In a couple of weeks, nearly a billion Indian citizens will begin casting their vote in General Elections to their National Legislature in what is claimed by liberal democrats as the “world’s biggest” exercise in democracy. But such a claim would be forgetting China, where a good billion citizens also regularly vote to elect their National Legislature.
The difference is that India practises a competitive multi-party system while China practises a single party system. Readers are advised to carefully appreciate the differences between these two systems, one being Liberal Democracy (India) and, the other being Social Democracy (China).
In China’s national elections, voters still do have a choice between individual candidates, all members of the Communist Party except for a few rare independent groups. Voters can still choose according to candidates’ individual performance profiles, their specific policy sets and, their general reputations.
More importantly, the candidates’ livelihood or professional survival is not solely hinged on political success. Thus, there is no desperate and unscrupulous scramble to win, riding on the backs of supporter resources and accompanying governance undertakings and financial influence.
Neither is there the prospect of drastic policy changes arising from the policy commitments of radically differing political outlooks of rival, competing, parties. Much of this seeming governance ‘efficacy’ of the one-party system is undermined by strictures on individual citizen’s liberties, especially the freedom of information and of political choice afforded under the Liberal political system, despite the vagaries and manipulations of big business and Big Tech.
In the case of India’s competitive politics, sharp inter-party policy differentials have evolved – although not as much as the gulf between America’s Democratic and Republican parties. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been pushed in the direction of a Hindu and Hindi centric national policy corpus. The Congress and its core allies have had to remain within a traditional secularist narrative in order to fulfil its ‘inclusive’ promise.
The BJP’s greed for even greater political dominance is pushing it even further rightward, into an uncivil exclusivist narrative that, having already mobilised social violence deeper and deeper in the nation’s social fabric, is already reaping the violent whirlwind.
One thing common in the political systems of India and China is that, in both their electoral systems, all citizens have equal sovereignty and franchise. This is in stark contrast to the political disposition of that small State, Israel, currently busy ethnically ‘cleansing’ an even smaller territory, Gaza.
Palestinian subjects
Israel, though, is flaunted by its Western backers as the “sole” democracy in West Asia even as it proceeds to blast its conquered Palestinian subjects and their homes to smithereens. The Zionist State’s own citizens are constitutionally separated into the privileged ‘Jew’ and less privileged non-Jewish categories.
Worse, Israeli military expansionism has been so relentless and oppressive that those occupied territories, so far spared of bombardment, are nightmarish enclaves of fenced-in, socially-deprived pockets of territory.
According to the March 16 formal announcement by the Indian Elections Commission, India’s 969 million registered voters will begin voting to elect the new Lok Sabha National Legislature on April 19. The voting will go on in seven phases across all 28 States and Union Territories over the next six weeks until June 4 when the results will be officially declared. There will be 15 million election workers at a million polling stations.
Some 2,660 political parties will contest the elections conducted at various levels. Following the declaration of results for all 543 Seats, the political party or coalition of parties with a majority of seats that enables it to rule, will become the new Government of the world’s largest capitalist democracy.
According to reports from Delhi, current Prime Minister Narendra Modi has set a target of 370 Seats for his Hindu/Hindi nationalist BJP. Apparently, the confident Premier wants the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition, which his party leads, to win 400-plus Seats in the Lok Sabha, the Lower House of the Indian Federal Legislature. In 2019, the BJP won 303 Seats.
The ruling NDA will be challenged by a broad alliance of Opposition parties, with the acronym ‘INDIA’ for Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance, led by India’s own ‘Grand Old Party’ (GOP), the venerable, ailing, Indian National Congress. For some analysts, the Congress’ illness is terminal.
When the BJP was emerging as a new political party in the 1980s, it was the Congress that had the all-India appeal while the BJP was yet concentrated in the Hindi belt. Not today.
The NDA has not only matched and even bettered the Congress in the Hindi belt, but it has also shown complete agility in negotiating winning deals with regional parties in the non-Hindi zones: the southern, Dravidian linguistic region of the Deccan Peninsula as well as the, barely ‘Indian’, north-eastern frontier states. Another victory, even if narrow – as some analysts predict – would make Modi, 73, only the second Prime Minister after Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s Independence hero and first Prime Minister, to win a third straight term.
In four states – Arunachal Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Sikkim – the Lok Sabha as well as State Legislative Assembly elections will be held simultaneously, with their results to be also declared on June 4. Andhra is one of the richest, most developed, States while Odisha is one of the poorest. By-elections will also be held for 26 State Assembly constituencies across the country.
Utilising their advantages as the Government in power, the BJP-NDA has been building up its election campaigning since last year with numerous project launches, project completions and tamashas. Somewhat belatedly, the Congress alliance has also launched a similar campaign. Just last week, the charismatic Rahul Gandhi presided over a massive state-wide Congress Party march and rally in Mumbai’s Shivaji Park with a crowd estimated at well over 100,000.
Ideological
While the very coming together of some 24 political parties under the INDIA umbrella enables a comprehensive, countrywide, challenge to the incumbent BJP-NDA combine, the diverse nature of the Opposition alliance – both ideological and in terms of caste/class/regional differentials – is also its main vulnerability.
This diversity provides a powerful vote catchment. But it is the sharing of electoral power that will strain its unity both during seat allocations as well as in Government formation (if successful).
This veritable festival of exercise of universal franchise that we see in our giant neighbour has never been enjoyed by the indigenous people of Palestine. The Palestinians are the only nation in the world not to have this fundamental power of voting to elect and appoint their own, fully independent, Government.
Next month’s election in India is being keenly watched by the whole world. The BJP’s domestic politics of ultra-nationalism has meant an abrasive form of international relations in its neighbourhood. At the same time, the somewhat simplistic reliance on market economics alone – except for piecemeal public handouts for votes – has meant a disproportionate reliance on a courting of Western investment rather than the traditionally slow mixture of indigenous productivity alongside joint ventures.
Hence the constant readiness to lean Westwards. This has resulted in a greater Indian dependence on geostrategic links with the West. This conformity with the US framework of the ‘Indo-Pacific’ is in sharp contrast to the traditional ‘Non-Aligned’ posture that had enabled Delhi previously to be far more self-reliant militarily and in terms of economic resources.
Delhi’s current Hindu-centric posture has distanced itself from Islam-linked geopolitical power and reduced its ability to have a strategic comfort zone in its own neighbourhood and also in relation to the oil wealth of adjoining West Asia. Instead, Delhi must face up to China’s inexorable superpower rise not on its own strengths based on multilateralism – but only with one set of leverage, namely, the seemingly knee-jerk hostility of Washington towards Beijing.
In the past, Non-Alignment gave India a multi-dimensional geopolitical capacity to be less confrontational with China, and to continue its military refinements with Russian as well as exploit Western technology.
That close link with Russia, which is a vital geostrategic ally of China, would serve to smoothen away the abrasive rivalry that Delhi must now deal with on the other side of the Himalayas.
Instead, Delhi now finds itself just a little too dependent on what is the outgoing superpower bloc led by Washington; ‘outgoing’ economically as well as politically, given Washington’s persistence in supporting an immensely globally unpopular and illegitimate aggressive militarism by Israel.
Much of the world is morally disturbed by Western proxy Israel’s brutality and at the same time directly affected by the current and potential instability in the entire West Asian region. This region crucially bolsters world energy stability and also is a vital source of Third World migrant livelihood.
If the Congress returns to power, however, both South Asia as well as the world – except Washington – is likely to appreciate a cooling down of India’s current somewhat blustering diplomacy. The Global South, in particular, would love to not solely depend on a rapacious West and credit-hungry China, even if Beijing’s ‘Belt & Road’ entrepreneurship is indeed enormously beneficial to poor countries.
Certainly, the current demonising of Islam within India does not serve to calm nerves and sensibilities in much of the SAARC region which is home to no less than three Islamic majority states, two of them rising powers themselves.
Whether BJP or Congress, India’s sheer size guarantees its standing in the world. What is important is that that brawn is matched by the brains inherent in the glorious legacy of the Maurya, Gupta and Moghul civilisational pulses. The very complex but always smooth exercise of India’s election operation is a wonderful example of that civic strength.
