Legacy of the Raj

[anvi]

>My first point was simply that India has been dominated by a party (or one might say a >dynasty) for most of the post-war era. That isn't really different from Sweden, as far as party >goes, of course. Still, the article sounds as if India is a model democracy. To me, a model >democracy wouldn't have three generations of the same family holding the premiership and >the same party being in power for too long.

India's parliment is the host of about 400 different political parties.  The fact that
the Congress Party has been in power for so longb since Independence is the
result of a number of factors.  First, with that many political parties, no majority
party will get into power without constructing a massive, broad-based coalition,
as is the case in most Parlimentary systems.  The IC has been the most successful
at building such coalitions, in a manner similar to the Liberal Democratic Party
in Japan, which only lost recently.  Second, the Indian populous, an overstated but
nonetheless vast majority of which are Hindu, was inclined to dance with the
one that brung 'em for many decades because it was effectively, in their eyes,
an IC coalition that brought them independence.  Thirdly, I would argue that
the resurgence of the IC party under Manmohan Singh has been overall quite
good for India, especially in view of the fact that the ten year reign of the BJP
was characterized by increased communal hostilities all over the country that
the BJP's allies often actively instigated, as well as the pursuit of the nuclear
arms race with Pakistan.  India does seem, on the whole, to be a rather
vibrant democratic state.