India has done much better as an electoral democracy but substantially less as a liberal democracy; freedom of expression and religious practice though not absent in the country, they’re not actually robustly anchored, said Ashutosh Varshney, a professor at Brown University, Providence (USA), here on Sunday while delivering lecture at the international conference organised by Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI).
He said 16 national and 362 State elections have been held since 1952 apart from three million members for local bodies have been elected since 1992, power has changed in Delhi several times and for many more times in the States, the poor and less educated people have voted as much as, if not more, than their more affluent co-citizens defying democratic theory.
Election finance, Varshney said, is the single biggest weakness of India’s election process but it is clear that while business houses finance elections, often illegally, they are unable to determine results. Citing the example of AAP in Delhi in 2013 and 2015, the Samajwadi Party in UP in 2012 and the Bahujan Samaj Party in 2007, he said poor political parties could and had won elections.
The so-called retrenchment of liberal values which is being attributed to the rise of Narendra Modi, Varshney said it was not something unprecedented and that checked on liberal values occurred under other governments also. He, however, added that the Uttar Pradesh results could prove to be very significant in this context. He said for the first time the head of a religious order has also become the head of the State.
“The fact that the BJP could win despite not having the support of the single largest minority group was also of immense significance. If the BJP remains in power both at the Centre and UP for the next 10 years, it could have repercussions for liberal values. He said it was for the courts to ensure that the Constitution does not get a Hindu orientation under the present dispensation,” said Varshney.