STUDENTS at several universities that I addressed during a recent visit to Pakistan wanted to know how the Indians, whose historical experience and political culture have much in common with our own, had been able to keep democracy while we have had such a rough time with it. Ever since independence, India has been governed by men and women whom the people had elected to office. Violence, intimidation, and fraud have surfaced in these elections to some extent, but for the most part they have remained fair enough for the system to retain credibility. As one might expect, several factors and forces were at work to keep democracy going in India. There was first an “accident of history,” the happenstance that Jawaharlal Nehru, the tallest figure next to Gandhi in India’s struggle for independence, lived to serve as the country’s prime minister for 17 years (1947-64). Nehru had been an immensely popular political leader since the early 1930s. A great many people all over India revered him. That kind of popularity could have gone to any politician’s head and turned him into a dictator. Writing anonymously in 1937, Nehru reflected upon this possibility: “Men like Jawaharlal, with all their capacity for great and good work, are unsafe in a democracy ... he has all the makings of a dictator in him — vast popularity, a strong will, energy, pride ... and with all this his love of the crowd, an intolerance of others and a certain contempt for the weak and inefficient.... His conceit is already formidable. It must be checked. We want no Caesars.”

Not only external forces, but Nehru’s own strengths and weaknesses, kept him from ending up as a dictator. Dedicated to the unity of both his country and party (Congress), and aware that both were ethnically, linguistically, and culturally diverse, he understood that neither could be driven to accept a single, coherent package of policy goals and programmes. Accordingly, he recognized the necessity of making compromises. He was given to compromise also by his own inclination.

According to Pran Chopra, once editor of The Statesman, Nehru was “too averse to seeing things as black and white, too much at home in the grey area of each issue, too gentle with people and loyal to colleagues, to be as single-minded and ruthless as a dictator has to be.” (Uncertain India, 1968) He was a centrist in the Congress which, under his influence, came to harbour a variety of points of view. Nehru was a socialist, but he was also a democrat both by necessity and persuasion. He meant to implement his concept of a “mixed economy” through the agencies of parliamentary government and central planning. He knew that if his government were to put through a socialist programme, it must have the clear backing of the people. Not only were socialism and democracy compatible, socialism had to be democratic in India’s circumstances. Cognizant of India’s diversities, he understood that pluralism and inclusiveness in politics could not be abandoned except at the cost of unending and uncontrollable rebellions.

The higher civil servants in India had inherited from the British low esteem, bordering on contempt, for the native politicians. Elitist in their outlook, autocratic of inclination, they could have been an impediment to democracy. But Nehru subordinated them to politics, its institutions, and their will. He was an exceedingly well-read and cultivated man. In his familiarity with the British and European traditions, he was more English than they were. Far ahead of them in intellectual prowess and accomplishment, he could overawe them.

Let us now look at some of the other pluses and minuses for democracy in India. Parts of the subcontinent had experienced British rule for some 200 years. The emerging native elite in these parts were exposed to western political ideas, including the case for democracy, which became the case for India’s independence. It posited that the Indians were entitled to all of the civil and political rights and freedoms that their colonial rulers claimed to value and enjoy at home. Having absorbed the premises, values, and reasoning of western democratic theory, they assumed that post-independence India would be democratic. The framers of the Indian constitution did not pause to give even a passing thought to alternatives.

The great majority of the people in India used to be cultivators, but feudalism, one of the greatest impediment to democracy, was confined to a few provinces where it was eradicated through drastic land reforms soon after independence. A significant proportion of the Indian middle classes engaged in commerce and partook of its culture, which includes negotiation, bargaining, compromise, and deals all of which are the essential ingredients of a democratic culture as well.

A council called the “panchayat,” consisting of village notables, had resolved disputes and addressed certain categories of local issues, for many centuries. It was not a representative institution, but it became one when the Indian constitution, which had instituted universal adult franchise in all jurisdictions, went into effect in 1952. Thus democracy at the grassroots became a functioning reality in India within a few years after independence.

Unity in diversity is not to be taken for granted. Left alone, diversity will work as a centrifugal agent. But attempts to eliminate or suppress it will most likely aggravate it and increase its disintegrative potential. It can be tamed if it is accorded due respect and allowed space for self-expression. The Indian leadership made concessions to regional diversities, and thus bolstered national unity, when after some initial hesitation they redrew state boundaries along linguistic lines.

It had been the ruling view in India, as elsewhere, that a “strong centre” was essential for preserving the political union of a heterogeneous people. Democratic resurgence at the local and state levels has set aside this notion. Gone are the days of “national” parties and “national” leaders, the days when a single party won enough seats in the Lok Sabha elections to form the government unaided by others. The balance of power has been shifting from the central to the regional political elite. State governments exercise a great deal more power and authority than they did during the rule of Mr Nehru and Mrs Gandhi. All of this has happened not by someone’s fiat but because the culture of democracy has spread outward to the periphery.

Riven by divisions of caste and class, Indian society has been deeply hierarchical. There were groups whose role it was to command while it was for others to obey. Democracy does not call for equality of condition but it does require equal rights under the law for all, including the right to political participation. Let us see how this problem has been handled in India.

Initially, the elders from the upper castes in rural India made deals with politicians in the lower castes and tried thus to hold on to power. In time notables in the middle and lower castes forged combinations to reach political power. The logic of numbers and universal adult franchise facilitated this development. But note that the resulting benefits did not travel much beyond the notables. The generality of people in the lower castes, who add up to about one third of India’s population, have remained deprived, living below the poverty line.

Democracy in India is working: more than 600 million persons are registered as voters, elections are held as appointed, and assemblies are in place. But is it delivering good governance? Not really.

At the very outset, India chose to allow its citizens a circumscribed version of civil rights and liberties. Its constitution does not forbid the parliament to make laws calculated to abridge the rights it grants. Instead, it makes them subject to restriction “under law” in the interest of national security and integrity, public order, morality, and several other considerations. Within such limitations as the government of the day may lawfully impose, the citizen is free to go about his business.

Government at all levels is corrupt. We know of the “permit raj” that prevailed when the economy was heavily regulated. Virtually every economic undertaking required a permit or a licence that the officials concerned issued only upon receipt of a suitable bribe. Bureaucratic corruption persists. Of late, corruption has entered the ranks of politicians as well. They make laws, and then they intercede to persuade law-enforcers to overlook the wrongdoing of those who want to break or evade the same law.

Referring to the long period of Congress party’s rule, Professor A.H. Somjee (Simon Fraser University) notes that “nothing in India moved unless officials and politicians were bribed. When other parties came to power, they also learned very quickly how to enrich themselves.”

Somjee tells us also that individuals with criminal records, gangsters and hoodlums, have now entered India’s democratic politics. In the old days, politicians who wished to act outside the law hired tough guys. Later, these men decided to work for themselves. They received party nominations and got elected. As a result, the Lok Sabha and state legislatures have substantial contingents of the criminal element.

The question in India, as in many developing societies, is how a democracy protects itself from corruption and lawlessness. In some places the middle class, acting through various organs of civil society and aided by the electronic and print media, has acted as the principal agent of reform. But the Indian middle class does not play that role. Consisting of close to 300 million persons, it professes to be disgusted with the waywardness of politicians, denounces them in its drawing rooms, but refuses disdainfully to have anything to do with them. That leaves it to the electronic and print media to do what it can to bring about reform.

Yet, curiously enough, all classes of Indians are immensely proud of the fact that theirs is the largest working democracy in the world. They know it is inefficient, corrupt, and at times lawless, but they will not trade it for dictatorship of any kind. Even the poor and the deprived want to keep it.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA. E-mail: anwarsyed@cox.net

THIS is the year Africa will be saved, and we are going to do it — that, more or less, was British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s message at the launch recently of the report of the Commission for Africa. But not with Paul Wolfowitz in charge at the World Bank, this won’t be possible. Key recommendations — for example, that corrupt dictators’ cash in foreign bank accounts should be repatriated, and that forcing policies such as privatization on countries in exchange for debt relief and aid needs to be rethought — are highly unlikely to be endorsed by Wolfowitz. This, after all, is a man who, while US ambassador to Indonesia, was scarcely a vocal critic of the blatantly corrupt Suharto regime; a man who embodies the mindset that compels other countries to adopt a particular set of values and policies, whether they are right or not. Wolfowitz is hardly even a champion of the values on which the bank itself was founded. He is neither well placed to help it meet its early goal of helping countries rebuild, nor its later one of poverty alleviation. Wolfowitz recently told the US congress that war-ravaged Iraq should pay not only for its reconstruction but also for the war itself out of its oil revenues.

Although the bank today is hardly a collaborative or progressive operation, any moves its current president, James Wolfensohn, has made to include environmental considerations in lending decisions and to broaden the range of nations consulted are unlikely to be continued under Wolfowitz, who has a track record of rewarding subservience. He banned countries that opposed the war with Iraq from bidding for reconstruction contracts.

Perhaps most worryingly he is George Bush’s chosen one. And the Bush administration is a very long way from the bank’s espoused goals and mandate. Development thinkers are now pretty much unanimous that trade subsidies are a serious barrier to development. Wolfensohn has spoken out against trade subsidies. But the Bush administration continues to reject calls to remove subsidies on its cotton and sugar producers, while its response to the recent World Trade Organization ruling that US cotton subsidies breached its trade rules has been an attempt to negotiate a way out of the ruling with Mali and Brazil.

There could hardly be a less suitable administration to choose a candidate to lead an organization whose mission is to alleviate poverty. At home, Bush has implemented a series of tax cuts for the rich, and his latest proposal to reduce the US deficit has been to suggest the slashing of food aid to his country’s poorest.

Of course, the US hijacking the World Bank to serve its foreign policy interests is not a new phenomenon. But the Bush administration is unabashedly forthright in its pursuit of self-interest, and in its willingness to use aid as a tool to promote its geo-political goals. Bush has said that he nominated Wolfowitz because he had proved himself adept at promoting US interests while ambassador to Indonesia.

But the nomination of the World Bank president is being left to a government that has cut off aid to any country that does not exempt it from being held to account by the international criminal court, and that has resisted attempts by Wolfensohn to weaken the US stranglehold over the bank.

It is only a matter of convention that America gets to nominate the president of the World Bank. The US has twice successfully rejected Germany’s candidate to head the IMF, despite the convention that allows Europe to nominate its head.

A rejection of the presumption that the US nominates the bank president would chime well with today’s climate of demands for more democracy and transparency in the development arena. It is also something that fits with Britain’s Labour government position on necessary reforms of the international financial institutions.

Jack Straw said of Wolfowitz’s nomination: “If his appointment is confirmed, we look forward to working with him.” That is not the response the world is looking to Britain for. If Blair is serious about making poverty history, he will have to do away with such diplomatic niceties for once. A U-turn on Blair’s wider support for Bush unfortunately remains a pipe dream. But Blair credibly can, and should, oppose the Wolf.—Dawn/Guardian Service

FOLLOWING the start of his second term, President Bush paid a four-day visit to Europe in late February, with a rather ambitious agenda. He wanted to revitalize the trans-Atlantic alliance, still intact and considered important for West’s security. He wanted to leave the negative fallout from his war on Iraq behind, and stress the commonalties in values and civilization between the US and Europe, relating to democratic freedoms and a culture based on liberty and human rights. As the leader of the world’s most powerful and richest country, he also sought to highlight its leadership role for a safer, more secure world, which was facing threats from terrorism and non-proliferation, to counter which teamwork was essential. Aware that his unilateralist approach and reliance on military might had affected the image of the US, it was also a tour designed to win back confidence in the values and goals of the US.

Three stops stand out in this tour, the first in Brussels to reaffirm America’s support to European integration based on shared goals and perceptions. The visit to Mainz in Germany was used to recall the history of cooperation and joint endeavour to meet the threat from Moscow, which was in control of a part of Germany. Lastly, the meeting with President Putin of Russia in Bratislava, capital of Slovakia, had great significance, both to put pressure for respecting democratic reforms, and to harmonize policies in meeting the threats from terrorism, religious extremism, and nuclear proliferation.

The outcome was claimed to be a success, as his support to EU and its goals was welcomed, and Chancellor Schroeder of Germany responded warmly to his desire to strengthen the trans-Atlantic friendship and cooperation. The president got mixed results in Russia, where President Putin, while reaffirming his commitment to fight terror, and to prevent nuclear proliferation, refused to end nuclear cooperation with Iran, by terminating transfer of peaceful nuclear technology.

He did not consider this to be nuclear proliferation, on account of its being under IAEA safeguards. The views of the two leaders of former cold war rivals also diverged on the role of the UN, and on the steps needed to implement the roadmap on Palestine.

Although President Bush sought to project a soft image of the US, by stressing traditional American values of democracy, and human rights, his inability to avoid unilateralist rhetoric did not really convince the world that the US was going to act differently during his second term. The neocons retained their dominant position, and the US pursuit of its hardline goals in the Middle East persisted, as it pressed Syria to withdraw its forces from Lebanon, holding it responsible for the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The pressure on Iran was also maintained over its nuclear programme, despite assurance that its goals were peaceful and were backed by the IAEA.

Though the holding of elections in Iraq, with a better than expected turnout of voters, was claimed to be reassuring, different kinds of doubts and concerns arose. The Shia coalition had won a majority, and the prospect of a Shia-dominated government in Baghdad was fraught with ominous difficulties, especially as the US-backed coalition of Ayad Allawi did poorly. A continuing US role in Iraq appeared to be unavoidable.

With the Shia coalition poised to form a government in Baghdad, the insurgency, now less concerned with Iraqi security organizations, appears to be targeting the Shias that could culminate in creating a Shia-Sunni divide that the Shia leadership has so far avoided. The US moves, that are usually coordinated with Israel, appear to be increasingly aimed at fanning religious divisions in the Middle East.

The pressure on Syria has made the Lebanese Shias rally around the government in Damascus. Iran is also coming under pressure, and while diplomacy through the Europeans is being given a chance, a resort to pre-emption directly by the US or through Israel is not being ruled out. However, if preemption is revived Syria is the likely target.

To top it all, Bush has again made a call for democratic reforms in the Muslim world, notably in the Greater Middle East stretching from Morocco to Pakistan. He clearly regards US-style democracy as the model, and the yardstick of reform, with regime-change as a threat to enforce it. The broadening of his agenda from fighting terrorism to replacing orthodox Islamic values with secular ones as the best guarantee of moderation holds the seeds of a long-term confrontation with the Muslim world. Already, many regional experts have started pointing out that even in the West, there are variations in the form of constitutions, and of power structures. What the Islamic world needs is the support to overcome poverty, and to popularize education, so that literacy and awareness improve and facilitate progress towards a tolerant society as well as a prosperous economy.

The latest signals on foreign policy are also being observed fearfully. Though Condoleezza Rice has adopted a traditional approach, as secretary of state, and announced the intention of following the diplomatic path, the nomination of John Bolton, currently under-secretary for nonproliferation and arms control, as ambassador to the UN has aroused concerns. He is a known hard-liner and has expressed views about the UN in the past about reducing its role as envisaged in its charter and keeping it effectively under Washington’s wing.

At a time when the talk about reforming the UN is in the air, with the aim of making it more representative, as well as more effective, Mr Bolton is expected to make a play for making the world body more responsive to US goals. The discussion of his nomination by the Senate may generate much questioning about the administration’s attitude towards the world body.

The secretary-general Mr Kofi Annan has been subjected to extreme pressure for expressing the view that the US attack on Iraq was illegal. He has been grilled as the scandal over UN role in the “oil-for-food” programme for Iraq. Many members of the ruling party in the US have called for his resignation. As was to be expected, this has made him highly submissive towards the US, over secretariat appointments and other administrative matters.

Though reassurances would be given about the desire of Mr Bush to restore the UN’s proper role in his second term, Mr Bolton can be expected to use his position as ambassador to the UN to make sure that US interests and preferences are safeguarded. He can keep track of all developments and initiatives and the mere threat of the US government or Congress to limit funds or not cooperate can restrict the role of the UN.

The decision by Mr Bush to offer Iran incentives if it cooperates on its nuclear ambitions, by facilitating its entry into the WTO, and lifting the ban on spare parts for Iranian civilian aircraft of US origin, marks a more pragmatic approach. If Iran fails to comply, the matter would be placed before the Security Council to impose sanctions. Thus, both hard and soft options are being kept open while retaining US goals of global hegemony.