It’s been more than 60 years since Gandhi was assassinated, yet his story, his ideals and the changes he brought about in India still don’t fail to inspire. I do wonder though what Ghandi would have thought about modern India – in all its glory, its poverty, its progress and its conflict.
In some ways India seems to have come a long way – in the film “In search of Ghandi”, a lower caste man was able to secure election to the local governing body in his village, in spite of opposition from members of the upper caste. Echoes of Gandhi’s values could be heard as this man professed his desire to do good things for everybody in his village, regardless of caste. Suggestions of class-based rather than caste based politics in this instance imply a great deal of political development, yet, this village may be the exception, rather than the rule. In many parts of India, caste or religious identity is still the defining mobilising factor in politics – the violence against Muslims in Gudjarat in 2002 illustrate the deep divisions and prejudices that still exist in India, and many villages are still segregated along caste lines.
There is no doubt – India is growing – and at an enormous pace. GNI per capita is now $1180 (BBC website, India Country profile), way above that of many other developing countries. The middle classes are feeling the benefits of the boom, frequenting shiny new shopping malls, consuming more and enjoying increased leisure time.
GNI per capita as an economic indicator, however, is misleading in regards to the distribution of wealth in India as although the country is making massive economic progress, the results of this “progress” are not being equally distributed. Rather, many poor people find themselves suffering at the hands of progress – displaced from their land and houses to make way for the infrastructure of multinational corporations, being exploited by multinational corporations operating in special trade zones, farmers driven to suicide when they cannot compete with cheap, subsidised imports and generally, being the losers in this new economic development.
Progress is being made – but there’s a big question mark over the nature of this progress. Is “competitive consumption” really the type of progress that is to be desired? Progress that is built on the backs of the poor – economic development which doesn’t seem to have any great link to poverty reduction? “Competitive consumption” is a hallmark of Western culture, with material acquisition being used as the standard of success in many countries. Such high levels of consumption in the West have been critiqued as being unsustainable – the voracious appetite for material wealth has seen whole generations living on credit and unfair world trade rules sustained in order to be able to support the Western lifestyle enjoyed by most at a relatively low cost, largely at the expense of the developing world.
This kind of “Western import” is not somethingat all Indians are glad to see – not everything that comes from the West is a good thing, as P Sainath (Film, P. Sainath on Western Democracy) points out when speaking about Western democracy. Sainath argues that many democracies in the West have been based on slavery – enslavement of people in Africa and Asia. All of the founding fathers of the US harked back to the early republics of Rome and Greece from which they drew their inspiration for the democracy they were building. Yet, those are democracies were based on slave ownership with Plato and Aristotle viewing slaves as property. These are the foundations of Western democracy – democracy which has been promoted, sometimes violently, across the world. Gandhi’s assertion that Western democracy was merely a diluted form of fascism doesn’t seem to be that unreasonable in this light.
Sainath’s suggestion that Europeans should have looked within themselves for more “noble” ideas of democracy is perhaps slightly flawed though, as he uses the example of the French and the revolutionary ideals of “liberty, equality and fraternity.” These may be noble ideas in themselves, however, they were born out of a revolution which saw the slaughter and execution of many throughout France – it was liberty, equality and fraternity for those who agreed with the revolutionaries… But perhaps not so much for royalists or for those who were loyal to the catholic faith!
Sainath does have a point though, in that the exportation of Western democracy worldwide by the US and its Western allies is a project unlikely to succeed, as the type of democracy being promoted is not necessarily a desirable form of governance – or a form of democracy that people want.
Larry Diamond, in his 2003 lecture, “Can the Whole world become democratic? Democracy, development and international policies” seems to be oblivious of this fact. Diamond points to the predominance of democracy as a form of government in the 21st-century and its endurance amongst a number of state as a sign of its superiority, desirability and likelihood as a universally embraced system of governance in the future. He doesn’t believe that poverty or religion (mainly Islam) are barriers to pursuing a successful democratic government and cites survey evidence to put forward the argument that even in a “bad” democracy, people would prefer that system of government to authoritarianism. I don’t have the time or space, or perhaps even willpower to deal with the breadth of the arrogant assumptions that Diamond makes in his article, so I will focus on just a few.
It is unsurprising that many of those surveyed in developing countries do not see an alternative to democracy as a form of rule. Although the democracy they may have experienced is disappointing, it is better to be disappointed than to be scared, as many may be under authoritarian regimes which do not respect basic human rights. However, the survey evidence is not a resounding vote of confidence in democracy as Diamond paints it to be. In Latin America, 57% of those surveyed believe that democracy is always preferable. This means that 43%, well over a third of respondents did not have confidence in democracy. This is not a number to be ignored and does not suggest overwhelming support for democracy. I would argue that the only experience that many have had of democracy in the developing world, has been of imported Western democracy, where power has been placed in the hands of the few, where economic development has not brought about benefits for all, and where meaningful public participation has been token, usually just at elections, rather than characteristic of the governance system. Many would argue that the 43% are right to reject such a form of democracy.
The implicit assumption in Diamond’s article seems to be that democracy was born in the West – and that everybody else is now catching up. However, he does not give enough justice to the question of whether benign authoritarianism is preferable in certain circumstances to a deeply corrupt, dysfunctional “democracy” which seems to be a democracy only in name, rather than in nature. Was authoritarianism necessary in order to bring about the radical reforms and development that was seen in the Asian Tigers? This is not something which can be dismissed flippantly as Diamond does when he says in reference to China that it is “not at all clear that it (China) will be able to sustain its phenomenal growth rates of the past two decades… some economic observers believe its economic growth has pretty much stalled already.” In 2011, with the Chinese economic boom seeming to show no signs of bursting, this statement seems to underline the shortsightedness of a number of Diamond’s arguments.
However, I don’t want to give the impression that I am a closet supporter of authoritarianism! The ideals of democracy can be something beautiful – openness, participation, equality… these are desirable things… Yet whether they are possible in contexts marked by historical oppression, political dysfunctionality and cultural, religious and other identity conflicts, is quite another thing. Once beautiful ideals can be manipulated and even instrumentalised for the subjection of others in many circumstances. Inequalities and poverty may persist whilst elites further entrench their position of dominance.
Varshney (2000, Why Have Poor Democracies Not Eliminated Poverty? A Suggestion) dares to ask the question of why poor democracies not eliminated poverty. Why have the poor in developing countries helped to elect governments which have not acted in their interests? In many developing countries, the poor make-up the majority of the population, so in theory, they should be able to pressure governments into practising more pro-poor politics. However, things are not as simple as that, because it is economic policies which reduce poverty – and the economic policies which are generally agreed to reduce poverty in the long run, growth mediated poverty reduction methods, are not the easiest ideas for politicians to communicate effectively to potential supporters. The mechanisms which make up economic growth are not something which hold a great deal of weight with the wider electorate, as they do not have the same short-term benefits as more direct poverty alleviation methods such as the introduction of universal primary education. So the voter may vote for a politician who promises the short-term benefits (and then likely fails to deliver due to a lack of resources and political will) rather than the politician who has a more long-term strategy based on economic reform. Another thing to bear in mind is that the poor don’t always vote on the basis of their poverty – they have other identities – religious, caste and tribal identities which can mobilise their vote, even if the politician being supported is unsupportive of democratic ideals and not pro-poor in their politics.
Varshney’s suggestions seem reasonable – the example of Kenya comes to mind as although a large proportion of the population are living at or under the poverty line, normally, people vote along ethnic lines rather than according to a politicians declared strategy of dealing with poverty. A politician outside of the ethnically diverse districts of Nairobi can only expect to have a chance of election if they are of the same ethnic group as the majority of those in their constituency. Politicians have consistently made promises in regards to social benefits, which they have either failed to deliver on or have only partially delivered on (for example, the promise to make secondary school education free has only been partially delivered on as although fees have been abolished, the many additional costs such as uniforms, boarding fees, textbook costs price many of the poor out of the secondary education market).
Perhaps the issue of identity and its instrumentalisation is something I need to consider more in regards to countries which are plagued by so-called “ethnic” and “religious” conflicts. If a heightened sense of ethnic identity influences of persons voting behaviour to the extent that a pro-poor politician with a sound economic strategy (and I do not necessarily mean one based on neoliberal tenants!!) for poverty alleviation is rejected in favour of a vastly inferior candidate in terms of their poverty reduction strategy and public economic management skills – purely on the basis of ethnicity – then this is surely one of the root issues that needs to be addressed in regards to finding a way of pursuing democracy which actually results in poverty reduction.
beckydalton 