India must engage in “an ongoing negotiation between (its different) ideas and cultures,” said former President of the Indian National Congress and current member of India’s Parliament Rahul Gandhi in a March 16 event at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
The founding fathers of India created its governmental framework through the premise of “one man, one vote” and the drafting of a constitution during the early days of modern Indian democracy, establishing independent democratic institutions, Gandhi said.
In conversation with Sol Goldman Professor of Political Science and International and Public Affairs Ashutosh Varshney and a panel composed of other Watson faculty, speakers assessed the current state of India’s democracy.
Gandhi lamented that India’s democratic institutions are facing a “determined attack” by Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, and the Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP.
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS, a Hindu nationalist volunteer organization tied to the BJP and similar organizations, “silently” attempted to undermine the strength of India’s democracy before 2014, according to Gandhi. But following the election victory of the BJP in 2014, many of these subversive acts, such as the “siphoning of public funds,” have entered the public domain and been legitimized by the BJP’s political influence on Indian politics, Gandhi added.
“Opposition parties together represent a much bigger chunk (of the population) than the Prime Minister and the BJP, but we’re not given that room for negotiation,” he said.
The opposition parties’ inability to negotiate is harmful to Indian politics, Gandhi said. “It’s not just a question of diversity. It’s a question of active negotiation taking place between that diversity.”
When asked about the V-Dem Institute, an independent research institute based in Sweden, and its characterization of India as an “electoral autocracy,” Gandhi argued that political research institutions are “behind the curve” and that “the situation is much worse than they imagine.”
Modi and the BJP operate India under the pretense that they have been running fair democratic elections, Gandhi said. “An election is not simply people going and pressing a button on a voting machine,” he added. It is “about narrative, an election is about institutions that make sure that the framework of the country is operating properly, … about a judiciary being fair, … about a debate happening in Parliament.”
Even though the government may not have direct control over the voting system, there are many indirect means by which the BJP have corrupted the political system, Gandhi said. “If you control WhatsApp, and you control Facebook, you don’t need to attack the vote,” he said. “You control the narrative anyways.”
The BJP’s influence over media outlets has allowed the party to keep the Prime Minister in the limelight while suppressing other political groups’ ability to obtain equal access to media, Gandhi said. This, in combination with BJP’s control over the government, has resulted in a “massive concentration of political and financial power” that does not bode well for the future of India, he added.
Prerna Singh, associate professor of political science and international studies, asked about how the National Congress Party’s “grassroots organizational structure” presents an alternative to the BJP.
Juxtaposing the Congress with the BJP, Gandhi said that the Congress is not built on a structure of cadres, but rather people who “operate as the bridge between communities.” Gandhi is concerned that “the conversation within India is stopping” and “that the systems that allow the conversation to take place are collapsing,” which will only cause more polarization in the country.
“Our problem is that the negotiation between communities in India has fractured,” he said. “When there is no negotiation taking place between the Hindu and the Muslim, or the Sikh and the Hindu, or the Tamil and the Bengali, we have a problem.”
Regarding the effect China’s rise as a global power has had on India, Gandhi said that China’s success in manufacturing and world trade has caused “political tremors” within both India and the United States. There is a “catastrophic job problem” in India, Gandhi said, adding that the only way to combat job loss is to create an economic strategy of prosperity that must transform the current systems of agriculture, manufacturing and services in India to compete with China.
These economic changes must be negotiated between government officials and the people whose lives are at stake, Gandhi said. Forcing government policies on people is unwise, according to Gandhi, who pointed to this as the catalyst behind the farmer protests that the country has faced in recent months.
Andrew Foster, professor of economics, asked Gandhi to elaborate on his thoughts regarding a repeal for the farm laws and policies that should be put in place to protect farmers going into the future. Gandhi responded that the key to fixing India’s agricultural problems and confronting the “full-scale assault” on farmers is to “empower the producer, make him efficient, make his negotiation more effective.”
“Any reform of the agricultural system has to come out of conversation with the stakeholders of that system,” he said. Compromise between farmers and the government has been non-existent due to the BJP’s massive political power giving “the illusion that (they) don’t have to negotiate with anybody,” Gandhi added.
The Indian political system as a whole must reform the way it conducts negotiations with opposing parties if the country seeks to solve its problems related to jobs and the economy, he said.
“I’d be very worried about making political decisions without being informed and without listening,” Gandhi said, adding that the fight for a greater voice in government among the opposition parties is “an ongoing process.”
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