INDIA
AN OVERVIEW (Click on hotspots):
Source: Berit Pallisgaard Stenhus Gymnasium
SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT
India is a union of 29 states and 6 union territories. Elections for the Lok Sabha (The Peoples' House/Lower Chamber) af held every five years, or more often, if Lok Sabha is dissolved some time in the election period. The number of constituencies depend on the size of the population in a state. The biggest state, Uttar Pradesh in Northerne India, population over 170 million have more than 80 Lok Sabha constituencies (valgkredse). A number of seats in the Lok Sabha are reserved for tribal people and scheduled castes.
Note: Click on hotspots
The first-past-the-post single member electoral system would normally lead to a two party system, or a system with two dominant parties. In India there are many political parties, not only at state level but also at the union level in New Delhi. This is due to the fact that there are big regional, ethnic and cultural differences in the Indian Union. Since independence was achieved in 1947, the Congress Party has for long periods been the dominant political party with representation all over the country.
The Indian president is elected by the members of Lok Sabha and the state parliaments. The president has quite a lot of formal power, but his/her power is sometimes more "formal" than real. It includes the right to declare at state of emergence for the whole union and governing by decrete. This formal power was used by Indira Gandhi. She, however, acted on advice by the prime minister. Actually it is more correct to describe the Indian political system as a parliamentary system. That means that the Lok Sabha can force the federal government to resign through a vote of no-confidence (mistillidsvotum).
Ideologies and Political Movements
The first leader in the Indian campaign for home rule was
Mahatma Gandhi.
The first prime minister in India was
Jawaharlal Nehru. He was leader of
the Indian National
Congress, the national independence movement, later main political
party. Nehru had studied in England, and he was influenced by English
socialist thinking (Labour and the Fabian Society). The elite of the
Congress Party were in favour of socialism and state planning.
Nehru became the founder of a political dynasty. He was prime
minister from 1946 to 1964. His daughter Indira Gandhi led the country
until 1984, when she was murdered by a sikh, one of her own body guards.
There were tensions in the state of Punjab, where the Sikh minority is a
considerable part of the population. Political forces in Punjab wanted more
self-government for Punjab, one of the most highly developed states in
India. Indira Gandhi had ordered the Indian union army to remove militant
Sikhs from the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the centre of Sikh religious
worship.
Indira Gandhi's son Rajiv Gandhi took over as prime minister and leader
of the Congress party. He was killed in 1991, shortly after introducing
economic reforms that were going to have great impact on the country.
Rajiv's Italian born wife Sonia Gandhi became leader of the Congress Party.
In the beginning, however, her popularity was not as big as that of
the other members of the Gandhi family. This may have been due to her
Italian background.
The Congress Party had increasing problems
maintaining its role as the big, secularised national political party in
India. Religious political forces were gaining ground. The Hindu BJP party
increased its representation in many parts of the country and in the federal
capital New Delhi.
At the general election in 2004 the party, however, the party
increased its number of seats in the Lok Sabha so that after the election a
Congress government could be formed with support from the Communists and
other left wing political forces. The Congress Party advances in electoral
support happened during the electoral campaign and may be caused by the
popularity of the 4th generation Gandhis, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Vadra,
Sonia Gandhi's children. They do not like the mother fall prey to easy
criticism for coming from an Italian background.
Why is Italian elite politics so dynastic? Some political
commentators think it may be explained partly by the Indian belief in
reincarnation. Jawaharlal and Rajiv were immensely popular. Rahul might be a
reincarnation of them. In the election campaign 2004 the leading Congress
politicians criticised BJP for favouring Hindu interests and Hindu points of
view. Hinduism is the dominant religion in India, but there are also many
muslims and representatives of other religions. In this campaign the BJP had
tried to distance itself somewhat from Hindu communalism (Hindu
one-sidedness), but the BJP politicians were not sufficiently successful at
this. There have been clashes of ethnic violence when muslims and hindus
have confronted each other in various parts of India.
BJP has traditionally been most represented i Northern India
among the Hindi-speaking population. After the election in 1999 a coalition
of political groupings led by the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party). It
was called NDA (the National Democratic Alliance). The BJP can trace
its roots back to the Hindu fundamentalist movement Bharatiya Jan Sangh.
This political movement has been a strong advocate of traditional Hindu
values. Even today part of the BJP political platform consists of the
so-called Hindutva politics, that is a kind of "hinduisation"
of India. Jan Sangh was the political wing of a group of interconnected
cultural and religious Hindu movements called Sangh Parivar. The most
influential of these is RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), a well
disciplined cadre organisation. Former prime minister Vajpayee of the BJP
and the minister of the interior are among its members. RSS is considered a
rather sinister anti-muslim group by enlightened intellectuals in India.
About 12 pct of India's population are muslims. The Hindutva communal
politicies were however somewhat weakened during the years in power in New
Delhi.
In the election campaign in 2004 BJP campaigned under the slogan
"India Shining". This was a reference to the economic achievements
through outsourcing of work from big Western corporations and the
development of high-tech industries, e.g. in the Bangalore are. To many
Indians this was not "real". They had no awareness or experience of
increasing wealth. The economic gains of the IT sector's success did not
trickle down to the hundreds of millions of desperately poor people. A
lot of them ended up voting for the Congress Party, which campaigned against
the "India Shining" slogans.
Table 1: Lok Sabha elections 1999 og 2004
| 1999 | 2004 | |||
| NDA | 298 | 188 | ||
| CONGRESS + | 135 | 219 | ||
| OTHERS | 110 | 132 |
Source: Hindustan Times 13.5.04. The table is based on 439 of 443 constituencies.
Economic structure and economic development - a new Asian tiger economy?
More than 60 per cent of India's over 1 billion (1 milliard) people are still in agriculture. The agrarian sector hence is important for the economic development of the country. There is a lot of inefficient agriculture in India, so it is difficult for the country to feed its big population. There are huge masses of desperately poor people in the countryside. Many landless peasants and unemployed agricultural workers leave the country and try to find work in the cities, which is not easy.
In the planned economy up to the 1980's there were many state enterprises
in India. The state owned big companies in iron and steel industries,
machinery, mining, automotive and other sectors. Productions targets were
set up in the five year plans. A lot of industrial products were made under
license from British corporations, for instance cars, motorbikes, white
goods, etc. There were tariffs and quantitative restrictions on many import
items. Through a policy of import substitution the Indian state tried to
develop the country by creating a big internal market. To some extent this
policy must be considered success. Many Indian companies developed
behind the protective trade barriers. Under Rajiv Gandhi the Indians started
a slow process of liberalising the protected economy. In the 1990's
the opening up of the economy meant using the well educated and
English-speaking middle class to fill lots of jobs in the high
tech and service sectors.
It meant increasing exports and living standards for some. It
was, however, still an enclave economy. The high tech sectors of the economy
are isolated islands of development and prosperity in enormous oceans of
underdevelopment and poverty. Furthermore, a lot of the advanced industries
have difficulties with badly functioning infrastructure. They are also
experiencing difficulties getting the skilled workers they need.
The famous indian writer Arundhati Roy (”The God of Small Things”, stories and essays) said in a speech given at Aligarh Muslim University in 2004 in a comment on the indian parlamentiary election the same year: "47 pct of Indian children under three years of age suffer from malnutrition, 46 pct are undergrowth. Still the government was passive while 63 mio. tons of grain were rotting in store houses". (Asiatimes 27.4.04).
SOME POETRY
Poetry in the Sufi tradition commented upon by Neha Visvanathan in this way:
Eroticism and spring go unmistakably together. Or maybe that's just me. A lot of Sufi poetry (or even Bhakti poetry for that matter) eroticizes the idea of God - the notion of a union or being coloured in the same hues:
You've taken away my looks, my identity, by
just a glance.
By making me drink the wine of love-potion,
You've intoxicated me by just a glance;
My fair, delicate wrists with green bangles in them,
Have been held tightly by you with just a glance.
I give my life to you, Oh my cloth-dyer,
You've dyed me in yourself, by just a glance.
I give my whole life to you Oh, Nijam,
You've made me your bride, by just a glance.
Kamat's potpourri (diversity of India)
Indian writing blog (with lots of links)
Jade story in the Sun (Jcase)