>From below - "Guha has recently published a brilliant narrative on
>post-Independence India India after Gandhi: The History of the Worlds
>Largest Democracy. "
Has anyone read the book? Is it just a narrative or does it have some
analysis also?
The editorial below states the facts as they are - there are flaws but India
survives and makes progress as a nation.
As I said yesterday, the plant must be learning to coexist with the pests.
How much better the plant would fare if the pests were eradicated!
Dilip Deka
======================================================
From the Sentinel
EDITORIAL » »
Last updated : WEDNESDAY 9 MAY 2007 The Idea of India
Is the idea of India a failed one after about 60 years of Independence? It is
difficult to answer that. However, what is crystal clear is that India has
survived the crises of varied hues, and in the wake of each crisis we have had
extraordinary lessons on the cardinality of democracy and better ways to deal
with the aberrations therein. It is another matter that the Indian political
class, barring a few exceptions, has failed the electorate in so many ways; and
yet, there has been a select class indeed very small of heroes rescuing the
same set of people in the form of honest and upright politicians and
bureaucrats, learned judges, pro-people activists and selfless workers. India
is deeply indebted to all of them. Therefore, when eminent historian
Ramachandra Guha says that the defining feature of Indian democracy is that
it has gone from crisis to crisis and somehow we have been able to contain
these crises, the very rationale is based on the peculiarly
Indian chapter of democratic sustenance. Guha has recently published a
brilliant narrative on post-Independence India India after Gandhi: The
History of the Worlds Largest Democracy. He talks of India as an unlikely
democracy when it started out as an independent democratic nation because
never before had a democratic framework been grafted on a society that is so
large, poor, illiterate. The fact that this unlikely democracy has
survived all along its tortuous trajectory and is now a key global player, is
illustrative of the wonders that democracy can work out, despite all
aberrations, as also the fact that there is no alternative to democracy if the
cause is that of a welfare state.
However, ours is not really a welfare state in the true sense of the term. And
in the glitter of the near-double-digit growth rate, many of us tend to
overlook the dismal human development index of the country. Many of us are
oblivious of the fact that the face of rural India which is indeed Real India
even now is still so pale, and then there are attempts to disfigure that very
face. The success story of Indian democracy will be authenticated only when
Real India is addressed to, and elevated, so that it shines along with its
happening urban counterpart. And for all this to happen, one has to ensure that
the class of unscrupulous politicians and bureaucrats is prevented from
committing fraud on the innocent people all the time. An alert and active
society can surely ensure this. This apart, India is plagued by two more
serious problems. One is the ongoing conflict between the Judiciary and the
Legislature or the Executive, with a panicky and guilty political class
giving it all a new name judicial activism. The people of the country must
categorically assert that whenever the elected representatives have failed
them, it is the Judiciary that has come to their rescue, and exemplarily at
that. And two, most of our lawmakers have also excelled as classic lawbreakers,
thanks to criminalization of politics, nay politicization of crime. It is now
up to the Election Commission of India to act as an effective deterrent to the
unholy trend of criminals having to adorn Parliament and State legislatures. At
this stage the idea of India needs a sustained flourish.
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