World's largest democracy gears up for general election

By Jonathan Power

LONDON (JP): India's elections are like India's trains -- lumbering along at no great speed, taking days before the destination is reached but, despite the discomfort along the way, reliable, sturdy and arriving at the station more or less on time.

The world's largest democracy will soon be in action for the second time in two years in a desperate search to find a stable government, an extraordinarily difficult task now that the founding party of India's independence, Congress, is a pale shadow of its original self and the strengths of local, regional, religious and caste parties, not to say the phenomenal rise of the Hindu nationalist, Bharatiya Janata Party, are now the deciding factors in Indian politics. Yet it is safe to predict it will be probably the fairest ever, without significant violence or vote-buying. Indian democracy is cleaner by the year.

This is partly thanks to the former election commissioner T.N. Seshan who presided over the last election with an iron hand. He later lent himself to a spot in a TV commercial, promoting vegetarianism, in which his line was that though he only eat fruit and vegetables what he really liked was "eating politicians for breakfast".

Thus India's problem is not the honesty of the ballot but the coherence of the politicians. India now requires one of the most delicate political balancing acts as only a minority of the elected performers are likely to have a recognizable ideology that can be turned into conventional political discipline.

Until comparatively recently India was a predominantly poor, agricultural-based economy that chose to shut itself off from the world behind high tariff walls, trusting, often quite effectively, in its own ingenuity. These days it is a growing industrial power which, after six and a half years of high-speed economic liberalization under successive governments of varying political hues, now has the largest middle class in the world, is an ever more enticing lure for foreign direct investment and is economically stable enough to have escaped the financial storms that have wrecked much of East Asia. And, according to the World Economic Forum, is topped only by the U.S. and China in an index that combines growth prospects with economic size.

This country with nearly one billion people has long shed what was mockingly called "the Hindu growth rate" -- 1 to 2 percent a year -- and now regularly turns in a 6 percent or 7 percent annual growth in GNP every year and could reach, if it found itself with a government that accelerates the pace of liberalization, a comfortable cruising speed of 8 percent to 9 percent, without the instability that plagues its competitors in East Asia and without the lack of political and judicial transparency that is China's main handicap. No wonder that a significant number of well- informed investors predict that within a couple of decades India will have leap-frogged over China. India has made its transition, to a modern society democratically. China has yet to make its and has no popular elected institution to act as shock-absorber.

While academics and journalists rightly debate the extent to which ordinary people exercise real power in the Indian parliamentary system, dominated as it is by various political and economic power structures, a look back over the 50 years of Indian independence does provide some evidence that it works for the poor and the commonweal as well as for the better off and privileged.

Land reforms have succeeded in containing excessive concentrations of agricultural land. Affirmative action has given more opportunities to the downtrodden scheduled castes. The institutions of the judiciary, the press and the bureaucracy do act for the poor at least some of the time, and are independently minded. A means of widespread local participation has been established by reviving the panchayat system and today one third of parliamentary seats have been reserved for women.

Much more needs to be done if economic growth is to have more impact on the lives of India's masses. Because India does not have an effective human development plan it still has the largest illiterate population in the world. It still has a quarter of its population without access to safe drinking water and so on.

Yet when a part of India has taken the trouble to invest in education and health it has reaped dividends. The best example is Bangalore where investment in skill formation has resulted in India's own "Silicon Valley", the second largest exporter of computer software in the world. If India as a nation could do as well as its four premier states, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Kerala and Punjab its poverty -- and its prospects as an economic superpower -- would be transformed.

The other item for India's next government to get on top of is its growing military budget which eats away more scarce resources as each year goes by. Continuous confrontation with Pakistan does not become this great nation which has much more important things to think about and which could afford to make the gestures to appease Pakistan without too much political effort. What it will lose on the Pakistani swing it will more than gain on the Chinese roundabout. An inflated military budget is dragging the country down and hindering it from overtaking China sooner rather than later.