English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

The reflections in this book on trends, tendencies and various features of the Indian political landscape do not lend themselves easily to delivering a coherent rating of Indian democracy. The contributions provide differing illustrations, examples and specimens of what Indian democracy stands for, what it has achieved and what it still has to live up to. What is common to all the contributions is that the phenomena that are analysed affect Indian democracy in one way or the other. In this chapter, therefore, I wish to hold up a kind of mirror to India’s democracy. What challenges do we see if we discuss the influence of Indian democracy on itself? A question that is often asked is whether India has the ‘right’ qualities for a democratic regime to function effectively. After brief reflection on the way the question is posed, one detects an unexpressed suspicion that India ought not to survive at all, either as a nation or as a democracy.2 Against the background of some of the challenges described in this book, the following questions are reasonable: Is Indian democracy sustainable? Does the country have enough middle class, literate, female and low-caste people in politics, a high enough average income and so on, to give liberal values buoyancy? Sometimes researchers and debaters turn the question around and wonder whether India’s democracy creates the ‘right’ conditions in the country for long-term development. When can India create some kind of basic welfare for all its citizens? Can democracy bring justice, economic growth and political stability at the same time? In discussing these questions, the issue automatically arises: Is Indian democracy itself creating the

9: India and the Two Faces of Political Mobilization