Birthdays are fine moments for honest reflection, so let’s ask: what have been the prime achievements, and the sobering shortfalls, of Indian democracy during its first sixty years?

At a time when only a dozen democracies were left on the face of the earth, the coming of parliamentary democracy to India proved that dictatorship and totalitarianism were not politically necessary. Indian democracy shot other goats of prejudice. Awash in poverty of heart-breaking proportions, millions of Indian citizens rejected the view of their British masters that a country must first be deemed economically fit for democracy. They decided instead to become economically fit through democracy, so proving that the humble could inherit the earth, that the ‘law’ of the survival of the politically strongest and economically fittest was by no means absolute.

The change was of epochal importance. It extended the hand of democracy globally, to potentially billions of people who had one thing in common: they were not European. India defied the prevailing rule that democracy could take root only where there was a demos with a common culture. India showed that self-government was needed to protect a lively, loquacious society, one brimming with different languages and cultures, and therefore different definitions of the polity itself. The result was democracy with a real difference. The country invented and harnessed a wide range of new devices for publicly monitoring and checking the exercise of power. The unique federalisation of government, panchayat self-government, the empowerment of women, the rise of regional parties headed by iridescent figures like Mayawati, satyagraha and compulsory quotas for minority groups are among the best known. Others include participatory budgeting, ‘yellow card’ reports, railway courts, student elections, lok adalats, water consultation schemes and public interest litigation.

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