research paper on indian democracy

The Election Commission of India: Guardian of Democracy

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• First Online: 13 November 2020

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• Amit Ahuja 4 &
• Susan Ostermann 5  

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This chapter tells the story of how the Election Commission of India (ECI) became one of the most awe-inspiring electoral regulatory bodies in the world. One of the most widely celebrated and trusted public institutions in India, it has ensured the integrity—free and fair—of 17 national and more than 370 state elections since 1947, in what is not only the most populous but also one of the most potentially fractious democracies in the world. Ever under pressure from the executive branch and governing parties to bow to demands fed by their desire for electoral windfalls, the ECI managed to strengthen its autonomy through assertive leadership by a series of Chief Electoral Commissioners following the decline of the Congress Party’s political dominance. The rise of the Hindu Nationalist BJP as the new dominant force in Indian politics provides a crucial test for the endurance of the ECI’s role as India’s guardian of electoral integrity.

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From Quiescent Bureaucracy to Powerful Institution 1

The Election Commission of India (ECI) is one of the most powerful electoral regulatory bodies in the world and one of the most widely celebrated and trusted public institutions in India (McMillan 2012 ). 2 It has overseen the completion of 17 national and over 370 state elections since Indian Independence in 1947. It also conducts some of the largest and longest elections in the world. The 2019 parliamentary elections, for example, had 900 million eligible voters, and were completed in nine phases over 39 days. Celebrated as an ‘undocumented wonder’, the ECI has emerged as a guardian of public value—free and fair elections—in India (Quraishi 2014 ).

The role of election commissions in the regulation of elections is of vital importance throughout the world, not least because democraticlegitimacy turns on election credibility. In many countries, opposition parties protest election results and boycott elections. 3 The legitimacy of election results are questioned because the institutions that ensure their validity are themselves questionable. In India, one of the most heterogeneous societies in the world, politics remains highly contentious. Both the democratic system and the state secure their legitimacy through regular free and fair elections. The ECI is responsible for India’s long-standing record of uncontested, free and fair elections.

The world over, democracy has struggled to take root in low-income countries (Przeworski et al. 2000 ). India’s democratic record also makes it an outlier in this respect. Elections have remained popular with the poor. Members of socially excluded groups have emerged as powerful political leaders (Varshney 2000 ; Jaffrelot 2003 ). Steps taken by the ECI have ensured that the poor and marginalized have been enthusiastic voters (Ahuja and Chhibber 2012 ) and have participated in elections in increasing numbers (Kumar 2009 ), without fear of intimidation by higher-ranked, more powerful groups. The security provided to poor voters has also enabled the rise of marginalized groups’ political parties. Leaders from these groups have achieved electoral success. Few low-income democracies can claim such transformative achievements.

The popularity of the ECI is not restricted to citizens alone; political parties have also come to view it as a neutral referee. During our interviews with 62 party leaders and officials, belonging to 15 national and regional political parties, we found that 51 of our respondents generally regarded the ECI in a positive light. 4

Yet the ECI was not always as prominent or powerful, especially vis-à-vis the executive. In a parliamentary system like India’s, the cabinet and the prime minister’s office comprise the executive branch. Before 1989, the executive restricted the ECI’s autonomy. Its Chief Election Commissioners (CECs) mostly remained quiescent. Even the most entrepreneurial CECs had little leeway. Occasionally, when a CEC tried to assert his authority, like Peri Shastri in 1987, the executive would curtail his efforts. 5 When innovations in electoral practice appeared, they resulted from the executive’s rather than ECI’s initiative. 6

In recent decades, however, the ECI has grown into a powerful institution. Krishna Bose ( 2016 ), from the All India Trinamool Congress, remembered how the ruling Communist Party that mastered the art of rigging elections in West Bengal, had to eventually contend with ECI’s close monitoring. ‘In fact, all political parties have a vested interest in a neutral and effective EC’, she wrote. A retired Chief Election Commissioner corroborated this view during an interview: ‘Chief Ministers who do not like the EC when they are in office’, he quipped, ‘are very happy with us when they are in opposition because they rely on a free and fair poll to find their way back to power’. Baijayant Panda, from the Biju Janata Dal, 7 a regional party in the state of Odisha, echoed this sentiment about the ECI’s close election monitoring: ‘It is a bit of a pain in the neck actually. But it does serve the purpose of establishing a degree of fairness and a perception of fairness’. Mayawati, India’s first Dalit (former untouchable) Chief Minister, attributed her party’s majority in the 2007 state assembly election in Uttar Pradesh to ECI protections for poor and marginalized voters.

The ECI is thus deeply implicated in India’s exceptional democratic experience. Understanding how a public institution such as the ECI was able to enhance its powers is an important question. How did the ECI build its institutional credibility? What was the role of the ECI’s leadership and strategy in the processof institution building? These are the questions that this chapter seeks to answer.

We explore and explain the ECI’s institutional development by analysing electoral data and drawing from interviews with six CECs, four Chief Election Officers and eight ECI officials. These lengthy, semi-structured interviews were conducted over two years, sometimes over multiple sittings. We also utilize insights gleaned from hundreds of voter interviews conducted across four large Indian states: Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.

We use historical process-tracing to unearth the mechanisms that enabled the ECI to interpret its mandate expansively and enhance both its power and status. Such an approach allows us to identify the sequence of causes that came to produce a more powerful ECI than was originally envisioned (Goertz and Mahoney 2012 ). In keeping with this methodology, we carry out an over-time process analysis of ECI activities, focusing on Model Code of Conduct (‘Model Code’) implementation and election duration, considering different observations at different points in time and identifying key historical junctures and events.

We begin by describing the ECI and the executive–ECI relationship over time. We then focus on the political opportunity presented by a weakened executive, state-based demands for a referee institution and bureaucratic entrepreneurialism. We examine the ECI’s institutional challenges in a moment of executive resurgence. We conclude with reflections on the conditions that support institutional development in democracies.

The Indian Election Commission in the Time of Congress Dominance and Decline

In developing countries, public institutions rarely enjoy statutory protections from executive pressure. When they do, protections may be ignored by a marauding executive (Collier 2009 ). 8 The ECI, over time, successfully secured institutional autonomy while expanding its mandate.

Gilmartin and Moog ( 2012 ) note that ‘in historical context, the establishment of the Election Commission can best be seen as an effort to “nationalize” elections in India, not only in structural terms to centralize their oversight, but also to associate them strongly with the idea of the Indian nation, unifying a highly disparate and divided population’. Free and fair elections require: (1) an independent electoral management body to conduct elections; (2) a set of rules governing electoral conduct; and (3) an effective electoral dispute resolution mechanism.

The Indian constitution provides all three. Article 324 establishes an independent election commission; Article 327 empowers Parliament to enact laws governing all aspects of elections; and Article 329 provides a mechanism for resolving electoral disputes through review by an independent judiciary. These articles reflect the clear preference of the Constituent Assembly to ensure the autonomy and independence of the ECI, protecting it from executive interference in particular (Devi and Mendiratta 2000 ).

Administratively, the ECI is tasked with a number of core electoral functions. These include the conduct of elections to parliament, all state legislatures and the offices of the President and Vice President; registration of voters and maintenance of electoral rolls; and assistance with electoral district delimitation. The ECI is headed by a CEC, who is typically an outsider drawn from senior members of the Indian Administrative Services (IAS) and the Law Commission. 9 Since 1995, two additional Election Commissioners have regularly worked alongside the CEC. 10

The ECI, in part, because it is small, depends upon state employees to administer elections and oversee the deployment of substantial staff. For example, 11 million personnel administered the parliamentary elections in 2019. In addition, the ECI deploys paramilitary and military forces to secure polls in insurgency-affected regions, where federal forces are often used instead of state police to guard against local influence.

While the ECI enjoys some formal autonomy from the executive, it is not an independent agency. The executive controls the EC’s finances and personnel appointments. During its first 20 years, democratic India was dominated by a single party, Congress, at both the state and national levels. Congress dominance was made possible by its stature as the face of the freedom movement, its relatively well-developed organizational structure, and the pre-eminence of its leadership. It also actively co-opted different interests. 11 Congress did not intrude on ECIautonomy during this period. It did not have to, as elections regularly installed national-level Congress governments and few protested electoral irregularities (as the overall result would not change). The ECI had little reason to exercise its powers and was not pressured to do so by opposition parties.

Over time, Congress’s freedom movement leadership 12 gradually disappeared, the party underwent multiple splits, and its organizational structure weakened. By 1967, Congress began losing power in the states. Under Indira Gandhi’s (‘Indira’) leadership and, later, that of her son, Rajiv Gandhi (‘Rajiv’), Congress’ hold on power became tenuous. Both leaders undermined public institutional autonomy, including that of the ECI.

During this period, the influence of the ECI was circumscribed. CECs knew that if their actions were interpreted to be detrimental to Congress’ interests, they would have to contend with Congress and the Prime Minister after the election. In describing the ECI during this period, McMillan ( 2010 ) observes that the Election Commission had become absorbed into the Congress system of government and lost sight of its broader remit to maintain the democraticstructure of the Indian political system.

The ECI’s minimalist institutional profile was reflected in the public stature of the CEC. Unlike CECs since 1991, who have been prominent public figures, pre-1991 CECs were not well-known. A remark by a CEC, who retired after 2010, captures this change:

During my tenure, I visited different states, in each place I felt the authority of the CEC’s position. The politicians and bureaucrats were deferential. I say this because this was not the case earlier. I remember being introduced to the CEC, Mr. S.L. Shakdher, in 1981, when I was serving as a district magistrate and no one knew him or really cared that much about the CEC’s office.

While discussing the same period, another CEC pointed out that ‘In those days, the ECs were just told by the PM or the Principal Secretary, get ready for elections on such and such date…. But when the elections are held is the prerogative of the CEC, not the PM’s office’. Another former CEC asserted that ‘the EC during the 1970s and 1980s was seen as a sidekick of the government…. You could find the CEC waiting outside the office of the Law Minister…. The ECI is [now] an independent and autonomous body. It does not have political masters’.

A key test of the ECI came in 1975, when the President of India, upon the advice of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, imposed Emergency Rule under Article 352 of the Indian Constitution. The justification was imminent threats to public order. During the 18-month long Emergency, Indira’s government disempowered state governments, incarcerated opposition leaders, cracked down on the press and subdued the judiciary. Then, against expectations, and for the first time in Indian history, the ruling Congress Party (‘Congress’) lost a parliamentary election. The ECI’s reputation benefited from its management of the 1977 election at the end of the National Emergency.

Overall, under Congress dominance and during its decline, CECs retained some independence despite executive power; this proved crucial in the following decades. The independence of the ECI’s office was protected during this early period for three reasons. First, it was constitutionally protected under Article 324. Second, after 1967, as Congress began to lose state-level elections, the Indira-led federal government invoked Article 356 to simply dismiss non-Congress governments, instead of resorting to rigged elections. 13 The executive, therefore, had little need to override ECIautonomy. And, third, Indira’s Model Code violation and judicial disqualification in 1975 made her wary of direct institutional clashes with the ECI. 14 The judiciary, by being willing to stand up to the Prime Minister’s Office, bolstered ECI authority vis-à-vis the executive. CECs we interviewed viewed the judiciary as an important safeguard. ‘The courts realize that we act in public interest’, explained one retired CEC, ‘so they have been willing to side with us and not the government’. The reputation garnered by the ECI under Congress dominance, as well as during its decline, provided opportunities for its further institutional development.

A Turning Point

In the post-Emergency period, Congress, a leader-centric party, suffered two significant organizational setbacks: the assassinations of Indira, in 1984, and her successor, Rajiv, in 1991. In the early 1990s, Congress dominance unravelled. In 1952, national-level Congress vote share was 45%. By 1967, it had shrunk to 41%, by 1991, 36% and by 2004, 27%. This decline was accompanied by: (1) an increase in the number of political parties 15 ; (2) more competitive electoral politics; and (3) coalition governments.

With party system fragmentation in the 1990s, coalition politics became institutionalized at the national level. A similar pattern occurred in many states. Between 1989 and 2014, all 8 national governments were coalition governments. The number of states being ruled by coalition governments increased from 0 in 1952, to 4 in 1995, to 18 in 2006. In the states where regional party systems replaced Congress earlier, party systems also experienced fragmentation resulting in party proliferation. The number of state-based political parties increased from 33 in 1984 to 209 in 1996.

Before 1989, party competition was more limited. Between 1952 and 1984, the effective number of parties (‘ENP’), as measured by vote share, ranged from 3.40 to 5.19; when measured using seat-share in parliament, the range was 1.69–3.16. The corresponding ENP for the period 1989–2014 were between 4.80 and 7.98, and 3.50 and 6.50, respectively.

With no party in a position to form a majority government, a variety of coalition governments came to power. This meant that executive power was, to varying degrees, dispersed among alliance partners. The addition of multiple veto players weakened the executive. 16 With coalition governance, government tenures at the national and state levels became more uncertain, surviving as long as their coalitions held. Under these constraints, political parties supported an assertive ECI that was willing to clean up the electoral process. The ECI profited from this uncertainty, as weaker governments became unlikely to limit its autonomy. 17 One ECI official recounted a moment when A. B. Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party (‘BJP’)-led coalition government between 1998 and 2004 moved to appoint an outsider instead of promoting the senior Election Commissioner as CEC. When this news reached the Election Commissioners, they threatened to resign. The government withdrew its proposal (Sridharan and Vaishnav 2017 ).

State-based parties came into prominence during party system fragmentation. These smaller parties relied on the ECI to ensure free and fair state-level elections. As challengers, they did not trust the state machinery, bureaucrats or the police to discharge their responsibilities in a nonpartisan manner, perhaps remaining loyal to incumbents. Thus, state-based challengers turned towards the ECI, a federal body, to ensure fair state -level competition. Aware of incumbent loyalties among public officials, an assertive ECI was willing to prevent them from influencing the electoral process. Smaller parties supported ECI efforts to clean up electoral rolls, as inflated rolls allowed major parties to fraudulently exaggerate vote share. Parties also demanded the use of the federal security apparatus rather than local police during elections, which the EC was willing to support. Parties that relied on support from poor and marginalized groups supported the ECI’s vulnerability mapping project. 18 The ECI cracked down on the flow of money and alcohol, despite resistance.

Occasionally, the ECI ran into resistance. In 2001, for example, the ECI had a standoff with state governments. The ECI wanted to be able to ensure public officials’ compliance with ECI instructions after state-level elections had been announced. State governments viewed this as a violation of federal principles that protect state government personnel from federal sanction. The ECI did not back down and a compromise was reached. The ECI was granted the power to remove government officials for the duration of an election, but state governments alone could act against them. The earlier changes had an immediate effect on ECI’sautonomy. Structural constraints on the ECI declined. The ECI became more autonomous and began to assert its authority.

The Pivotal Role of the Entrepreneurial Chief Election Commissioner

The collapse of single-party dominance and increase in party competition in the 1990s was a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for the development of a powerful ECI. The decline in single-party dominance weakened executive power, a key constraint on the ECI’sautonomy. Increased party competitioncreated state-based demand for the ECI’s role. These conditions provided the ECI with a political opportunity. Then, in the 1990s, entrepreneurial CECs used and built upon the credibility the ECI had developed over the years to expand its mandate in the name of serving a diverse coalition of interests.

Indeed, the CEC played an important role in the expansion of ECIpower. Mandate expansions have often been driven by entrepreneurial leadership from bureaucrats, acting in moments of political opportunity (Bakir 2009 ; Nay 2011 ). In many parts of the US federal bureaucracy, bureau and division chiefs were responsible for mandate expansion. These entrepreneurs crafted agendas, shaped the composition of the long-term, organized workforce, marketed their agencies and themselves, controlled information flowing to the legislature and, ultimately, convinced elected officials to use programs the agencies themselves had designed (Doig and Hargrove 1987 ; Carpenter 2001 ).

After 1989, with no party in a position to win a majority, the ECI faced few structural constraints on its autonomy. CECs began to assert authority over political actors during elections. The first to do so was T. N. Seshan, who introduced several changes to the election process. Seshan was able to win concessions from the Congress-led minority government to elevate the CEC’s position, in the warrant of precedence, from that of a High Court judge to that of a Supreme Court justice. He also introduced election observers for state assembly elections, pioneered voter ID cards and refused to take executive instructions. Seshan skillfully navigated an expanding media environment. He regularly issued press releases and used publicity to ‘force politicians to internalize… the norms’ embodied in the Model Code (Gilmartin 2009 ).

Such was his influence that politicians, it was said half-jokingly, ‘feared only God or T.N. Seshan’. His aggression and repeated executive clashes made him controversial. Sometimes he exceeded his authority and the Supreme Court stepped into overrule his decisions. Despite occasional losses, Seshan differentiated himself from predecessors by demonstrating the constitutional powers that an entrepreneurial CEC could exercise.

Seshan was the force that moved the ECI from a little-known institution to a highly regarded one in a moment of opportunity. This change was likely not inevitable and owes a considerable debt to Seshan’s leadership. Opportunities do not automatically convert into outcomes. Those of his successors who we interviewed, even those who did not always approve of his methods, acknowledged as much. A less entrepreneurial CEC may not have responded similarly to the political opportunity he received. Seshan demonstrated ECI authority and set a standard by raising the ECI’s profile and altering public expectations of both the CEC and the ECI. ‘Before Seshan, the CEC’s main job was to announce the election results’, a former CEC observed. ‘From the 1960s right up to the 80s, the ECI was being run Ram-bharose (left to the mercy of God), said another former CEC’. Additionally, another former CEC commented, ‘The ECI can continue to learn from his legacy’. One CEC described Seshan’s tenure as an era in which the CEC set new benchmarks for all CECs who followed.

The CECs who followed were not as controversial, but they were also not reluctant to assert ECI authority, even when this meant taking on the executive. More significantly, an informal norm arose in which each CEC would try to leave a mark on the ECI by improving the electoral process in some way. Introduction of electronic voting machines, vulnerability mapping, closer monitoring of elections, digitizing of voter lists, voter education programs, publishing information on a candidate’s economic assets and criminal records are all initiatives that have been introduced by Seshan’s successors.

But if the executive appoints CECs, why have weak executives not chosen more pliant CECs? After all, it is not in the executive’s interest to appoint entrepreneurial bureaucrats to the ECI, but some have done just that. Our interviews point to three answers.

First, these are seasoned bureaucrats who have spent their entire careers around politicians. An important aspect of the professionalization process is learning to mask personal preferences. It is then difficult for politicians to assess the capacity and intent of such bureaucrats. Second, potential CECs are ECI outsiders and it is only when they join the institution that they actually discover the true stature of the position. Third, bureaucrats are beholden to their profession. Their prestige is rooted in what fellow bureaucrats think of them. More than one CEC described how much their professionalreputations matter to them. One CEC noted, ‘When the ECI organizes elections, it works with civil servants from all over the country. I always felt that these bureaucrats must be able to look up to the CEC and take pride in my conduct’.

Institutional Development and Evidence of Mandate Expansion

The institutional development of the ECI occurred in two phases: a pre-1991 period, in which the ECI played an important-but-circumscribed role; and a post-1991 period, in which, the ECI, under a weakened executive and led by an entrepreneurial CEC, began to expansively interpret its constitutional mandate and play an increasingly powerful role. Below we substantiate the ECI’s expanded role by examining two key indicators: Model Code Implementation and Election Duration. 19 We use these two indicators because: (1) they represent the most significant manifestations of the ECI’s expansively interpreted mandate and (2) they can be tracked longitudinally.

Model Code Implementation

The Model Code of Conduct began in the South Indian state of Kerala, in 1960, as a consensus between political parties regarding their electoral conduct. It delineates the types of appeals that may be made during the run-up to an election (e.g. no ethnic or religious appeals, no criticism of candidates’ private lives), outlines the procedures that must be followed for meetings and processions, describes what members of the ruling party cannot do while acting in official capacity, describes permissible election manifesto material and lists polling day rules (e.g. distance parties must maintain from polling booths, how parties must cooperate with authorities, how party workers must identify themselves, etc.). While infractions occur on a regular basis, parties largely adjust their conduct once officially notified, suggesting that the Model Code does represent the rules of the game. 20

Until the late 1980s, the ECI merely watched how the Model Code was updated and gradually adopted by additional states. It wasn’t until 1990, however, that the ECI enforced it. In December 1990, T. N. Seshan became CEC and quickly began pursuing ECI independence and mandate expansion. He did so, in part, by formalizing the Model Code. These efforts drew the ire of Narasimha Rao’s Congress government and the executive pushed back, expanding the ECI to three members to check Seshan’spower. These two additional election commissioners failed, however, to curtail both the ECI’s power expansion and Model Code institutionalization.

As Singh ( 2012 : 153) explains, ‘since 1991, the Model Code has come to be seen as an integral part of elections, making the electoral contest democratic by ensuring that the party in power and those who staked claims to power would abide by certain rules, and by pruning the powers of the ruling party to reduce the advantage that it may have in the electoral arena’. One former CEC pointed out, ‘[we] are interested in catching violations of the Model Code. It requires substantial manpower. But in such a competitive environment rivals (parties and candidates) monitor each other. A large number of complaints and Model Code violation reports come from political parties. We take these complaints very seriously and investigate them immediately’. ECI officials knew that a proliferation of television channels and media platforms ensure that such incidents are well-publicized, so the ECI has to respond swiftly.

Examples of Model Code enforcement abound. In January 2017, Arvind Kejriwal was censured for remarks at a rally in Goa. 21 Kejriwal, the Aam Admi Party leader, suggested that voters, when parties offer Rs. 5000 for their vote, should ask for Rs. 10,000. In 2015, in the lead-up to Bihar’s state elections, BJP President Amit Shah was censured for stating that, if the BJP loses in Bihar, ‘firecrackers will go off in Pakistan’, a violation of the provision prohibiting aggravation of existing differences or creation of mutual hatred. In the same election Rahul Gandhi, Congress Vice President, was cautioned for suggesting that the BJP makes Hindus and Muslims hate each other; these were unverified allegations used to criticize other candidates or their workers. A more subtle Model Code violation occurred in the lead-up to the 2009 general elections. The ECI notified the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, the Cabinet Secretary and the Chief Secretary of Delhi, for taking out a full-page advertisement on the 2010 Commonwealth Games in major Delhi newspapers listing the infrastructure built for the event and the thousands of job opportunitiescreated. The ECI found this list of the government’s achievements to be a clear Model Code violation.

Since it is not based on legislation passed in parliament, the Code is not judicially enforceable. The action against a violator usually takes the form of an advice, warning or censure. No punitive action can be taken. But this does not make the Code toothless. Its moral authority outweighs its legal sanctity. Its impact is instant. Political leaders are scared of inviting a notice for a violation, as it creates negative public perception about them and their party just before elections. Importantly, while individuals sometimes contest whether their behaviour truly violated Model Code regulations, both candidates and parties almost never argue that the Model Code is illegitimate or should be abandoned.

Election Duration

In addition to Model Code institutionalization, the ECI’s expanded mandate manifested itself in the duration of both national (parliamentary) and state-level elections. With the exception of the 1952 and 1957 national elections, early Indian elections, as evidenced by Fig.  2.1 , were brief. Most national elections, from independence to 1996, took only a few days. This has since changed dramatically. The first three parliamentary elections were held over four months, 17 days and ten days, respectively. 22 The three elections conducted between 1967 and 1977 were each completed in less than seven days. The same trend continued through the 1980s. The 1991 election was supposed to be completed in a week; however, Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination in the middle of the election extended its duration.

( Source Election Commission of India)

Parliamentary election duration in India

Since 1991, however, the general trend has been towards substantially longer elections. In 1996, election duration began to increase sharply. The 1996 election was completed in three phases over the course of a month; the 1998 election in four phases over three weeks; the 1999 election in five phases over four weeks; the 2004 election in four phases over three weeks; the 2009 election in five phases over four weeks; and the 2014 and 2019 elections in nine phases over five weeks.

This pattern holds at the state level as well, where the ECI also conducts elections. While longer election duration is particularly pronounced in larger states, it also exists in smaller states. For example, in Bihar, the average pre-1991 election duration was 1.4 days, and 17 days since then. In Maharashtra, the average pre-1991 election duration was 1.86 days, and 8.75 days since then. Meanwhile, in Odisha, the pre-1991 number is 3, and 6 since then. In Andhra Pradesh, pre-1991 election duration averaged 1 day, while post-1991 duration averaged 8 days. Finally, in Assam, a much smaller state, in terms of both geographic size and population, average pre-1991 election duration was 1.75, while post-1991 duration was 3.8.

Entrepreneurial CECs justified the increase in election duration by pointing to demands for cleaner elections. The ECI has to move security force personnel and other parts of the administrative apparatus over long distances. These logistical constraints help justify longer election duration because they are directly related to the process of ensuring free and fair polling.

The ECI’s expanding mandate in the post-1991 period is also visible across other indicators. Since 1991, the ECI has mandated voter ID cards, curtailed campaign periods, engaged in large-scale voter mobilization, tried to regulate political parties and entry of candidates into the electoral process, and assumed both executive and quasi-judicial control during elections (Quraishi 2014 ).

Credibility: The EC’s Core Institutional Currency

The ECI has gradually expanded its mandate and increased its activity both during and in the run-up to elections. The enforcement of the Model Code, curtailment of electoral campaigns and longer election durations all constitute mandate expansion. While some credibility was required in order to make these changes, they have also served to reinforce institutional credibility, which has, in turn, allowed the ECI to leverage public and sometimes judicial support to confront government’s intrusion between 1990 and 2014. It has helped the ECI to become a powerful public institution. A closer look at the ECI’s pursuit of credibility reveals how important this ratchet function was to the ECI’s expansive interpretation of its mandate.

The ECI entered the era of party system fragmentation in the 1990s with some institutional credibility. Its quiescence during Indira Gandhi’s and Rajiv Gandhi’s tenures notwithstanding, it had retained a degree of independence, and it had successfully conducted a large number of national and state assembly elections. Since 1967, Congress had regularly lost power to opposition parties in state assembly elections overseen by the ECI.

The 1977 and 1989 national elections were pivotal to the ECI’scredibility. Opposition leaders had feared that post-Emergency elections in 1977 would be rigged in Congress’ favour. Charan Singh wrote as much to Jayaprakash Narayan (both opposition stalwarts) in January 1977: ‘Mrs. Gandhi is thinking of staging an election. I call it “staging” because conditions for a real election–free and fair–will be lacking’ (Raghavan 2017 ). As it turned out, Congress was voted out of national office for the first time during these elections. Had the ECI not presided over a free and fair election in 1977, political parties would likely have had less faith in the ECI as an honest referee and would have resisted its mandate expansion.

Prior credibility allowed an ECI led by an entrepreneurial CEC to take advantage of a political opportunity and expand its mandate. The ECI then used its added powers to further equalize treatment: demonstrating political neutrality and being willing to intervene in favour of marginalized voters. This approach reinforced the ECI’s credibility.

The long-term credibility of a referee institution turns on its perceived neutrality. The EC needs to be viewed as an impartial institution by two sets of actors: (1) politicians and political parties and (2) voters. The ECI has put in place a set of policies to ensure neutrality with respect to both sets.

To ensure neutrality with respect to politicians and political parties, the ECI appoints a Chief Election Officer for each state who reports directly to the ECI. It also has the power to remove and/or suspend partisan state government officials. To secure polling stations and voting machines, the ECI always uses the Central Armed Police Forces to ensure that any security action taken is not affected by local-level loyalties. It also penalizes candidates for Model Code violations. Finally, it regularly consults with political parties, especially before implementing new policies, and takes their concerns into consideration. In the words of an ECI official, ‘elections are their show, we are only referees’.

To ensure neutrality with respect to voters, particularly subnationalist groups and individuals especially suspicious of the ruling dispensations in Delhi or their respective state capitals, the ECI has ramped up security in violence-prone areas and conducted vulnerability mapping. The ECI’s past failure on this count proved consequential. During the 1987 state assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir, when, under the federal government’s pressure, the ECI looked the other way while the elections were rigged in favour of state-backed parties, it triggered an insurgency. The ECI’s failure contributed to the onset of India’s bloodiest internal conflict, but also provided the ECI with a learning opportunity.

A more assertive ECI has been able to ensure that elections in violence-prone areas are seen as free and fair. For example, J. M. Lyngdoh, CEC in 2003, spoke to the Army and Paramilitary commanders in Jammu and Kashmir and told them that security forces should neither cast ballots nor force citizens to vote to boost turnout, as doing so would rob the election of its legitimacy (Lyngdoh 2004 ). He also threatened to cancel the election results if his warnings were not heeded. 23

Similarly, as CEC, M. S. Gill engineered a compromise to enable free and fair elections in Assam, in 2001. Gill assured local groups that they could petition the ECI to cancel the votes of Bangladeshi migrants whose Indian citizenship was in doubt, thus preventing a boycott of the elections by local ethnic groups. Along the same lines, soon after the 2002 Hindu–Muslim violence in Gujarat, the ruling BJP called an election that would allow it to benefit from religious polarization. 24 The ECI thwarted this plan, challenging the state government’s assertion that the state was ready to hold a free and fair election (Lyngdoh 2004 ), and delaying the elections by six months.

Besides deploying security forces and delaying elections after violent incidents, the ECI closely tracks criminals and potential troublemakers. Preventative arrests are made, surety bonds are obtained and targeted individuals are tracked with video surveillance. Candidates with criminal backgrounds are continuously tracked. Reports of observers, security personnel, media and videographers are reviewed to assess instances of violence (Shukla 2010 ; Mendiratta 2010 ). If they suggest disruptive activity, then a re-poll is ordered immediately. These efforts seem to have paid off, as instances of electoral violence have dropped dramatically across most states. During the 1970s and 1980s, electoral violence claimed hundreds of lives and polling booth-level irregularities were common across some states (Crossette 1989 ). This is no longer the case.

The ‘active neutrality’ described above also characterizes ECI vulnerability mapping efforts to ensure the equal opportunity of voters who are particularly susceptible to social intimidation and disenfranchisement. In North Indian states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where historically marginalized voters have been intimidated and prevented from voting, acts of violence and bullying have dropped drastically. During interviews, elderly Dalit voters in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar often reported that in the past they had been asked not to vote, or turned away from polling stations after being told by dominant caste individuals that their ballots had already been cast. One-on-one interviews revealed that 33% of 206 Dalit subjects in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar reported that either they or a member of their immediate family had experienced intimidation during elections at some point (Ahuja 2019 ). 25 Today, the situation is different, however. During recent interviews, voters rarely reported feeling insecure or unsafe while lining up to vote on the day of polling.

Post-1991, the ECI came to be regarded as a force for good in Indian politics and neutrality was essential to its success. CECs we interviewed generally believed that being perceived to be above partisan and ethnic politics was critical to their credibility with both parties and the public. An increase in political contestation beginning in 1967 tested the ECI’s role as a referee institution. The ECI is a public facing institution, so its legitimacy in the eyes of the citizens and political actors turns on its performance. Elections are high-stakes contest, especially in first-past-post winner-take-all electoral systems like the one in India. The widespread acceptance of election results across the political spectrum of India’s multiparty democracy as well as the reduction in electoral irregularities and violence together have built the ECI’slegitimacy.

Return to Quiescence?

Since 2014, after a gap of twenty-six years, the executive has been resurgent in India. All governments between 1989 and 2014 were coalition governments and no single party enjoyed a parliamentary majority. The Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) attained parliamentary majorities in both 2014 and 2019. Its vote share increased from 31% in 2014 to 38% in 2019. The BJP is also in government in a majority of Indian states. For the 2019 elections, the ENP values, based on both vote and seat shares, have fallen to 5.4 and 3.0, respectively.

It should not be surprising, then, that the executive has instead turned to the tactic of limiting the ECI’sauthority from within, by appointing pliant election commissioners. The ECI deferred the 2017 Gujarat state assembly elections. This move went against the ECI’s own convention and opposition parties alleged that the ECI’s actions were designed to delay the implementation of the Model Code of Conduct and allow the BJP-led Gujarat government to announce new programs that might convince voters to cast their ballots for the BJP. In a separate incident, the CEC disqualified twenty legislators of the Aam Admi Party, a BJP rival, from the Delhi assembly. As this move occurred without following due process, the CEC was criticized for his actions. The ECI was also widely criticized for its meek response to Narendra Modi and the BJP’s repeated model code violations during the 2019 parliamentary election campaign. The ECI was slow to respond to these violations, and it failed to censure bad behaviour and impose penalties on the ruling party and the prime minister.

By contrast, it was much swifter in its response to similar violations by opposition parties. The same pattern was visible in the 2020 Delhi state assembly elections. Faced with unprecedented levels of hate speech, the ECI’s rebuke was weak at best. 26 Together, these actions point to a consequential slide. The ECI’s moves in the state assembly and the 2019 parliamentary elections have cast a shadow over the ECI’s reputation for neutrality, something it has gradually built over decades.

Still, election commissioners are not as helpless in the face of a marauding executive as they were in the 1980s. Today, entrepreneurial election commissioners can leverage the ECI’s enhanced reputation to retain its authority and stand up to the executive. One of the Election Commissioners, Ashok Lavasa, wrote four dissenting notes against the ECI’s meek response to the Model Code violations of the BJP and its leadership during the 2019 elections. After taking office, the BJP government was swift to punish Lavasa by opening investigations against his family. Lavasa is scheduled to take over as India’s next CEC in 2021. It remains to be seen if the executive will intervene to prevent this transition.

To assert its authority, the ECI can also draw on the demand for a reputable referee institution among India’s national and numerous regional political parties. It risks politicization of the institution, however, if it relies solely on support from opposition parties to stand up to the executive. In addition, ultimately, if the election commissioners and the chief election commissioner in particular, are unwilling to protect the ECI’s institutional autonomy from the executive who appointed them, the ECI will struggle to maintain its power and reputation. To the degree that the executive wins this battle, we expect weaker Model Code implementation and the emergence of irregularities that favour the executive.

In this chapter, we showed that the Indian EC’s mandate expanded during a moment of political opportunitycreated by a fragmented party system. Faced with a weakened executive and a more competitive party system between 1989 and 2014, and led by entrepreneurial bureaucrats, the ECI successfully bargained for greater political power. The institutional values of competence and integrity enhanced the ECI’s credibility. It gradually increased its credibility by offering additional protections to voters and procedural assurances of the fairness of the voting process. As it did so, it began to enforce a Model Code and expanded the scale and duration of the electoral process. Political parties that had become increasingly reliant on a strong, neutral referee institution were unable to resist the ECI’s expansionist interpretation of its mandate.

The ECI emerged as a credible referee institution, not only for India, but as a model for the developing world, where contested election results and biased referee institutions have often weakened the foundations of democracy. This chapter suggests that a weak executive, often associated with political uncertainty and therefore regarded as detrimental to state institutions, can benefit credible regulatory institutions led by bureaucratic entrepreneurs and be a boon for state capacity in the long run.

The ECI is not invincible, however. Since 2014, the resurgent executive has constrained the ECI, and if the ECI’s competence is in question, or its behaviour is perceived as being partial it will also begin to lose its legitimacy. In fact, as recent democratic experience has highlighted and the literature on democratic backsliding has documented, neutrality of referee institutions and the credibility of the democraticprocess cannot be taken for granted, even in long-standing democracies (Levitsky and Ziblat 2018 ). Such institutions are vulnerable to being undermined from the outside as well as from within. 27

One clear implication of this chapter on the ECI’s institutional development is that a weak executive can facilitate the strengthening of state institutions. A competitive party system that regularly transfers power from one party or coalition to another allows state institutions the space to both remain apolitical and maintain high credibility. Such a party system also creates a demand for neutral institutions. A single-party or a single-coalition dominant system is likely to have the opposite effect. In a single-party system, institutional mandates and credibility are protected by strong leadership or executive self-restraint. In India, while a CEC enjoys substantial protections, their appointment is in the hands of the executive making the ECI vulnerable.

The corollary of this argument is that a stronger executive may well reassert itself and reclaim the authority it has ceded to the ECI over the years. We do observe evidence that points in this direction. Still, given the credibility the ECI has accumulated, even a strong executive must avoid an open challenge to the ECI’s institutional authority. Demands for referee institutions are unlikely under single-party dominance; instead they appear in moments of political contestation. In federal systems, state-based actors often demand strong referees. Governance of heterogeneous, pluralistic polities demands a set of shared institutions, principles and procedures that make it possible to rule a divided society without undue violence. Such rules are particularly necessary in federal systems where power is shared between the federal and provincial governments. In such systems, citizens and state-based political organizations may want common rules and external referees, even as they remain opposed to central rule. Generally, we expect that the greater the number of conflicts at the subnational level, the higher the demand for federal referee institutions.

The findings of this chapter can be connected to perennial questions about public institutions. When are institutions able to expand their mandate and accumulate power in the name of public welfare? How are institutions able to take advantage of political opportunities to preserve and expand their power? Broadly speaking, the evidence points to a nested set of factors at work in a federal democracy: the political opportunity presented by weakened institutional constraints is a necessary prerequisite for institutional mandate expansion. In this moment of opportunity, when entrepreneurial bureaucratic actors take advantage of a demand for a competent, neutral arbiter, they are able to successfully increase the powers of their institutions.

Questions for Discussion

This chapter describes two types of institutional leadership. Can you identify both types and explain how they relate to the institutionalization of the ECI?

What roles do national election regulators such as the ECI play within the political process, and what values do they seek to safeguard?

What are the main challenges to the effectiveness and legitimacy of national election regulators?

How did the ECI manage to overcome these challenges—what were the key drivers of its current status as a public institution?

How might the independence and competence of regulatory bodies such as ECI be ensured irrespective of who holds political power at any given time?

This chapter draws substantially on previously published work: Ahuja and Ostermann ( 2018 ).

The 1996 National Election Study (‘NES’) found that the ECI enjoyed the highest level of public trust among major public institutions, including the judiciary, police and political parties (Mitra and Singh 1999 ). In the 2004 NES, 80% of respondents believed elections to be free and fair (De Souza et al. 2008 ).

Beaulieu ( 2014 ) examines 1975–2006 electoral protest data and finds that after 1990 post-election protests increased threefold and election boycotts ninefold.

Interviews conducted by Ahuja between 2004 and 2009 in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.

Peri Shastri annoyed Rajiv’s government by not adhering to the government’s election schedule. Unable to fire Shastri, the executive punished him by opening false investigations against him and packing the ECI with two additional Election Commissioners.

For example, in 1971, Indira shifted vote-counting from polling stations to district headquarters. Indira, who was popular among poor voters, believed them vulnerable to reprisals from property-holding groups and acted to protect their anonymity (Blair 1972 ).

Baijayant Panda shifted from Biju Janata Dal to Bharatiya Janata Party in March 2019.

In postcolonial democratic societies, universal franchise from the beginning presented an institution-buildingchallenge (Nordlinger 1968 ).

Most CECs have been IAS officers. This is not surprising—conducting elections is an administrative exercise carried out with the help of state-level bureaucrats.

In 1989, a Congress-led government appointed two additional Election Commissioners for the first time. This policy was reversed soon after. The number of Election Commissioners increased again in 1993. After a legal challenge in 1995, the Supreme Court approved two additional Election Commissioners permanently.

These included ethnic, religious and class-based interests. Congress was a catchall party.

By ‘freedom movement leadership’ we me those members of the Congress political party who were actively involved in the struggle to free India of British rule, including Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel and Rajendra Prasad.

Article 356 was invoked only thrice from 1949 to 1974, while from 1975 to 1979, it was invoked 21 times, and, from 1980 to 1987, 18 times.

The complaint against Indira was made not to the ECI, but the courts, which found in the complainant’s favour.

The logic of federalism implies that coalition governance at the national and state levels creates more opportunities for small parties to gain access to public resources.

According to Tsebelis ( 2002 ), veto players are individual or collective actors who possess the power to prevent a decision-outcome.

Rudolph and Rudolph ( 2001 ) suggest that in a moment of executive weakness the Indian state shifted from interventionist to regulatory mode. This may not entirely be true. For instance, the executive mustered the coalition strength to extend affirmative action programs to Other Backward Castes in 2006 and implemented a national rural employment guarantee program across India in 2008. Since all parties desired a neutral referee, it was not possible for the executive to build a similar coalition against the ECI.

Vulnerability mapping involves the ECI identifying groups—like the poor, Dalits and Scheduled Tribes—that are particularly susceptible to voter intimidation. At relevant polling stations, the ECI then contacts these individuals to assure them of ECI protection on the day of the election. Vulnerable voters are encouraged to report misconduct and immediate action is taken on complaints.

We measure election duration from first to last polling date after removing exceptional dates. We do not use election notification or MCC enforcement date because of the longitudinal nature of our analysis; the level of disruption associated with the first has changed over time and the second did not exist during many of the early years included in our analysis, thus preventing clean comparisons.

The exception is with respect to alcohol distribution during the campaign. The Model Code prohibits this and the distribution of similar enticements, but, despite the ECI generally confiscating thousands of litres of alcohol during an election, most parties at least attempt to continue this practice.

Censure is supposed to publically embarrass the candidate in the middle of an election campaign. When appropriate, the ECI can file a criminal complaint against the candidate.

Poor infrastructure, weather and lack of experience conducting elections contributed to the unusual length of these first elections.

We learned this from ECI officials we interviewed.

The BJP and the state government were directly implicated in supporting an anti-Muslim pogrom.

These semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2004 across rural and urban Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The subjects for these interviews were selected using stratified random sampling.

The ECI’s conduct during the 2020 Delhi state assembly election provoked criticism from one of the former CECs (Quraishi 2020 ).

For a similar argument about European bureaucracies, see Olsen ( 2007 ).

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Ahuja, A., Ostermann, S. (2021). The Election Commission of India: Guardian of Democracy. In: Boin, A., Fahy, L.A., ‘t Hart, P. (eds) Guardians of Public Value. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51701-4_2

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India’s democracy: illusion or reality.

For the last sixty years, since it gained independence in 1947, India has claimed the position of the world’s largest democracy. For almost as long, skeptics have seen India’s democracy as an Indian rope trick,1 an illusion in which the superstructure of democratic government—a parliament and prime minister, periodic elections, constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms—hides the reality of on-the-ground authoritarian rule by local landlords, bureaucracy, and party bosses, buttressed by a culture of caste-based inequality, and sustained by India’s continuing desperate poverty.

If this is an illusion, it is an impressive one. Within two years of independence, and through open and spirited debate, India produced a constitution that guarantees “fundamental rights,” and a federal and parliamentary system with a significant role for the Supreme Court, which over the years has enhanced its powers in the system through decisions that limit parliamentary sovereignty. From the beginning, there was tolerance of peaceful dissent and a wide range of active political associations. Despite some small-scale Communist-led rebellions, the Communist Party was not banned. There was a vigorous free press.

The 1951–52 elections for national parliament and state legislatures highlighted the bold decision to adopt universal adult suffrage. Despite the high level of illiteracy and low level of education, all men and women twenty-one and older—the age limit has since been lowered to eighteen—had the right to vote. With Jawaharlal Nehru in the lead, the campaign was very lively, with literally thousands of public meetings and processions. There was no doubt that the Congress Party would win the election easily, since it was a mass movement that had brought freedom to the country. It had major responsibility for governing the country in the five years before the election, but it is significant that Nehru, as Prime Minister, had included important leaders of other parties in the cabinet, including the Law Minister, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the leader of the “untouchables,” and S. P. Mookherjee, who later founded the Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh. Even though the Congress won an overwhelming majority of seats in parliament and in every state legislature, it received less than half the vote. Thus, a mandate was given for Congress to rule, and for the opposition to legitimately hold it accountable.

Nehru continued to act as tutor for India’s democracy, making sure to attend parliament on important occasions, respecting opposition party leaders, and listening to those in power in the states, who were his comrades in the freedom struggle and Congress Party members. The next two sets of elections (held in 1957 and 1962) followed the same pattern, with the Congress surviving the major political crisis that ended with the reorganization of the states—a substantial redrawing of the map of India based on language. In the 1967 election, however, the Congress met defeat in many major states, bringing opposition coalitions to power. The defeat was one factor that caused a split in the party in 1969. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, adopting a populist electoral appeal, swept aside the other Congress splinter, and in the aftermath of India’s successful war against Pakistan in 1971, won victories in states lost in 1967 and in several other mid-term elections. Indira Gandhi’s actions seemingly re-established Congress hegemony.

A series of economic and political crises, however, resulted in Mrs. Gandhi, in June 1975, invoking a constitutional provision for declaring a national “Emergency.” She jailed opposition leaders, imposed press censorship, and rammed through constitutional amendments to reduce the autonomy of the judiciary and enhance executive powers. Despite very little popular resistance, after a year or so there was considerable disillusionment with the claimed benefits of the Emergency and disquiet with apparent abuses of power. To her everlasting credit, Mrs. Gandhi not only allowed the scheduled election of parliament, but did not interfere with its administration. The election was as free and fair as previous ones, with most opposition leaders freed from jail and the press allowed to function as before.

The unexpected and exhilarating defeat of Mrs. Gandhi and the Congress in the 1977 election constituted a second liberation from authoritarian rule. It is critical to note that Mrs. Gandhi quietly handed over power to the winners, and three years later fought successfully to return to power through democratic means. In the meantime, the constitutional powers of the judiciary had been restored, other changes repealed, and the Congress faced a credible political alternative at both national and state levels. The press rapidly changed into a more active institution, doing investigative reporting and challenging the government in ways it hadn’t before the Emergency.

In the four decades since 1977, India’s democracy has weathered other crises—the separatist movements in Punjab and the northeast states, for example—without returning to authoritarian rule. Regular elections have been held, and there has been peaceful alternation of power between parties or coalitions six times at the national level and countless times in the states. 2 A free press has become a largely free media, as the government has diluted its monopoly of TV (although it still holds complete control of the radio broadcast system), and information flows freely from abroad, as it has always done. Political parties and non-governmental organizations, ranging from local social action groups to country-wide issue-oriented movements (on the environment, for instance) continue to grow in importance. Individual freedoms of speech, association, and assembly are largely unconstrained.

Currently, the political landscape continues to feature a national parliament that meets regularly, debates openly, but in many ways is fairly weak as a legislative body. Now, twenty-eight states also have regularly elected and functioning legislatures, chief ministers, and cab inets that make policies in crucial areas mainly reserved for the states, such as law and order, education, health, and economic development. Originally, local government institutions were creatures of state government. However, local government has found a place in the constitution, with required periodic elections and a mandate for substantial transfer of resources for development purposes. Elections throughout India have produced literally millions of newly elected representatives, one-third of them women. For the most part, however, substantial financial resources have not been provided to those institutions.

A judicial system at the upper levels—the High Courts of the states and the Supreme Court in Delhi—is respected for administration of justice, though burdened by widespread inefficiency. Some cases take literally decades to decide. There is corruption at the lowest levels.

The players in the system have changed dramatically over the last sixty years. At present, in national elections, the Congress Party gets around a quarter of the vote, as does the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Parties powerful in only one state split the rest of the vote. There are hundreds of small parties and thousands of independent candidates, very few of whom win any seats.

Over time, more and more states have developed two-party systems, many of which have in fact two coalitions, but they are not necessarily the same two parties (or coalitions) that are competing. The Congress remains a force in almost all states, but the BJP’s strength is confined mostly to northern and western states. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has won every election in West Bengal since 1977, and in Tamil Nadu, the two major contestants are the two Tamil nationalist parties, the DMK and the AIADMK. Other major parties include the Socialist Party and the BSP—the party whose core is the people once considered outside and beneath the Hindu castes (the Untouchables), many of whom now use the term “dalit” (oppressed)—in Uttar Pradesh; the Akali Dal (party of the Sikhs) in Punjab; the cultural nationalist TDP in Andhra Pradesh; and the RJD (a middle-caste based party) in Bihar.

A pattern of instability in state governments after the 1967 election lasted about two decades. Now, it is not exceptional for state governments to last a full five-year term, and recently several have won re-election. This stability has helped state governments to become more active and effective promoters of programs in education and economic development; they now play the central government for resources rather than being manipulated, as in the past when their local political footing was less sure. Some instability associated with coalitions surfaced in Delhi after the 1989 election, when a coalition called the “Third Force” (i.e., neither Congress-led nor BJP-led) took power, but soon had to be rearranged. The same thing happened in 1996–98. The BJP-led coalition that won in 1998 came apart, but a new version won in 1999 and served a full term. The Congress-led coalition that won narrowly in 2004 has managed to stay together.

In sum, India appears to have a democracy that functions according to the rules. The country handles external and internal crises well, while accommodating new political leaders, movements, and patterns of political rule and opposition. The ordinary citizen has not been left out: turnout in elections has risen to a present-day figure of about fifty-five to sixty percent of eligible voters, and the percentage of women, people designated “tribal,” and other marginal groups has almost reached that of the population as a whole. Turnout percentages of poor and rural voters are significantly higher than the average Indian turnout.

Indian citizens show strong support for democracy. In the 2007 State of Democracy in South Asia report, ninety-two percent of a large survey sample believe democracy to be suitable for India; “strong democrats” outweigh “non-democrats” by forty-one to fifteen percent (with forty-three percent as “weak democrats”). 3 In Yogendra Yadav’s summation: “The idea of democracy has, above all, come to supply the only valid criterion for claims to legitimate rule and, correspondingly, the moral basis of political obligation.” 4

If this is all not an illusion, and India is indeed democratic, then it stands as a mammoth exception that tests our understanding of what makes countries democratic. India has features that most believe make democracy impossible. Although its economic growth in recent years has been high, India remains a very poor country with a per capita income well below the threshold that seemingly demarcates democracies from dictatorships. 5 It has a bewildering number of ethnic communities, separated by language, religion, and caste, with occasionally alarming incidents of inter-community violence. 6 Caste remains a major feature of the social and political landscape with its religiously-sanctioned inequality. India is usually ranked among the world’s worst countries when it comes to the prevalence of corruption. The military is strictly under civilian control, and, historically, has never been a threat to stage a coup. However, the military has been given power for significant periods and allowed to ignore normal legal processes in certain parts of the country, such as the northeastern border states, Punjab from 1984 to 1992, and Kashmir since 1989. Finally, it has a bureaucracy inherited from colonial rule that—in practice and in the attitudes of its officials—is often capricious, authoritarian, and almost impossible to hold accountable. 8

Clearly, there are also flaws, perhaps fatal flaws, in India’s democracy. Are those many elections truly free and fair, given that in each election there are reports of intimidation, forcible occupation of polling stations, and other irregularities? With literacy and significant education still at very low levels, how can citizens cast their votes effectively? Do programs and policies change meaningfully when new parties come to power? Doesn’t the weakness of the rule of law at the lowest level encourage criminalization of politics and increase the difficulty of bringing corrupt officials to justice? Are there not powerful landowning and other classes that dominate and control politics in Delhi, state capitals, and local arenas?

Let us sketch responses to these questions and link them, in general, to underlying anti-democratic features. To begin, let us consider the integrity of elections. An autonomous Election Commission, one of the most respected institutions in the country, conducts elections and its record has been remarkably good. The electoral registers the Commission compiles can be quite inaccurate, and may contain many names of those who have died or moved; other names are missing. However, political parties and ordinary citizens have ready access to the rolls and are able to challenge or add names. Currently the rolls are being computerized, and anyone with an Internet connection can check them. The Election Commission has a code of conduct for election campaigns that regulates the hours of public meetings, requires financial and criminal record disclosure by candidates, recognizes parties and assigns them symbols, and attempts to regulate expenditures. Although expenditure rules are routinely flouted, it is not clear that this affects the outcome. Early on, money to buy votes for particular leaders flowed quite freely, but as voters gained confidence that the ballot was truly secret, vote-buying produced unreliable results and became less important.

On polling days, the Election Commission has full authority to mobilize government employees, such as teachers and security forces, to conduct the election. Most elections have violent incidents, including murdering candidates and ballot box stuffing. These occurrences have declined in recent years, however, as security has tightened; polling is on multiple days for up to a month. In cases where an election has been “countermanded,” a fresh poll is held weeks later, with additional security—and invariably there is no further problem. Vote fraud still exists in a few areas, but even then affects only a small percent of the vote total. All voting is on Indian-designed and Indian-manufactured electronic machines. This has accelerated the vote count results, but even before these technological advances, elaborate procedures were in place to make sure ballot boxes were secure and votes counted fairly.

Uncontested elections are rare at national and state levels. The range in ideology, policy, and social base of the winning parties is quite large. Communists have ruled West Bengal for thirty years, and in Kerala, a Communist-led coalition has alternated with a Congress-led coalition for almost as long. There are parties with cultural nationalist agendas, religious parties, and parties centered on particular castes that have ruled solely, or in coalition, in many states and in Delhi.

Election campaigns are wide open and thoroughly reported in the press. Spirited discussions also occur on TV. Face-to-face contact of candidates with voters remains at the heart of the campaign, however, with countless speeches and snippets of discussions during the three-week, eighteen-hour day sprint to polling day. This lessens the significance of education. Male voters with little or no schooling are practiced in judging what a candidate says and remembering it. As a rule, women do not attend meetings or hear speeches, and if uneducated, they have more difficulty than peer males understanding issues. Still, considerable empirical evidence exists that regardless of gender, most people no longer vote according to the dictates of husbands, or caste leaders, or even those with economic power over them. The secret ballot makes an enormous difference.

People appear to act rationally when they vote—not wasting their vote on candidates who have no chance of winning. They frequently throw out incumbents (about fifty percent), and usually disregard boasts of accomplishments and promises of good things to come, such as roads, electricity, or fertilizer supply. Local issues count more than national issues, except in extraordinary elections like 1977. The poor value the vote as one of the very few ways they can exercise even the smallest amount of power. Typically, they are utterly dependent on their landlord or their boss in a shop, with no recourse to laws, or even public opinion, if they are made to work long hours without decent pay, let alone other benefits; they are often beaten. They have no influence when it comes to getting proper health care or other government benefits. But with the assurance of a secret ballot and usually an uncertainty about who is leading, they find rich and powerful candidates begging for their vote.

There are, of course, large numbers of poor people who vote, and in India, the voter turnout of the poor is now higher than that of the non-poor. The contrast becomes most clear when the very poor are compared to the very rich, or illiterates to college graduates. The reverse is true in developed countries, including the US.9 And they get results. The most recent example is the party that won the 2007 state assembly election in the giant state of Uttar Pradesh (185 million inhabitants), which is led by an ex-untouchable woman named Mayawati, who captured a majority of the seats—mainly with the votes of the poor. 10

India’s society is socially fragmented to a high degree. For example, even if we ignore the fact that Hindi, the national language, composed of mutually unintelligible dialects (in addition to literary and film dialogue forms), is spoken by a minority of Indians. In any given electoral constituency, with a few exceptions, no community, whether caste or religious, has a majority, so cross-caste, and often cross-religion alliances must be created to win. Some of these alliances are horizontal, with middle-level farmers uniting, while others are vertical, between landlord groups and their farm workers, for example. Caste and religious groups, especially in local arenas, are often divided into factions, which can further complicate support. In some villages, and even in larger areas, powerful men organize followers into armed gangs to intimidate the lower classes. In some areas (mainly in the tribal belt of east-central India), these oppressed people have been organized to resist by workers of a coalition of revolutionary parties. In most of India, however, politics of all kinds—including democratic electoral politics—is more a matter of shifting alliances, countervailing groups, and leader-follower relationships based on the personal characteristics of the leader.

Efforts to create class-like movements on a broader level—farmers’ movements, for example—have been unsuccessful, and the caste associations that became prominent in the early years of independence have faded from the scene. In no state, much less at the national level, are there institutions that pull together even economic interest groups for effective political action. There are multiple and competing business associations, and Communist, Congress, and BJP parties mainly control trade unions through affiliating federations. Feminist, environmental, and other social movements have some impact on politics, using such tools as demonstrations and litigation, but they usually steer clear of electoral politics. The rich, and even the urban middle classes, manage to advance and protect their interests in large measure through networks of kinship and common institutions, such as schools and colleges, social clubs, and professional associations. This form of interest group politics by well-positioned groups is typical of not only India, but of all democracies.

Corruption in the court and criminal justice systems most certainly distorts the rule of law and the implementation of government programs. Although many politicians have criminal cases pending against them, very few have been convicted and almost none have exhausted their appeals. The serious “mafias” (the word is used in India) that are involved in smuggling, illicit drugs, alcohol, and other protection or extortion rackets and that control politicians, exist in relatively few cities. In certain government departments, corruption is endemic— contractors and others pay bribes shared by officials and politicians who control their transfers and promotions. That said, the national scale or even state-level corruption in which policies are bought and sold is rare.

Democracy in India is not a façade behind which one finds dominant classes or other societal institutions that exercise power. India is not very different from other democracies in the extent to which the bureaucracy governs without much day-to-day accountability. Colonial rule was built on a very small, elite corps of administrators whose task was primarily to maintain order. When independence came, those who did not quit were allowed to continue, but they had to prove their loyalty to the new political order, and to the leaders they had put in jail just a few years before. At the same time, the tasks of government expanded enormously, as the promises in education, health care, and, most of all, economic development, required a much-enhanced bureaucratic apparatus. Unlike many Third World countries, the balance of power between elected politicians and bureaucrats in India favored the politicians, and that advantage has not been lost. 11

In contrast to most post-colonial countries—Pakistan presents a particularly vivid comparison—India’s military has been kept firmly under civilian and political control. Because the military also needed to demonstrate their loyalty to the new political leaders, when fighting erupted with Pakistan in Kashmir at independence, and a border dispute with China in 1962 ended in war, the military had an important national security mission, which it had been taught, in the British tradition, would be undermined by involvement in politics. The Indian government also was aware of the need to keep the military budget firmly under civilian control. Coups in many Third World countries have been associated with armies controlled by particular, often minority ethnic communities. Although Punjabis, particularly Sikhs, were disproportionately represented in the army at independence, they were still a small minority, which was further diluted as the navy and air force expanded.

Most important, though, was the success of the Indian democratic system in resolving crises involving states with different languages and cultures, and dealing with the economic crisis of the mid-1960s. The army faced insurgencies in peripheral states, but never had to deal with a law and order problem the government could not handle. Each time the military was not called upon for domestic purposes—notably not even during the Emergency—the less likely the chance of subsequent intervention.

The absence of a military coup, or even the threat of one, is one explanation for why India remains a democracy. It is less clear why India has maintained a democracy while remaining below the theoretical threshold of development that many political scientists see as crucial for sustained democracy. Using quantitative data, scholars have shown that almost all countries at the lowest level of development are autocracies, and almost all countries at the highest level of development are democracies. Development that breaches the threshold does not necessarily produce democracy. However, when a high development country becomes democratic, it nearly always sustains its democracy.

Carles Boix and Susan Stokes make a persuasive argument that “democracy is caused not by income [the measure of development] per se but by other changes that accompany development, in particular, income equality.” 12 As India has developed, its inequality has increased only slightly and remains at the comparatively low figure, as measured by a Gini coefficient of consumption, of 30.5 in 2004–05. 13 Smaller Gini coefficients indicate greater equality of income and wealth distribution. Significantly, in the countryside, the small farmers have increased in number and in percent of landholdings at the expense of marginal farmers and large landowners. In urban India, the middle class has expanded at the most rapid rate, especially in recent years. India is exceptional in this as well: for example, the Gini indexes of Nigeria, China, and Brazil, are, respectively, thirtyfour percent, thirty-seven percent, and seventy-eight percent larger than India’s, which indicates substantially greater inequality. 14 It is quite possible that India’s democracy helps explain the difference. When the poor can vote effectively, government is more likely to ensure that they get a more substantial share of the benefits of development.

The income equality argument does not sufficiently explain why India was able to build a democracy when others failed. The best probable explanation of why India is democratic today is that it had a functioning democracy yesterday. Particularly for a country like India that is struggling to develop and manage huge societal and cultural change at the same time, the success of democracy builds on its ability to solve those problems, as demonstrated by its earlier successes. 15 The 1977 election, or possibly the first half of 1980, when Sanjay Gandhi seemed to be leading the Congress Party towards a more authoritarian program, marked crucial “roads not taken” moments. Before then, although democratic institutions had been established and worked effectively, there was a good chance democracy would break down. 16

Nehru’s personal role in setting India firmly on a democratic path has been noted, but Nehru himself got his opportunity from being the “first among equals” in the Congress movement that transformed itself into a party of governance. That nationalist movement is unique in the colonial era for its longevity, the depth and breadth of its roots in the populace, and the general extent to which it was internally democratic. Founded in 1885, for thirty-five years the Congress was essentially an annual gathering of the elite of India’s educated class who had petitioned the British to grant rights to their citizens in India. As the British resisted change, the Congress debated among themselves and demanded rights from the Raj. Then Gandhi transformed the Congress into a mass movement with a permanent governing body and a revolutionary constitution. He then led movements of civil disobedience in the early 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Each of these drew in larger and larger numbers of followers. The new Congress organization ensured that they were represented in the highest councils by leaders with local support, as well as by Gandhian or other nationalist credentials. As a movement for independence, the Congress was inclusive and included rich and poor, socialists, and Hindu nationalists. Only those who rejected nonviolence were excluded. Gandhi’s respect for the rule of law was such that while he claimed to be the judge of which laws he would follow, he insisted that he be condemned in court for breaking those laws. Although Gandhi and his trusted lieutenants effectively ran the Congress from above, the annual sessions and the debates on policies were exercises in free speech.

The second leadership generational transfer brought Jawaharlal Nehru in, with Gandhi’s support, even though Nehru’s views on socialism and modernist development contradicted Gandhi’s own ideas favoring village-level economic self-sufficiency and the belief that the rich should hold property as “trustees” for the poor. Over generations, the Congress developed a style of leadership and internal functioning that fit well with democracy. It developed momentum derived from effective action with an unrivalled network of support that reached minorities, women, and the rural poor. These political attributes served India well when independence came in 1947.

If India had not begun with that precious inheritance, it is doubtful that its democracy would be the reality it is today. That reality is clear in the unwavering commitment to democratic practices, especially in elections, and in the effective control of the military and bureaucrats. With the exception of the Emergency of 1975–77, the crises in the federal system, the ethnic and revolutionary insurgencies, and wars with India’s neighbors have been handled without damaging the democratic system, although the government has been responsible for severe violations of civil rights in the localities concerned, some of them quite substantial states, like Punjab and Kashmir.

As in all democracies, groups and some individuals wield a very wide range of power vis-à-vis government, but even at the local level there are only a few places where landlords or dominant castes can consistently get their way. In state and national government, it is the political party system that shapes most policy—not big business, or external powers, or a religious institution. In recent decades, there has been an impressive mobilization of the poor and previously marginalized groups, including the lower castes and women, which has been reflected in voting, in participation in local government, and in the leadership that has come to power. If India continues to grow economically at a rapid pace, the final foundation piece for a stable democracy will soon be put in place.

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• See Lee Siegel, Net of Magic: Wonders and Deceptions in India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991) for a discussion of the magicians’ “rope trick.”
• Not counting the rearrangement of coalitions in 1990 and 1997, and with a fresh election in 1999.
• In Pakistan “non–democrats” (forty-one percent) outweigh “strong democrats” (ten percent), with “weak democrats” at forty-nine percent.
• Yogendra Yadav, “Politics,” in Marshall Bouton and Philip Oldenburg, eds., India Briefing: A Transformative Fifty Years (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1999), 31.
• See: Axel Hadenius and Jan Teorell, “Cultural and Economic Prerequisites of Democracy: Reassessing Recent Evidence,” Studies in Comparative International Development 39, 4 (Winter 2005), 87–106.
• See: D. L. Sheth, “Society,” in Marshall Bouton and Philip Oldenburg, eds., India Briefing: A Transformative Fifty Years (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1999).
• See: Transparency International India, India Corruption Study 2005; To Improve Governance , http://www.cmsindia.org/cms/events/corruption.pdf, (accessed July 7, 2007).
• See Myron Weiner, The Child and the State in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).
• See the Wikipedia entry on “voter turnout” (accessed September 20, 2007): “In developed countries, non-voters tend to be concentrated in particular demographic and socioeconomic groups, especially the young and the poor. However, in India, which boasts an electorate of more than 670 million people, the opposite is true. The poor, who comprise the majority of the demographic, are more likely to vote than the rich and the middle classes.” For representative India data, see the important chapter by Yogendra Yadav, “Understanding the Second Upsurge: Trends of Bahujan [“majority”] participation in electoral politics in the 1990s,” (Francine R. Frankel et al., eds., Transforming India: Social and Political Dynamics of Democracy (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), 120–145.
• See Yogendra Yadav and Sanjay Kumar, “Poor Man’s Rainbow over U.P.,” Indian Express (online edition), May 18, 2007; the data show that forty-one percent of the poor, and only fifteen percent of the rich, voted for the Bahujan Samaj Party.
• For an important argument on this issue, see Fred W. Riggs, “Bureaucrats and Political Development: A Paradoxical View,” in Joseph LaPalombara, ed., Bureaucracy and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 120–167.
• Carles Boix and Susan Carol Stokes, “Endogenous Democratization,” World Politics 55, 4 (July 2003), 540.
• See Surjit S. Bhalla, “Misconceived Ideas—Income Inequality,” Business Standard (New Delhi), July 7, 2007, http://www.business–standard.com/economy/storypage.php? tab=r&autono=290320&subLeft=3&leftnm=3 (accessed July 7, 2007).
• UNDP, Human Development Report 2006, Table 15, http://hdr.undp.org/ hdr2006/pdfs/report/HDR06–complete.pdf (accessed July 7, 2007). The report does not note precisely what the Gini index is measuring (income, consumption, wealth?).
• See Atul Kohli, ed., The Success of India’s Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
• For the general analysis of democratic breakdowns (and “reequilibration,” which is what happened in India in 1977), see Juan J. Linz, Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Crisis, Breakdown, and Reequilibration . (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978). For a pessimistic view of the survival of India’s democracy even after 1977, see Ainslie Embree, “The Emergency as a Signpost to India’s Future,” in Peter Lyon and James Manor, eds., Transfer and Transformation: Political Institutions in the New Commonwealth (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1983), 59–67.
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JUDICIAL ACTIVISM IN INDIAN DEMOCRACY

2022, IASET

The scope of judicial activism not a limited one. It is used to look in the matters and enforce what is beneficial for the society at large. The word "JUSTICE" has no end, this critically tells that justice is for all, 'rich or poor, strong or weak', even the king and queen were entrusted by karma to provide justice. The object behind the research paper is focused on the expansion of judicial activism in Indian democracy. The judicial activism in India had touched almost every aspect of life to provide positive justice. Many a times the right to judicial review and judicial activism act as a boon for the weaker section of society in protecting their rights by mere filling of a social interest litigation or a public interest litigation. Many a time, judicial intervention into the matter of executive and legislature has provided society with the upper hand in getting justice. Judicial system is a means of providing 'JUSTICE 'to all, and also to take all relevant and possible steps to protect the interest of JUSTICE. Judicial activism legal framework in Indian constitution integration towards fundamental rights.

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