New Delhi: In what appeared to be an attempt to counter stinging and continual criticism from institutes studying democracy, democracy indices and global think tanks, the recently-held Raisina Dialogue organised by the Observer Research Foundation during the much-hyped G-20 meeting in New Delhi this month, held an intriguing session.
Its premise was that “Electoral autocracy, a term made popular by a section of the commentariat, is as persuasive and yet as feckless as anarchic mobilisations.”
It asked, “Is the liberal elite criticism of supposed institutional decay fundamentally undemocratic? Is the rise in populism globally a threat to democracy, or is it instead an indication of its strength and resilience?”
In a giant leap from the “mother of democracy” phrase used regularly by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, this session quizzed, “is there any one model of functional democracy, or are there ways in which the emerging world challenges Eurocentric conceptions of democratic functioning?”
Titled “The Liberal Conundrum: Whose Democracy is it Anyway?”, the conference had the likes of Sanjeev Sanyal, member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, and Balazs Orbán, political director to the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Coincidentally, both countries are said to be fast turning into autocracies and are amongst ‘top 10 autocratisers’ per the latest V-Dem report.
Dissing the V-Dem report, Sanyal said, liberal democracy has come to mean “a democracy where self certified liberals win”.
The Freedom House report has found India to be only“partly free”.
The V-Dem report classifies India as an “electoral autocracy”, not using the word democracy at all.
India’s score in the Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index has “declined significantly in recent years.
Most panellists said the “narrative” is being controlled by the “liberals” who are setting the agenda which in a democracy should be by the majority in society. “India, which by some margin is the largest democracy is rated 108 out of 140 countries… three places up from Pakistan,” Sanyal said. And Sri Lanka has moved up the democratic index in the past 10 years from an electoral autocracy in 2012 to an electoral democracy in 2022, per the report. “After what happened there last year, I am shocked to learn they consider Sri Lanka an electoral success,” Sanyal added.
Attacking what he said were “self serving ideologies which have nothing to do with the original idea of liberal democracy,” Sanyal trained his guns at Hungarian billionaire George Soros accusing his Open Society Foundation of blatantly spending money to create a certain kind of narrative that needs to be called out. Soros recently said at the Munich Security Conference, that the stock market manipulation allegedly by Adani would “significantly weaken Modi’s stranglehold on India’s federal government”. Soros’ comment had attracted sharp criticism by Union minister Smriti Irani who made it about an attack on India’s sovereignty.
Balazs Orbán said, half in jest, that amongst the similarities between Hungary and India was that they were both fighting Soros and his liberal organisations. Orbán said, “If you are not in favour of mass migration, if you are not in favour of gender propaganda, if you are not in favour of continuation of the war but rather you would like to talk about peace, you are not a good democrat…and this is problematic because it makes impossible real conversation which is important in a democratic society.”
There should be an open debate about these issues which should be decided by the majority of the people, he added.
Giving the example of Twitter before Elon Musk took over, Sanyal said that “Certain kinds of debates are being shut down, ironically by the people who proclaim themselves to be liberal.”
For Sanyal, it was also timing that was suspicious. He said he found it galling that the report came on a day the BJP won state assembly elections in three north eastern states, his message being that winning an election is the best weather vane for a thriving democracy.
However, former Central Information Commissioner Yashovardhan Azad pushed forth a counter view. “Democracy is about dialogue. If a political party with say 37% of the votes is first past the post, it does not mean this is everything. The 37% should engage in dialogue with the rest 63%. That is consensus.”
Or as academic John Keane, co-author of To Kill a Democracy, would say, “Democracy is much more than pressing a button or ticking a box on a ballot paper. It goes beyond the mathematical certitude of election results, majority rule and lists of minority rights.”
In fact, James Carafino of The Heritage Foundation of the US, a think tank described by The Washington Post as being increasingly aligned to issues that resonate with Republican Donald Trump, unwittingly echoed Keane when he said, “Winning elections isn’t an indication that your policies are true. We have a deeply federal system, we have cities with huge unemployment, homeless problem, high crime rate, failing schools and yet the same governments get elected over and over and over again…so you can have really bad outcomes and yet win elections.”
This view was puzzlingly seconded by Sanyal who gave the example of Jyoti Basu as being “the worst chief minister” the country has had “and only recently displaced by Naveen Patnaik” and one who went on to win elections after elections.
Tripurdaman Singh of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, UK, who has in his writings, including in his latest book, drawn attention for taking on Jawaharlal Nehru’s vision for modern India along lines often espoused by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s leaders, said, “Liberalism is tied to colonialism and imperialism…and provided the justification for Empire for so many hundred years. We couldn’t rule ourselves as we didn’t know how to as we weren’t liberal enough. Empire was a liberal enterprise. Its opposite, Conservatism, is grounded in culture and in local society. This has led to a blowback against liberalism. “
Former CIC Azad had a thing to say on that.
“Conservatism is against archaic policies such as those associated with Sati, or with keeping women confined to the house or giving them no role in society. Liberalism is actually about keeping pace with the times. Liberalism is all about transparency and fairplay. For example, the process behind electoral bonds should be transparent. These are issues that are not being debated,” he said.
Samir Saran, ORF chief, tried to strike a balancing note, though it is unclear if it won anyone over. “Agreement is not a virtue of democracy. Celebrating even the disagreement is …as long as we allow the space for disagreement we will continue to have a structure that is fundamentally tolerant and may disagree on what is intolerant. Rather then being fundamentally intolerant and agreeing on what is tolerant.”
The session was moderated by CNBC-TV18’s Maria Shakil.