The Representation Trap

The story is familiar by now. We know of the waning of the Congress system and the birth of many new political parties. The spread of the BJ...

The story is familiar by now. We know of the waning of the Congress system and the birth of many new political parties. The spread of the BJP to hitherto uncharted territories. The decentering of politics and the new primacy of the state as the site of political contest in the 1990s. Yes, it is an oft-told tale but storytellers must beware, it is not a linear one. India8217;s 1999 Elections and 20th Century Politics is not able to cope with its twists and turns. It stumbles awkwardly into the traps.

The single largest trap is laid by the dominant framework of looking at contemporary Indian politics. The 8217;90s is generally known as a period of political decline and collapse. Academic and popular readings emphasise the fragmentation of political space and fall of governments, a growing apathy and popular disenchantment. We now know that this picture does not tell the whole truth. It ignores, for instance, that electoral data has revealed an undeniable expansion and downward thrust in the participatory base of democracy and that this is a significant departure not only from India8217;s own past but also from that of most existing democracies.

But the danger lies in asserting this too vigorously, sans nuance or footnote. Danger lies in giving in to the temptation to come up with a slap-dash counter-reading that is a mirror image of the dominant picture of unrelieved gloom. Jyotirindra Dasgupta8217;s chapter 8220;How contention promotes multicultural resilience8221; unresistingly succumbs to this danger.

As the Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, tells it, contemporary Indian politics is the epic story of inclusionary politics by disadvantaged groups. It features 8220;constructive rivalry8221; leading to 8220;multicultural assurance8221;. It is a process of 8220;national becoming8221; and 8220;inter-regional collaboration8221; that is 8220;self-regenerating8221;. Dasgupta sets up a simple encounter: elitist/western suspicion and alarm versus the new idiom of 8220;mobility and access8221;. For him, the choice is stark and tidy. Too stark and too tidy.

Has the entry of more contestants in the field and the intensification of political competition led to a larger number of policy options? Does greater political participation of the disadvantaged give them greater control over the agenda of governance? Is representational democracy in India merely about the politics of presence or has it grown up to become more? Haven8217;t the new pragmatic partnerships bartered away coherence and vision for power? Dasgupta8217;s conceptual framework leaves these questions not merely unanswered but, worse, unasked.

The volume does go on to make a welcome attempt to break up the grand political narrative into smaller stories set in individual states. Like the continuous election campaign in Goa, where, from 1989 to 1998, eight governments which were not elected by the people assumed power. Tamil Nadu, where traditional rivals AIADMK and DMK have been so bleached of their distinctiveness and difference that both hospitably alternate as partners to the BJP. The compulsive Darwinian 8220;partyisation8221; in Karnataka.

But for the most part, the accounts do not escape the seductive trap of personalities and events. Mostly, they tell the story of Indian politics in terms of the hectic fluctuation of electoral fortunes. The narrative seldom permits itself the breathing space to make those critical connections without which an election study can be nothing more than the bloodless toting up of caste and class arithmetic 8212; the connections between electoral democracy and its pledge to bring self-governance.