The problem(s) with Indian Democracy
And some difficult solutions
India is the world’s largest and most diverse democracy. There are about 950 million voters, almost thrice the entire population of the US. In the most recent Lok Sabha elections, the Election Commission of India counted almost 650 million votes in a single day.
Indian Democracy is nothing short of a miracle
India has always had a smooth transition of power, except for a 2 year period between 1975-19771. That is a remarkable achievement. To just put this in perspective, there aren’t many countries with a per-capita income of $2,500 that have seamless transition of power. Many sub-Saharan African countries that are at around the same per-capita income as India, have had dictatorships or military coups2. There are none that have either India’s diversity or its population.
In South Asia, almost all of India’s neighbors face problems with their democracies. Pakistan is (in)famous for being a democracy only in name. The Pakistan Army exerts undue influence on the Pakistani elected government. The military has successfully executed multiple coups, overthrowing multiple elected leaders. Bangladesh has also flitted in and out of military rule. Most recently, their elected leader, Sheikh Hasina was overthrown in a revolution and her partymen were subjected to violence at the hands of protesters. In 2022, Sri Lanka faced economic issues that toppled its government and led to a constitutional crisis. Afghanistan, due to its location, has been unstable for the past few centuries. The only relative calm Afghanistan had was during the US occupation of the country. Once the US vacated the country, it descended into chaos quickly. Myanmar is also dealing with multiple coups, the most recent of which occurred in 2021.
Global perspective on India’s democracy
There are some international groups that publish their findings on democracy. Prominent among them are Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), a Swedish organization affiliated with the University of Goethe; Freedom House, a U.S.-based non-profit; and The Economist’s Democracy Index. Each of these organizations evaluates global democracy rankings, and India has seen a notable decline across all of them. Freedom House downgraded India to a “partially free” democracy from a “free” democracy. V-Dem said that India had become an “electoral autocracy”, and in the Democracy Index, India fell two places.
All of them blame Prime Minister Modi’s government for curtailing civil liberties. V-Dem and Freedom House place India’s democracy on par with Pakistan and Bangladesh. In light of recent events, that appears highly questionable. Pakistan jailed their most popular Prime Minister Imran Khan, leading to protests that have rocked Islamabad, the capital. Bangladesh overthrew their premier Sheikh Hasina and the caretaker government hasn’t declared elections yet. There are other issues with the methodologies of these groups that I hope to explore in a future post. For now, it is enough to point out that the methodologies are dubious, relying on qualitative metrics instead of quantitative ones, rendering them highly subjective.
So what are the problems with Indian Democracy?
While the rankings from these groups are undoubtedly questionable, it would be unwise to ignore the serious challenges India faces within its democracy. India has a host of structural issues with its democratic structure. I find three issues to be the most important.
1. Relatively low number of seats in Parliament and state assemblies
There are 543 seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament and 250 seats in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house. Members to the Lok Sabha, being directly elected, each represent about 2.7 million people each. This is well above global standards. I’ve created a graph below that shows the number of seats in the lower houses of a few Western democracies.
India sits squarely in the middle of the pack. Keep in mind that with a population of 1.5 billion, each elected member represents nearly 3 million people. For comparison, each elected representative serves about 90,000 people in the UK, 110,000 in France, 900,000 in the US, 130,000 in Germany, and approximately 1.5 million in Australia.
A similar analysis can be done for state legislatures. In Maharashtra, each elected representative serves about 500,000 people. The situation is even worse in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state. Each representative in the state assembly serves 600,000 people. Combined with a First Past The Post (FPTP) system, this ensures that political aspirants need serve only a small section of their electorate to get elected.
The 84th amendment to the Indian Constitution allowed the use of 1971 population figures for Lok Sabha seat apportionment between states until the first census after 2026. This means that 2031 is likely going to be the year that redistricting and delimitation of Indian constituencies occurs. The size of the lower house needs to at least triple to maintain the same ratio of lawmakers to the population as it was at the time of India’s independence. While that is unlikely, I hope that the size at least doubles to 1086 from the current 543.
2. The Anti-Defection law
The 52nd Amendment to the Constitution, introduced in 1985, brought in the anti-defection law. Under the anti-defection law, legislators voting against the party’s instructions in Parliament or state legislatures would be disqualified of their membership. Additionally, changing party affiliation would also lead to disqualification unless two-thirds of the members of the same party also merge into another party.
The combined effect of these factors is the undue elevation of party leadership to prime importance. In the Congress Party, the Gandhis have championed several far-left positions, many of which are reflected in the party’s 2024 general election manifesto. This manifesto, crafted by the party's uppermost leadership, bears the unmistakable imprint of figures like Mr. Rahul Gandhi, Mr. Mallikarjun Kharge (party president), and Mr. Jairam Ramesh (a Rajya Sabha member), among others. However, these positions are not universally shared within the party. Notable dissenters include Shashi Tharoor (Lok Sabha member from Trivandrum) and Manish Tewari (Lok Sabha member from Chandigarh), both of whom have previously spoken out against elements of the manifesto.
Such dynamics have the unintended effect of polarizing the electorate, leaving Members of Parliament unable to work in a bipartisan manner to introduce bills. A clear example of this is the abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which pertained to Kashmir. A number of Congress MPs disagreed with the party’s stand to oppose the abrogation. Prominent dissenters included Deepender Hooda, Jyotiraditya Scindia and Janardan Dwivedi. Jyotiraditya Scindia later ended up defecting to the BJP3, further dwindling the opposition of good political talent. The situation was so bad, that the party’s whip4 in the Rajya Sabha, Bhubaneshwar Kalita, quit the Congress rather than issue a whip to vote against the issue in Parliament.
3. Electoral Bonds
Electoral Bonds were a mode of funding in India from 2018 to 2024, when the Supreme Court struck them down in their February 2024 judgement. They could be procured by a donor through cheque from the State Bank of India (SBI). Donations were anonymous because if asked to reveal their identity, donors would revert to cash donations. Arun Jaitley, who introduced the bill in Parliament, said that it would help clean up campaign funding.
Earlier cash donations to political parties were capped at Rs. 20,000 (USD 300). Because such paltry donations aren’t enough to sustain an election campaign, “black money”5 was often used to fund campaigns. Consequently, parties often received income from criminal sources frequently. The scheme as it was implemented, left much to desire. The anonymity feature was a double-edged sword. On one hand, doing away with anonymity would lead to political harassment, but maintaining anonymity would lead to opaque funding, which would make it hard to identify vested interests in politics. Unfortunately, with the scheme being struck down, campaign financing in India would revert to cash donations. This money is often illegitimately obtained and untaxed. It is a loss for the Indian State and the voters.
Campaign finance in Western democracies like the US among others rely on organisations like PACs (Political Action Committee). Any citizen can donate to a PAC and the PAC can then use it to fund the political party of their choice. Contributions above $200 are public. Keeping donation records public is crucial because it sheds light on the influence various social groups have on the nation’s politics. This doesn’t imply that illegal transactions are absent in such settings; rather, these practices only formalize what is already happening in India. Even so, adopting these measures is vital for India, as it brings transparency into the system.
Are these reforms possible?
All the issues mentioned above require political will to execute. Delimitation of seats in Parliament is going to be a political minefield. The can has already been kicked down the road twice. The government in power in 2031 must take responsibility for implementing these reforms. Otherwise democracy weakens if people don’t feel represented.
I don’t expect the anti-defection law to go away any time soon. There are far more pressing problems that any given administration has to deal with. It would require political action groups or public interest litigations to pursue this issue and get it resolved. Any government that deals with the issue gives the opposition ample firepower to attack them on charges of horse-trading.
On an optimistic note, I have hope that in the next decade, methods to formalize campaign finance are rolled out. This issue is at the top of the public, because it is a major source of corruption. Transparency into campaign and party funding immediately reveals lobbying and other vested interests.
Further Reading
A Carnegie Endowment article on the India’s emerging representation crisis.
Livemint explains why Rajya Sabha must expand alongside the Lok Sabha and the importance of domicile requirements for lawmakers elected to the upper house.
Indira Gandhi, then Prime Minister of India, imposed a state of Emergency in India. The last general elections had been held in 1971. Mrs. Gandhi had been elected from the constituency of Rae Bareilly defeating Raj Narain, a prominent politician. Narain sued her, accusing her of using government machinery for her campaign. In 1975, the court reached its verdict and Mrs. Gandhi lost the case, with her election being declared null and void. She appealed to the Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court’s decision. Rather than lose power, she had the President impose an Emergency which meant no further elections, and converted India’s federal structure into a unitary one. She voluntarily lifted it in 1977 (no one really knows why) and called for general elections. It remains the darkest chapter in India’s democracy.
Examples include Sudan, Guinea, Gabon, Libya and Egypt. All of these are at the same level of prosperity as India, are mostly monocultural and have significantly smaller populations.
He had lost his parliamentary seat in the 2019 election, defected to the BJP two years later, ran from the same seat in 2024 and won it.
In Indian politics, a whip is a member of Parliament who has the authority to issue voting instructions to their party colleagues. Voting against the instructions issued by the whip is a violation of the anti defection law and the member could lose their membership of parliament.
An Indian term for money generated in the parallel or shadow economy.