Liberal Approach to the study of Indian Politics

slide1. Liberal Approach to the study of Indian Politics B.A 2nd Semester (CBCS)
General Course
By T. R. Baruah<br>
slide2. Political Science is a Social Science and it is a Progressive science. There are different methods and approaches for studying the subject. Different methods and Approaches are used by the political scientists to cope up with different changes in human nature and institutions. A method is a technique but an Approach is a broad view or attitude which is adopted in studying the subject. It is a way of looking at and then explaining a particular phenomena. Indian Politics is a part of Political Science and different approaches are used by scholars of the subject.

India's independence was a great historical event and a political phenomenon which turned out to be a baseline for reshaping the political future of India. Independence of India became a baseline for forming a self-government based on the principles of democracy, adult franchise, secularism and egalitarianism and its most important consequence was the democratization of Indian society and polity. Over a period of more than seventy years since independence a number of Political Scientists, Historians ,Sociologists, Economists and anthropologists conducted studies with different perspectives or approaches concerning the nature of Indian State.<br>
slide3. Politics means it is a struggle for power and it is an unavoidable universal activity. It is the activity through which people make, preserve and amend the general rules under which they live. It is a continuous, ever-changing and universal activity. Study of the Indian Politics is a crucial and complex one, it is crucial in the sense that Indian Politics emerge from various social heterogeneity. Indian politics is very interesting to study by applying different approaches. Thus different approaches are adopted by scholars of the subject. Liberal, Marxist and Gandhian are the three principal perspective or approaches adopted by the scholars.
Liberal Approach:
Before starting about Liberalism as an approach to the study of Indian Politics it would be desirable to understand what is liberalism. With the emergence of the new bourgeoisie class (middle class) in the 16th and the 17th centuries, the philosophy of liberalism came into being as a progressive revolt against the reactionary forces represented by feudalism, the church and the monarchy. It was a voice for the recognition of the consent of the individuals based on individual’s rights and liberty. It was a political movement for the establishment of a democratic government with emphasis on Individual freedom.<br>
slide4. The term Liberty has been derived from the Latin word “Liber” which means free .This theory put its faith on the importance of liberty and equal rights. The exponents of liberalism support some ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights ,capitalism and freedom of religion etc. Famous political thinker John Lock has been credited with the creation of liberalism as a distinct philosophical tradition.
According to this theory there is no conflict between the interest of the people with the interest of the society. This theory is based on the liberal notion of man, which gives due importance to man as a free agent in this world, having a free will of his own. Protection of individual liberty means protection of greater interest of the society. No authority can compel any person to pay his allegiance to the state. Thus it can be said that liberalism means it is a society in which people enjoy their rights and liberties in a free atmosphere. It is against the unnecessary interference of the state over the lives of the people. Liberalism distinguishes between state and society and maintains that state is for society and not otherwise.<br>
slide5. Classical liberalism is also known as the theory of ‘laissez-faire’ or the police state, or the theory of Individualism that regards the state as a necessary evil. Necessary, because it protects the lives of the people and it is evil, because it is an enemy of individual liberty. The state and individual freedom are seen as each other’s opposite and classical liberalism wants to give more freedom to the individual by increasing the sphere of his activities and decreasing the sphere of the state. The function of the state is to provide physical security to the individual so that he can develop his personality without state interference. In brief, it means minimal state function and maximum individual liberty. Adam Smith supported this on an economic basis and Jeremy Bentham on a moral and political basis. Later liberalism or modern liberalism came to be known as the ‘theory of welfare state’, ‘revisionist’ or ‘reformist liberalism’. Here, the state is not regarded merely as a necessary evil, but it is assumed that the state can perform various functions of social welfare, can bring equilibrium and can satisfy socio-economic demands of the masses. Today liberalism has been combined with the concept of democracy and its outcome is the emergence of Liberal Democratic State. It represents a free market economy with universal adult franchise.<br>
slide6. In Western societies, the democratic franchise came after the liberal society and the liberal state were firmly established. In the postcolonial countries, democracy could not be installed as an addition or supplement of the liberal state, because the latter itself had not been established by itself. The economic cornerstones of liberalism have been private property and a market economy, the political cornerstones are political freedom and a market polity.

The policy of State nationalism also originated in Europe. Under this system the state used its institutions and resources to promote national identity in order to consolidate and legitimise itself by manipulating these powerful new symbols. The campaign was very successful within a short period of time. The nation- state became the focus of cultural identity. According to one famous Western Writer India was 'the first great post-colonial state' .The difficulty for most postcolonial societies was that state-building and nation-building commenced simultaneously in those societies. Thus the colonial states inherited some legacies of British rule even after independence. For India, part of the colonial legacy included the rudiments or foundations of statehood. The British Indian state was geared to serving the needs of the metropolitan power.<br>
slide7. Here we have to note one thing that the Indian state differs from both the Capitalist and the Communist model. It is not the end-product of an industrial revolution led by the bourgeoisie nor the product of a revolutionary capture of power by the peasantry or the proletariat. But the British did help to create a middle class in India. Thus it is not very easy to understand Indian political system by adopting a particular approach.

After analysing liberalism now we will try to discuss the model of liberal democracy in the twenty-first century. In a liberal democracy, it is the people who have the undisputed right to determine the framework of rules, regulations and policies within a given territory and govern accordingly . Liberal democracy is premised on the notion of popular sovereignty and institutionalization in citizenship rights. Democratic rule is exercised in the sovereign, territorially consolidated nation-state., In a bounded territory, people's sovereignty is the basis upon which democratic decision- making takes place, and In a liberal democracy, the people are sovereign. The idea of popular sovereignty gained wide currency in the late eighteenth century.<br>
slide8. Working of Indian democracy since independence :
The political leaders in India adopted liberal democracy recognizing universal adult franchise, fundamental rights, parliamentary democracy, independent judiciary, competitive party system, freedom of media, freedom of religion and rule of law and centrally recruited bureaucracy. The goal of the state was to establish an open liberal and plural model. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was the architect of modern Indian democracy. Nehru followed mixed economy and democratic virtue of social justice.
Rajni Kothari the famous writer being a liberal ,supported democratic institutions and diversity of Indian culture and noted that Indian culture has marked tendency towards "agglomeration more than segmentation, accommodation more than confrontation" of all the agencies, according to him the Congress functioned as the major mediating agency, which gave to the country a coherent and unified leadership which could speak for the nation as a whole, and so acquired a power of identity of its own" . The congress party was able to accommodate multiple identities in the first two decades of independence. But Indira Gandhi ,another Congress leader was severely criticized for imposing emergency though she empowered Indian poor through bank nationalization, abolition of privy purses and “Garibi hatao” slogan.<br>
slide9. Since the beginning of 1980s congress party was challenged by several regional parties: Shiromani Akali Dal in Punjab, Assam Gana Parishad in Assam, Telegu Desam party in Andhra Pradesh and DMK in Tamil Nadu etc.

In the initial years of independence there was joyous hope and pride in the establishment of democracy in India, but by the beginning of 21st century this gave the way to distrust and disappointment among the people with the functioning of democracy .There has been a removal of democratic spirit among the citizens of India in the form of people's movements that question the various aspects of the Indian state and its functioning. Seventeen national elections and many more state level elections have been held till now. Thus probability of democratic collapse is minuscule(minute). Democracy has become the institutionalized common sense of Indian politics ,no one thinks any longer that there is any other way of coming to power. It can be said that keeping the nation together is perhaps the greatest achievement of Indian democracy, though democracy alone has not made that happen: a combination of force and persuasion has been used to supress various insurgencies and riots.<br>
slide10. The greatest failure of Indian democracy is mass poverty. Since 1991 the poverty rate has been declining, and a real measure of property has reached the middle classes for the first time in modern Indian history. In recent years, those who looked at some aspects like poverty, primary and secondary education, and public health and economic growth , the figure is substantially, unsatisfactory. Thus according to the critics Indian democracy is procedural and not a substantive democracy. Indian state started with three national projects- national unity, dignity and social justice, and elimination of mass poverty. Though India a is multicultural, multi– religious and multilingual society it has been successful to maintain unity of the state.
The concept of freedom and democracy in India :
As two important principle of liberalism are freedom and democracy we have to study the idea of modern freedom in India in two senses, one as the liberty of individuals to choose their lives, and other as the freedom of specific social groups like castes to follow their 'destiny‘. The legal structure of democratic politics was constructed in great detail and with enormous technical care, and after exhaustive often extremely subtle theoretical debates in the constituent Assembly.<br>
slide11. The constitutional arrangements adopted after independence were the ideas of nationalism federalism, social reform and individual freedom. The constitutional arrangement was a liberal document. Its configuration of rights was centred around the right to freedom of speech, association, belief, faith, acquisition of property . Rights to political equality was provided which is a liberal conception by guaranteeing universal adult franchise, and social equality rather than economic in the peculiar Indian contexts . There are two distinct ways for securing freedom. The first procedural way which advocates liberal state and the rules of procedure for the equal treatment it put in place. The second, participatory, trend was to oppose the state through political mobilization to bring social justice. Thus India ,the new state was created which is a liberal individualist model with parliamentary democracy.

In the economic field one important feature of liberalism is open market economy. India adopted Economic liberalisation policy since 1990s. The economic liberalisation in India refers to the economic liberalisation of the country's economic policies, initiated in 1991 .<br>
slide12. Main goal of this policy was to make the economy more market oriented and service-oriented, and expanding the role of private and foreign investment. Economic Reforms refer to the fundamental changes that were launched in 1991 with the plan of liberalising the economy and to quicken its rate of economic growth. The Narasimha Rao Government, in 1991, started the economic reforms in order to rebuild internal and external faith in the Indian economy.
The economic reforms aimed at rapid industrialization. For this, the abolition of industrial licensing, allowing foreign investment, encouragement to the private sector and coexistence of public sector and private sector were taken by the government. The essential features of the economic reforms are – Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation, commonly known as LPG.
The new industrial policy 1991 has been adopted under which far-reaching structural reforms have been initiated to lift excess direct controls and regulations on industries and to ensure a free-market oriented economic system. The list of industries reserved for the public sector has been reduced.<br>
slide13. India's New Economic Policy of 1991 was a neoliberal Structural Adjustment Program that allowed India to qualify for aid from the World Bank and IMF. The fruits of liberalisation reached their peak in 2006, when India recorded its highest GDP growth rate of 9.6%. With this, India became the second fastest growing major economy in the world, next only to China.

At last it can be said that Indian political leaders are adopting liberal trends in different aspects of life. But in recent times we have witnessed atrocities against the poor, dalits, tribals, minorities and women which can hardly be democratic. If democracy in India is to survive in the long run along with economic reforms, the rights and dignity of the marginalized are to be protected and their voice must be heard in the decision making process. A nation-state is strengthened if its members attain autonomy which leads towards their fullest realization adequately and treat it citizens with equal concern. India is a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-lingual society and we must be tolerant to each other's identity.<br>
slide14. If the liberal democracy is to be successful ,those whose lives are affected by the decision– making process must have a say in the decision-making process. There must be dialogue between the government and the governed. To conclude, we must recognize diversity and differences along with economic reforms for true success of a liberal democratic system in India.

Reference:
Liberal democracy and the concept of freedom in India
Dr. Bilas Ranjan Das Assistant Professor, Dyal Singh College, University of Delhi, Delhi, India.
International Journal of Academic Research and Development
ISSN: 2455-4197 , www.academicsjournal.com Volume 2; Issue 6; November 2017; Page No. 01-04

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