
parliament. A democratic form of government is based on the majority’s rule i.e. a government can be
formed by a party when they have the majority number of votes with them and the process is similar.
The democratic government in India is the largest one. The beginning of the democratic system in India
was when the Constitution of India came into effect on 26th January 1950. Democratic India reveals that
for choosing representatives through the election, every citizen of India has the right to vote without any
discrimination irrespective of any creed, caste, religion, region, and sex. The principles on which the
democratic government of India is based are liberty, equality, fraternity, and justice. In India, there is a
state government and a central government which means it is a federal form of government.

The government i.e. at the center and the state follows the democratically elected government
respectively and the parliament’s two houses – Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha. The country’s president (the
official head) is chosen by the two governments i.e., the central and the state. The beginning of the
democratic system was put a way forward when the election was held for the first time, to say more
prominently when the first government was created by the people’s vote. The election in India for the
first time was noticed to be one of the biggest experiments in the world’s democracy.

Based on the universal adult franchise the elections were conducted, according to the universal adult
franchise, the citizens of India who are 18 years or above 18 years have the right to vote and form
government irrespective of their religion, culture, creed, sex, region, and caste. As this was the
beginning of the democratic system in India, the procedure of the election was new to the citizens as
well as those who are conducting it. The election procedure occurred for about four months which was
from October 25, 1951, to February 21, 1952. The election was contested by 14 national parties along
with regional parties (63) and several candidates were independent. By getting the majority of votes and
majority of the seats, the National Congress party won the election for the first time in India.

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.

Since taking power the BJP has been preoccupied with pursuing this agenda. Hindu nationalists are not
concerned about other religions which originate in India, such as Sikhism and Jainism, but its attitude to
religions which originate elsewhere, notably Islam and Christianity, is more hostile. The BJP argues that
other parties have privileged the minority (Muslim) population, and that it is levelling up the status of
Hindus.
Kashmir, the only Muslim-majority state in India, was put under lockdown from 2019-2021 and subjected
to a communications blackout. The region’s autonomous status was revoked, and thousands were
arrested, including Kashmiri politicians, activists and separatists.In Assam, a north-eastern state, where
illegal immigration is a significant problem and Muslims represent around the third of the population,
detention camps have been created for those who cannot prove their Indian citizenship.

This followed the Citizenship Amendment Act passed in 2019, which eased citizenship requirements for
various religions – but expressly omitted Muslims. 1.9 million Muslims had already been effectively
stripped of their citizenship in Assam after being left off India’s National Register of Citizens.

But the BJP’s attempt to remake India has seen political discourse become increasingly polarized, while
economic growth has slowed. It has also eroded trust in India’s institutions and in basic democratic
foundations like the rule of law.Trust in the law is further undermined by India’s dysfunctional legal
system, which leaves many languishing in detention before trial for ‘crimes’ including peaceful protest.
Meanwhile Amnesty International reports numerous uses of excessive force by India’s police and
security forces.

India also faces several demographic challenges. Decades of selective abortion have led to a significant
imbalance between males and females. India is currently undergoing a ‘demographic dividend’ – a rising
working age population. However, it is struggling to generate jobs. Unemployment stands at a 40-year
high. Finally, population growth has been higher in poorer northern states than in generally better-
educated southern states.
Indian democracy faces further challenges because of criminality in the political system. 43 per cent of
those who won national parliament seats at the 2019 general election had been charged with a crime of
some kind.Various accusations were made in relation to the 2010 Commonwealth Games. The Indian
government formed a special committee to investigate allegations against the Games Organizing
Committee, resulting in arrests of the Committee Chair and various other officials. As of March 2022, no
convictions have occurred.

Indian politics has been plagued by corruption for decades. A wave of scandals engulfed the Congress-
led coalition government that assumed power in 2010.Another major ‘scandal’ saw India’s telecoms
minister, Andimuthu Raja, imprisoned on corruption charges relating to India’s auction of 2G spectrum
licences. The case damaged the coalition government’s support, though it was eventually dismissed.As
part of their winning 2014 electoral strategy the BJP promised to tackle corruption. High-profile arrests
have taken place, including that of former finance minister and Congress party MP, Palaniappa

However, the BJP has faced corruption allegations of its own. Congress accused the government of
favoritism in the awarding of contracts relating to a €7.8 billion purchase of Rafael fighter jets and the
privatization of six major airports, with Modi allies winning lucrative contracts. Again, nothing has so far
been proved.Chidambaram, who was charged in 2019 over allegations that he cleared foreign
investments in exchange for bribes while minister in 2007.
Future of democracy in India

The trajectory of Indian democracy is more uncertain after two terms of BJP rule, as key democratic
institutions have proven themselves to be brittle. Opponents and critical journalists have been harassed,
prosecuted, investigated for tax irregularities or put under surveillance, restricting critical voices.Election
campaign finance laws have become more opaque, making it easier for individuals to make unlimited
anonymous donations, undermining the integrity of elections.

Worst of all, religious division and resentment has intensified, challenging the constitutional right to
religious freedom and undermining the rule of law.Government measures against Muslims have stoked a
more polarized politics reflected online and in communities.In December 2021 BJP allies helped organize
an event in the northern state of Uttarakhand at which Hindu leaders called for violence against
Muslims. Public lynchings have taken place elsewhere and been shared on social media.

The BJP is accused of encouraging religious division in pursuit of its objective of a Hindu homeland,
rowing back from the earlier secular consensus.Whether such a monochrome vision can fit in a country
as diverse as India is far from clearThrough its control of the media, monopolization of campaign finance
and harassment of opponents, India seems set on a path to becoming an illiberal pseudo-democracy
similar to Turkey or Russia. However, when the BJP has faced a united opposition in recent state
elections it has generally lost.

It has also failed to usher In a period of higher economic growth. While the pandemic had a significant
negative impact, so too have some of the government’s policy choices.

Demonetization was a BJP initiative apparently intended to tackle widespread tax evasion. Around 90 per
cent of all transactions in India take place in cash and few people pay income tax. In 2016 the
government made 86 per cent of banknotes in India worthless in an effort to address the issue by
surfacing untaxed cash.
There were some positive impacts – widening the tax base and encouraging digital payments for
instance – but most economists agree the pain far outweighed the gains, particularly in rural India.

In 2020 the government proposed a series of reforms to the agriculture sector. India’s system of
agriculture is in dire need of reform. Most farmers are poor, and while the country is self-sufficient in
food, malnutrition is widespread. Around 40 per cent of India’s food production rots somewhere along
inefficient supply chains.

While some economists suggested the reforms would benefit India, many did not. Thousands of farmers,
mostly from Punjab and Haryana, demonstrated outside Delhi. After months of protests in 2021 the
government was forced to back dow

While there is a disparity between the BJP’s campaign success and its record in government, many
Indians may well believe that any alternative party would have fared work.

Nonetheless, the most significant factor in determining recent elections, and likely to determine the
outcome of the next general election, will be whether opposition parties can work together or compete,
splitting the anti-BJP vote.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

M. Lakshmikanth (2012). Public Administration (9th ed.). Tata Mcgraw Hill. ISBN 978-
0071074827. OCLC 1039277322.

Chander, Prakash (2001). “Nature of Party System in India”. Comparative Politics & International
Relations. Cosmos Bookhive. Pp. 129–134. ISBN 817729035-5.

Hicken, Allen; Kuhonta, Erik Martinez (29 December 2014). Party System Institutionalization in
Asia: Democracies, Autocracies, and the Shadows of the Past. Cambridge University Press. ISBN
978-1-107-04157-8.

Guha, Ramachandra (2008). India after Gandhi : the history of the world’s largest democracy
(Indian ed.). India: Picador. ISBN 9780330505543.

Basu, Amrita; Chandra, Kanchan (2016). Democratic Dynasties: State, Party and Family in
Contemporary Indian Politics (1 ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-
107-12344-1. Archived from the original on 10 November 2019. Retrieved 23 May 2016.
REFRENCE

M. Lakshmikanth 2012, pp. 389–390.

“General Election 2014”. Election Commission of India. Archived from the original on 23 May 2014.
Retrieved 21 May 2014.

“Need for accountability in politics of dynasty”. Dailypioneer.com. Archived from the original on 17
January 2017. Retrieved 17 January 2017.

Chhibber⇑, Pradeep (March 2013). “Dynastic parties Organization, finance and impact”. Party Politics. 19
(2): 277–295. Doi:10.1177/1354068811406995. S2CID 144781444.

Chander 2001, pp. 389–390.

Krzysztof Iwanek (2 November 2016). “The Curious Stories of Indian Party Symbols”. The Diplomat.
Archived from the original on 19 April 2017. Retrieved 19 April 2017.

“Election Commission of India Press Note”. Archived from the original on 5 March 2016. Retrieved 13
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Hicken & Kuhonta 2014, p. 205.

Agrawal, Puroshottam (1 September 1999).

 CONCLUSION

It is to be concluded that democracy is a form of government where the ruling party is chosen by the
people of the country. The party which can form the government must get the majority of the vote in the
election and the election occurs every 5 years, so forming a government is not inherited.