Can India’s New Democracy Revival Sustain?
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Despite the clear danger of the rise of totalitarianism in India today, Radha Kumar’s book, The Republic Relearnt: Renewing Indian Democracy (1947-2024) aims is to look forward to the moment when democracy will be renewed in the country and ask what lessons can be learnt from past experience to anchor it more firmly when the opportunity arises.
It is generally assumed that Indian democracy has had an unbroken run since Independence, with the brief disruption of the 1975-77 Emergency. While those two years saw a stark assault on democratic institutions, Indian democracy had been repeatedly punctured prior to the Emergency, and it has been threatened many times since. The country underwent almost four decades of democracy decay after the founding years of the republic, as compared to the three relatively short-lived waves of democracy renewal. That fact makes an examination of these three waves rather significant.
Examining the three waves of democracy renewal, Kumar finds that the most valuable lessons lie in policy actions as well as proposals that were left unimplemented. These, which ranged from electoral reform to human development, social justice and institutional as well as federal autonomy, could form the bedrock for a third republic, albeit partly. India’s democratic future, Kumar concludes, depends on the extent to which a revived political opposition and civil and political society can draw on the lessons of the three waves of democracy renewal.
In this session, she is in conversation with Lakshmi Arya Thathachar, Professor, RV University. A Q&A with the audience will follow.
Негізгі бет The Fourth Wave
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