Abstract
At midnight on 15 August 1947 British colonial rule over India came to an end in an atmosphere of hope and anticipation. ‘Long ago’, India’s new prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru eloquently proclaimed to the Constituent Assembly, ‘we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time has come when we shall redeem our pledge’. Despite considerable political and economic progress, fifty years later as the Indian republic celebrated its Golden Jubilee anniversary, hope had turned to cynicism, anticipation to anxiety, and the country’s ‘tryst with destiny’ appeared to remain unfulfilled. India’s dangerous decades seemed to have arrived and the country was faced by a serious crisis of governance. This crisis of governance was reflected in the erosion of its political institutions, new stresses on its federal compact, a breakdown in its national consensus, the decline of national parties, the regionalisation of the party system, increasing political instability, a rising sense of discontent among its increasingly mobilised and politically conscious society, its continued mass poverty and mounting calls for the creation of a second republic. Faced with this growing crisis of governance, it seems pertinent to analyse to what extent India’s political system has taken root and what forces have shaped its successes and failures.1
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Notes
For detailed discussion of the problem of governance in India, see Paul R. Brass, Politics of India since Independence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Atul Kohli, Democracy and Discontent: India’s Growing Crisis of Governability (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Satish Saberwal, Roots of Crisis: Interpreting Contemporary Indian Society (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1996) and Bhabani Sen Gupta, India: Problems of Governance (New Delhi: Konark Publishers, 1996).
James Manor, ‘How and Why Liberal and Representative Politics Emerged in India’, Political Studies 38, 1990, 20–38.
For an extremely well-written history of the Indian Constituent Assembly, an analysis of the constitution it created, and a review of constitutional change in India since independence, see Granville Austin, The Indian Constitution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966) and Working a Democratic Constitution: A Window into India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999).
For an analysis of the role of the prime minister in India, see James Manor, ed., Nehru to the Nineties: The Changing Office of Prime Minister in India (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1994).
See Henry C. Hart, ed., Indira Gandhi’s India: A Political System Reappraised (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1976).
See C.P. Bhambhri, The Janata Party: A Profile (New Delhi: National Publishing House, 1980).
For a detailed treatment of major political issues in the late 1980s and 1990s, see the annual collection of essays in Marshall M. Bouton and/or Philip Oldenburg, eds., India Briefing (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press).
See Subhash Kashyap, The Ten Lok Sabhas: From the First to the Tenth, 1952–1991 (Delhi: Shipra Publications, 1992).
Subhash C. Kashyap, ‘Parliament: A Mixed Balance-Sheet’, in Hiranmay Karlekar, ed., Independent India: The First Fifty Years (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 39.
Ibid., 40.
T. N. Ninan, ‘A Year in Purgatory’, Seminar, no.473, January 1999, 25.
David C. Potter, India’s Political Administration, 1919–1983 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
O.P. Dwivedi and R.B. Jain, ‘The Administrative State in India’, in Yogendra K. Malik and Ashok Kapur, Fifty Years of Democracy and Development (New Delhi: A.P.H. Publishing Corporation, 1998), 18.
Poornima Advani, Indian Judiciary: A Tribute (Delhi: HarperCollins, 1997).
David Butler, Ashok Lahiri, and Prannoy Roy, India Decides: Elections 1952–1995 (Delhi: Books and Things, 1995).
For the decline of the Congress Party, see Stanley A. Kochanek, The Congress Party of India (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968).
For the rise of the BJP, see Thomas Blom Hansen and Christophe Jaffrelot, eds., The BJP and the Compulsions of Politics in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998); and Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, 1925 to the 1990s (Delhi: Viking, Penguin India, 1993).
For a brief overview of Indian foreign policy, see J.N. Dixit, ‘Foreign Policy: A Critical Introspection’, in Karlekar, Independent India, 73–91; and Selig S. Harrison, Paul H. Kreisberg, and Dennis Kux, eds., India and Pakistan: The First Fifty Years (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 155–69.
For an excellent review of the major debates that have shaped India’s economic policies since independence, see Terence J. Byres, ed., The Indian Economy: Major Debates Since Independence (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998).
For a review of social movements, see Tom Brass, ed., New Farmers’ Movements in India (Newbury Park, UK: Frank Cass, 1995); Gail Omvedt, Reinventing Revolution: New Social Movements and the Socialist Tradition in India (Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1993); Ghanshyam Shah, Social Movements in India: A Review of the Eiterature (New Delhi: Sage, 1990).
John McGuire, Peter Reeves, and Howard Brasted, eds., Politics of Violence: From Ayodhya to Bebrampada (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1996).
Noorjahan Bava, ed., Non-Governmental Organisations in Development: Theory and Practice (New Delhi: Kanishka Publishers, 1997); D.L. Sheth and Harsh Sheth, ‘The NGO Sector in India: Historical Context and Current Disclosure’, in Kuldeep Mathur, ed., Development Policy and Administration (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1996).
Pradeep K. Chhibber, Democracy Without Associations: The Transformation of the Party System and Social Cleavages in India (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 16.
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© 2001 Amita Shastri and A. Jeyaratnam Wilson
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Kochanek, S.A. (2001). Political Governance in India: The Challenge of Stability and Diversity. In: Shastri, A., Wilson, A.J. (eds) The Post-Colonial States of South Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-11508-9_2
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