[Mb-civic] U.S. Can Find a Model for Iraq in Today's India LATimes

[Michael Butler]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-menon1aug01.story

DEMOCRACY

U.S. Can Find a Model for Iraq in Today's India

A host of deep problems have meshed to create a stable, robust society.
 By Rajan Menon
 Rajan Menon is Monroe J. Rathbone Professor of International Relations at
Lehigh University and a fellow at the New America Foundation.

 August 1, 2004

 NORTH SUTTON, N.H. ‹ India's failures are legion and impossible to ignore.
Poverty and desperation abound. Infant mortality is unacceptably high.
Schools and healthcare are substandard ‹ if available at all. Roads and
other infrastructure are primitive or in poor repair. The Indian government
seems unable to adequately protect the country's Muslim minority (about 12%
of the population) from periodic pogroms, and violence against lower castes
erupts regularly. Conflicts with Pakistan over Kashmir continue, made more
alarming by the fact that both countries now possess nuclear weapons.

 But despite these very real problems, most of what we read about India
misses what is most remarkable about the country: its sheer survival. And as
the United States attempts to shape a new government in Iraq, the lessons of
India are perhaps worth considering, not least because the challenge Iraq
faces ‹ keeping a multiethnic country whole without sliding into
dictatorship ‹ is one that India, despite all its difficulties, has faced
and overcome against considerable odds.

 When India gained independence in 1947, it seemed too big and too diverse
to hold together. Though a majority of the country's 400 million people were
Hindus, there were Muslims, Christians (Protestants and Catholics), Jews,
Jains, Buddhists and Zoroastrians. An array of languages (18 now have
official status), thousands of dialects and a labyrinthine system of castes
and sub-castes added to this bewildering complexity. Few outside India
believed that such an unwieldy behemoth could remain a single country.

 But the system has held together, and it has done so despite some fearsome
shocks, starting with the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi soon after Indian
independence and continuing with the slaying of two prime ministers, three
wars and numerous crises with neighboring Pakistan, the emasculation of
democracy during the "emergency" proclaimed from 1975 to 1977 by then-Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi, widespread and devastating riots sparked by plans to
declare Hindi the national language, and separatist movements of Muslims in
Kashmir, Sikhs in the Punjab and Nagas and Mizos in India's remote
northeast. 

 Not only has Indian polity proved sturdy enough to weather these shocks, it
has done so without abandoning democracy. With the exception of Indira
Gandhi's "emergency," there has not been an interruption in ‹ or even a real
threat to ‹ democratic institutions. Political power in the country has been
passed from party to party frequently in federal and local elections, and
voter turnout is high. The military has remained thoroughly under civilian
control. Furthermore, India has consistently allowed a free press ‹ in
English and the many Indian languages. And a staggering array of civic
groups promotes the interests of women, castes and language groups,
professions and the environment. Labor unions engage in collective
bargaining and strike regularly. Political demonstrations are a daily
occurrence. 

 If the survival of India as a unified country is remarkable, the survival
of its democracy is astonishing. When India became independent, it lacked
any tradition of modern democracy. It had an abysmally low per capita income
and a minuscule middle class, and most of its people were illiterate.
Democracy, so social scientists tell us, cannot survive under such
circumstances. 

 The standard explanation for how India has managed to reconcile diversity
and unity while also fostering democracy invokes the country's colonial
legacy. The British, so the explanation goes, transplanted their hallowed
traditions, ideas and institutions of civil liberties and the rule of law.

 Yet this account doesn't hold up on closer inspection. Let's leave aside
for the moment the fact that most expansions of democratic rights in
colonial India were not the products of benevolent tutelage but necessary
and shrewd responses to the gathering momentum of an Indian nationalist
movement. The main problem with crediting the British with India's success
at democracy is that there is no shortage of former British colonies that,
upon becoming independent, turned thoroughly undemocratic, with the military
seizing power and ruling through naked force. Consider, for example, the
post-colonial histories of Egypt, Iraq, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya and Burma.
Consider, in particular, India's neighbor and cultural cousin Pakistan,
which has been ruled by the military for most of its existence.

 There is no simple explanation for why India has not only survived but also
maintained a fairly robust democracy. But what is clear is that the first
could not have been attained without the other. A democratic order has been
critical in preventing India's fragmentation.

 Elections, a free press and civil society have provided multiple mechanisms
for political participation ‹ for power to be pursued, for grievances to be
aired and for resources and remedies to be sought. India's democratic
institutions work as a series of safety valves that prevent conflict from
becoming the prevalent mechanism for deciding the most basic societal
questions: who gets what, and when and how.

 Moreover, India's federal system of 28 states, which were created to
represent major linguistic and cultural groups, provides for substantial
decentralization and autonomy, both of which have increased as local parties
representing the interests of particular peoples have grown in number. The
design is at times unwieldy and untidy, but it has served to prevent
contentious issues from being automatically projected onto the national
stage. 

 This arrangement, along with India's heterogeneity, has helped prevent
crises in one region of the country from rattling the entire political
system; instead, disturbances remain localized. In distant Kerala (both
spatially and culturally removed), Kashmir's violence is viewed with a
degree of detachment. Likewise, the bloodshed that accompanied Sikh
separatism in the northern state of Punjab did not inflame passions in the
southern state of Tamil Nadu.

 The paradox, then, is that India's diversity and its seemingly cumbersome
political system have enabled unity and democracy to combine. Seeming
weaknesses have proved to be assets.

 Now that economic reform, which was initiated in 1991, is well underway,
India's growth rates have picked up, averaging 6% since 1992, compared with
3.5% in the 1970s and early 1980s. Foreign investment is increasing as
barriers to entry are being dismantled. And a wealth of English-speaking
scientists and engineers is enabling India to exploit the opportunities
provided by globalization.

 India's democratic politics rule out any Chinese-style economic reform by
fiat. Nor will there be any counterpart to Deng Xiaoping, the all-powerful
moving force behind the Chinese economic miracle. Democracy, which requires
compromise, will ensure that India's pace of change is slow and that there
are plenty of setbacks.

 But the gradualism necessitated by participation and the reconciliation of
differences will give the reforms that emerge greater legitimacy. And if, in
its lumbering fashion, India does get its economic act together, it will
combine unity, democracy and prosperity. It will then have performed a
miracle of its own. Whether Iraq, like India, can defy the odds remains to
be seen, but Iraq's leaders could certainly look east for some useful
lessons.


If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at
latimes.com/archives.

Article licensing and reprint options




 Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times