From the July/August 2009 issue of The National Interest.
I LIKE to think of India as a "fifty-fifty" democracy. I owe this formulation to a Bollywood film I once saw which featured a great comic actor named Badruddin Jamaluddin Kazi, whose screen name was Johnny Walker (after an alleged fondness for that brand of whiskey). In this particular film he played the sidekick of a mafia don, who used him as a sounding board. Will I be able to successfully raid the bank? asked the boss of the sidekick. Will this moll of the other gangster come over to me? To every such question Johnny Walker would rub his hands and answer, "Phiphty-phiphty, boss, phiphty-phiphty." Every project or endeavor, felt the sidekick, would have a 50 percent chance of success, 50 percent of failure.
It is much the same with the political experiment conducted by the nation of which Johnny Walker was a citizen. If one looks at the successful conduct of elections, the free movement of people and the vigorously independent press, then India is indeed a democracy. On the other hand, if one looks at the widespread corruption in public institutions, the inequalities of class and status, and the bloody and continuing battles between insurgent groups and the state, then perhaps India is not a democracy.
IN 1952, when the Republic of India held its first general elections, they were dubbed the "biggest gamble in history." Evidently, the gamble worked. The country has now successfully held fifteen general elections for the national parliament, as well as countless polls for different state assemblies.
This past, hot spring, more than 400 million Indians voted in the most recent exercise of their democratic franchise. This was an elaborate process, conducted over five weeks and in six different phases.
