India remains a anomaly among long term democracies that have failed to improve the living standard of majority of its people in a significant way. In the socio-economic-cultural context of post world war 2 era democracy has been idealised to be the best form of governance due to incentive of ruling class to deliver good governance to avoid electoral defeat. Using this logic ; over a extended period of time a democratic country will overall have a better socio-economic development record compared to the non democratic ones.

The GDP growth rate performance and poverty rate paints a poor picture for Indian democracy despite the free and fair election. The only conclusion that can be drawn from the Indian statistics is that the ruling class does not have an incentive to deliver good governance to get re-elected. Looking closely at the GDP growth statistics the bursts of growth that India has periodically achieved directly co-relates to the the times when Indian parliament had a credible opposition with strong personalities. It can be hypothesised that with credible opposition the ruling government had greater incentive to deliver growth compared to the times without a credible opposition.

It must be noted that Indian National Congress achieved comprehensive victories up until the the 1977 general elections and did not have a credible opposition. India completely missed the miracle economic growth that occurred in post world war two Europe, North America, Japan and South Korea. The successive Indian governments without a significant opposition turned into a ossified gerontocracy without a vision. Under the leadership of Atal Bihari Vaijpayee (Bharatiya Janata Party) BJP became the first true opposition of India starting 1990's and began challenging Indian National Congress for power.

Just like in commerce where increased completion forces firms to improve its game, Indian National Congress delivered a energetic and high growth period of governance under Narasimha Rao in the early 90's. It is argued that the economic crisis forced the Narasimha Rao government to deliver a competent and reform minded government. Since 1946, India has gone through several wars, drought and political events far serious that the economic crisis of 1991. The only difference between the past crisis and 1991 economic crisis was that unlike the past , government had to face a competition for the next impending elections. To better understand the effect of competition lets take the example of Indian Car Industry. Before they were forced to face competition Indian car industries manufactured sub standard cars in Insufficient numbers and post liberalisation, the same companies produce quality vehicle and even export . The same phenomenon has happened to the Indian government since early 1990's resulting in better governance and economic growth. Below is the statistics of countries which have experienced sustained economic growth drastically cutting poverty rate and improving quality of life.

Korea : From 1962 to 1994, South Korea’s tiger economy grew at an average of 10% annually

Indonesia : From 1966 to 1997, Indonesia recorded GDP growth of 5.03 % annually

Thailand : From 1985 to 1996, Thailand recorded GDP growth of 12.4 % annually

China: As noted in my last blog post, China has grown to become 2nd largest economy of the world.

The common political reality among these countries during their growth period was that the ruling class derived their legitimacy from being able to deliver socio-economic progress unlike the democratic legitimacy of the ruling class in India. Therefore the governments of the four countries during their growth period had a bigger incentive in delivering good governance and economic growth than the successive Indian government.

Therefore, the failure of Indian democracy was not failure of democracy but failure of the Indian voters for not coupling act of voting to good governance. The reason behind this failure of the voters has a deep sociological and cultural context that can not be changed easily. Therefore Indian democracy must convert itself into democracy with Indian characters just like the Chinese have done with their version of communism.

Part 2 of the this blog post will discuss about some creative ideas that could make the Indian democracy accountable. One of the idea I will be discussing is reserving 20% of the parliamentary seats for permanent opposition i.e. the candidates elected on these seats are not allowed to participate in the government and align themselves with any established political parties. Will this result in making government more accountable and efficient ?

Suro Banjade ( Twitter https://twitter.com/suro1234567 )