Recent events indicate that democracy in India’s neighbourhood faces perfect storm as the region becomes more authoritarian. Thus, the question is whether democracies around us have become so vulnerable.
This is important also because illiteracy, pseudo-literacy, corruption, crime and lawlessness are widely rampant in neighbouring Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
Political leaders are apt at fooling the people with false promises. Power politics alone is widely rampant. Power hungry political leaders are crafting political parties according to their sinister design. Power has become all important for leaders than people or the country. India’s neighbourhood has been witnessing serious democracy deficits over the last couple of years, on account of political instability.
Nepal is politically unstable since it abolished a 239-year-old monarchy in 2008
On 15 July 2024, Nepal appointed its 14th Prime Minister in the last 16 years. KP Sharma Oli secured 157 of the 268 MPs present and became the 30th Prime Minister since the restoration of parliamentary democracy in 1990.
Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda, leader of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist Centre (CPN-MC) was voted out of Prime Minister’s office as he could secure only 63 votes on the floor of the House.
Can it be then said that political instability has proved to be the only constant for Nepal in the aftermath of November 2022 elections to 275-member House of Representatives (HoR).
Nepali Congress (the largest party in parliament, of Sher Bahadur Deuba) has 89 seats; KP Sharma Oli’s Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) has 78 seats; and together they formed alliance on power sharing formula as they had more than majority (138 seats) required to form government.
Thus, intermittent alliances, counter-alliances, reversals, betrayals, and hunger for power alone, among the political leaders of the tiny Himalayan nation-states are writ large. And let us not forget that political developments in Kathmandu are actively monitored by rivals New Delhi and Beijing.
Over 150 killed in protest against politicised quotas in Bangladesh
In June 2024, Supreme Court of Bangladesh gave a ruling to revive the 30 per cent quota for descendants of freedom fighters, reversing a 2018 reform.
Bangladesh has since then been reeling under massive protests mainly by students to oppose the reintroduction of the quota for all government jobs.
Even though the decision was made by the courts, it has largely been considered as a thinly veiled political maneuver by the Sheikh Hasina government. Needless to say that it is often presumed that Hasina has a tight grip over the judiciary.
Hasina’s party Awami League is born of Bangladesh 1971 War of Independence; hence she is attempting to appease supporters to strengthen her position within the party and the government.
Hasina’s latest move has led to widespread outrage across the country’s campuses amid the downturn of economy and high rate of youth unemployment. Thus, most youths of the country are apprehensive of their jobs being stolen away from them.
Bangladesh’s top court on July 21 pared back contentious civil service hiring rules but failed to mollify university student leaders, whose demonstrations against the scheme sparked nationwide clashes that have killed 151 people.
Jobs in any country must be made available to citizens not through patronage but on merit. However, calculations of political fortune by political parties and their leaders take democracies to ransom and ruin the peace of societies. Certainly, this is a bad democracy and the move itself is undemocratic.
Imran Khan and the Dance of Democracy in Pakistan
Divide within Pakistan’s political clouts has been deepening over the last 76 years. On 15 July 2024, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar announced at a press conference that his government is considering banning the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) led by former Prime Minister Imran Khan.
It is one of very few examples in the world that a country’s former head who hailed as one of the most popular politicians in the country, stands imprisoned although he is being acquitted by the court in one case after the other. It makes it obvious that he has been craftly and wrongly implicated.
Such is his stature among the people that his party emerged as the largest party, though short of majority to form the government, in spite of the fact that candidates of PTI contested as independents.
It is because of his stature among the masses that he is being sidelined by ruling (read politically powerful) families of Pakistan in unison.
As a matter of fact, Imran Khan had risen to power on a classic populist platform, presenting himself and his party as the non-corrupt alternative to the country’s two main parties (the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, known as the PML-N, and the Pakistan People’s Party, known as the PPP), and their long, checkered history of corruption scandals and misgovernance. But, where does he stand today?
What could be worse democracy than this? Democracy is not at the crossroads in Pakistan but is in well which is akin to hell. No wonder, Pakistan’s always-troubled democracy is on the brink once again.
Lynne O’Donnell, a columnist at Foreign Policy and an Australian journalist and author, says Pakistan is living under the pall of authoritarianism as the rowdy circus of political survival pushes the urgent need for reform and accountability into the shadows.
Lesser said about Afghanistan is better, where democracy is gagged and suffocated by the onslaught of Taliban-II takeover on 15 August 2021. Surprisingly enough most countries are cooperating with the existing regime to build their fortune.
Democracy in Sri Lanka: Backsliding or Inching Forward?
Sri Lanka witnessed the worst days of its existence in July 2022; when demonstrators from all over the country marched to Colombo demanding resignation of the then President Gotabaya Rajapaksa for mismanagement of country’s economic crisis.
They danced on the bed of president storming the presidential palace. Democracy was at its peak when people were shouting ‘Gota go home!’
On the day the presidential palace was stormed, BBC footage showed scores of people taking a dip in the palace pool. Sri Lankan democracy went bankrupt, from then onwards it has been struggling to overcome and strengthen its economy.
History and the erstwhile global literature have hardly ever located a democracy which could be declared as a ‘perfect democracy’. Democracies have been praised but advised in myriads of ways to achieve perfection with policy interventions and engineering state’s institutions.
Citizens are the real kingmaker and not the leaders; either with massive majority or with small-little seats. Accordingly, political leadership across political parties must realize that they can fool ‘some of the people, some of the time’ but not ‘all the people, all the time.’
Democracies must move from ‘populism’ to ‘people’ in their processes of governance. It makes it imperative to comprehend as far as dynamics of democracies in the neighbourhood are concerned: the way the nature and processes of governance have been changing; the way prevalent electoral processes have contributed towards weakening democracy; the way digital technology has contributed towards re-engineering democracies in almost all walks of nation-state’s life.
Ongoing power struggles have many more lessons for political parties as well as policy analysts within democracies. There are strong signals to mitigate mediocrity from politics.
The answer must we find in India
Fractured mandate on 4 June 2024 reveals that democracy in India is shaking and is not on track.
Although the mainstream media projected the results as a positive-sum game for all political parties, a lot depends on the way one understands it: the glass is half-full for some, whereas half-empty for others.
The key question, therefore, is whether India can claim to be the mother of all democracies after the arduous journey it has made over the past 75+ years!
Take This Home: According to Dominique Reynié, Professor at Sciences Po and Director General of the Foundation for Political Innovation, “Despite a clear attachment of citizens to this model, democratic states must withstand internal crises and delicate change that can destabilise their foundations.”
