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Opinion | Modi’s India Is Where Global Democracy Dies [1]
['Debasish Roy Chowdhury']
Date: 2022-08-24
I grew up in West Bengal. After independence, the state was led by the Congress Party, which freely deployed goons and the police to stifle opposition. It was followed by the Communist Party, which held power for 34 years and thoroughly emasculated state institutions. West Bengal is now ruled by a party whose leader projects herself as a national alternative to Mr. Modi’s authoritarianism but has likewise been accused of relying on brute force, cronies and a cult of personality. Such despotic trends have long been widespread at the state level. Mr. Modi himself ruled the western state of Gujarat with an iron hand for nearly 13 years and was accused of encouraging anti-Muslim rioting in 2002.
Arbitrary power is entrenched in the reality that most political parties are personality-centered and dynastic, and India is the rare democracy where political parties are not themselves democratic and do not conduct internal elections.
Money — and often criminal links — has become paramount in politics. Legislators are bought and sold. Many are ill equipped for lawmaking, instead rubber-stamping the policies of a top executive who is often beholden to special interests that are far removed from the people, like agricultural laws that stirred farmer protests until they were repealed last year.
But a deeper and much older hindrance to the development of a healthy, resilient democracy has been India’s historical failure to ensure the welfare of its poorest citizens. Hundreds of thousands of children die each year from hunger, and more than a third are stunted even as Indian billionaires race up the global wealth charts.
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/24/opinion/india-modi-democracy.html
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