American Behavioral Scientist

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Participation, Representation, and Democracy in Contemporary India

Neera Chandhoke
American Behavioral Scientist 2009; 52; 807
DOI: 10.1177/0002764208327660
The online version of this article can be found at:
http://abs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/52/6/807

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Part I: The Role of Place in

Developing Democractic Form

Participation, Representation,
and Democracy in
Contemporary India

American Behavioral Scientist

Volume 52 Number 6
February 2009 807-825
2009 Sage Publications
10.1177/0002764208327660
http://abs.sagepub.com
hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com

Neera Chandhoke
University of Delhi, Delhi, India

This article analyzes the tensions and paradoxes that are emerging as developing nation
governments and civil society organizations alike institutionalize. It examines the prospect for effective representation and for democratic governance in the face of the
increasing complexities and professionalization of the publics business and of nongovernmental institutions. The article concludes that the challenges are large but not
insuperable if approached with openness and imagination.
Keywords: representation; participation; mediation; campaigns; crisis of representation;
accountability; civil society organizations; democracy

lthough democracy creates a relationship between citizens and the state through
elections, in complex societies, representatives mediate this association. Whereas
the concept of representation has long been attended by anxious debates on several
issuesfor instance, how representatives discharge their mandates with commitment
to their constituentsby the 1970s, scholars had begun to speak of the crisis of representation. Political parties as the prime agents of representation had become more
preoccupied with pursuing power than representing their constituents. The turn to civil
society and away from formal politics was one manifestation of this crisis. However,
civil society was soon dominated by highly professionalized, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The NGO sector initiated a qualitatively different style of politics:
campaigns instead of social movements and delivery of social goods instead of political mobilization. This article examines the implications of these new forms of politics
for democratic theory and for participation, accountability, and agency in India.
The argument proceeds in seven parts. The first section outlines one of Indias
campaigns for the delivery of social goods and the second discusses some of the
implications of civil society activism for the country. The third section suggests
that democracy is about deepening agency while the fourth part spells out the relationship between representation, citizens, and agents. The fifth section traces the
Authors Note: Please address correspondence to Neera Chandhoke, Department of Political Science,
Social Science Building, University of Delhi, Mall Road, Delhi 110007, India; e-mail: neera
.chandhoke@gmail.com.
807
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808 American Behavioral Scientist

transformation of the political context of representative democracy in recent history.

The sixth section sketches the implications of this changed political context for
citizen participation and representation. The seventh section offers conclusions and
explores a growing disjuncture between participation, representation, and agents that
seek to deepen democracy.

The Right to Food Campaign

India is one of the worlds largest democracies and is also projected to become a
major power in coming years. Yet at the onset of the 21st century, reports of starvation deaths, hunger, and generalized malnutrition regularly appeared on the front
pages of Indias newspapers despite the fact that large stocks of food grains were
piled up in granaries owned by the Food Corporation of the nations government.1
Declining prices for agricultural commodities and higher costs for fertilizer and
seeds have led to increasing landlessness and poverty among the lower castes and
Scheduled Tribes. Rising food prices have resulted in widespread food insecurity. A
United Nations Special Rapporteur reported on the extent of chronic hunger and
malnutrition in India to the United Nations Human Rights Commission on September
22, 2006. That presentation suggested that more than half of the nations women and
children suffer from serious malnourishment and chronic undernourishment, 47% of
children are underweight, and 46% of youth suffer from stunted growth (The Hindu,
2006). These figures exceed those found in the poverty-stricken countries of subSaharan Africa, and they have led to what economist Jean Dreze has called hunger
amidst plenty (Dreze, 2007).2
This difficult situation combined with an inefficient, arbitrary, and corrupt public
distribution system gave rise to the campaign for the right to food. On April 16,
2001, the Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) Rajasthan submitted a petition
to the Supreme Court of India, citing the central government, the Food Corporation
of India, and six state governments. That list was enlarged over time to cover the
governments of all states and union territories (PUCL v. Union of India, 2001).
The petition raised a number of specific as well as generic concerns:
Given the rising prices of food grains in the 1990s, poorer groups were unable to
buy food. Therefore, institutional arrangements to deliver food to families below
the poverty line and destitute people needed to be strengthened, the implementation of various plans monitored, and the administrators of those strategies held
accountable.
Citizen purchasing power needed to be expanded through the institutionalization of the
right to work so that in time, individuals could achieve some level of self-sufficiency
and be emancipated from the stranglehold of deprivation as well as dependence on the
state.

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Chandhoke / Democracy in India 809

The government had a large role to play in designing, implementing, and monitoring
various plans that related to the provision of basic needs.
More importantly, the writ argued that the right to food supervenes on the right to
life and is therefore guaranteed by Article 21 of the Indian Constitution.

The petition resulted in a proactive and interventionist stance by the Indian

Supreme Court. The court ruled on July 23, 2001, that food should be provided to
vulnerable sections of society. In case of famine, there may be shortage of food
stated the court, but here the situation is that amongst plenty there is scarcity. . . .
Distribution of the same amongst the very poor and the destitute is scarce and nonexistent leading to mal-nourishment, starvation and other related problems (PUCL
v. Union of India, 2001). In a series of interim orders, the court directed the central
and state governments to ensure that hardship was reduced through food provision.
The courts hearings led to two notable consequences: First, they gave rise to the
campaign for the right to food, an informal alliance of organizations committed to
the right of all citizens to be free from hunger and undernourishment. Second, even
as the hearings drew considerable attention from the media, the prime minister
announced on August 15, 2001, that his government would initiate a massive program of employment generation via the Rural Employment Scheme. This was followed by a central government order streamlining the public distribution system.
This directed state governments to pick up their food grain quotas, to introduce efficiency and responsiveness in the system, and to punish hoarders of food grains.
The right to food campaign has attained several achievements.3 First, as a result
of court orders, most state governments have introduced midday meals in government and government-aided schools.4 The effort has successfully extended the strategy to children studying as late as Class X in some states. Second, the Supreme
Court has set in place mechanisms that monitor the implementation of various
nutrition-related initiatives of the central government and appointed commissioners
who report to it.
Third, the court, by repeatedly stating that the right to food directly emanates
from Article 21 of the Indian Constitution, which provides that raising the level of
nutrition and the standard of living of its people and improving public health are
among the states primary duties, has accorded legal backing to the right to food.
Fourth, the campaign for food rights has secured implementation of food-for-work
programs (The Hindu, 2004). By any measure, these are significant developments.

Contemporary Civil Society Activism in India

The right to food campaign is one of five major initiatives launched by NGOs in
India since the late 1990s. The others have been organized around right to work,

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810 American Behavioral Scientist

right to health, right to education, and right to information. These campaigns have
given rise to a flurry of political activity.5 India probably possesses one of the most
vibrant and perhaps one of the most unruly civil societies in the world, peopled with
citizen groups of all kinds, such as professional trade unions and lobbies, consumer
associations, film clubs, cricket fan associations, election watch, social audit groups,
and advocacy groups. Some political movements that have conducted far-reaching
mobilization have emerged in the space of civil society, such as the movement for
land rights and the womens, anti-caste, and environmental movements. Most of
these are grounded in a strong redistributive ethos.
These campaigns have brought new ways of conceptualizing issues and ways of
getting things done. For one, most of these initiatives focus specifically on social
policy issues, health, education, food, work, and income, especially in light of the
massive social inequality in the country.6 In particular, these campaigns seek to
upgrade the provisions of the Directive Principles of State Policy (part 4) of the
Constitution to the status of fundamental rights (in part 3).7 These campaigns interpret democracy largely in terms of social and economic rights.8
Most of the leaders of these campaigns are not interested in raising popular consciousness, mobilizing citizens in pursuit of a cause, or building a mass base.
Preferred strategies of these efforts include networking with other organizations,
calling on like-minded individuals to sign petitions or attend meetings, and persuading government officials and members of political parties. The NGOs involved have
skillfully used the range of civil rights granted by the Constitution and drawn on the
entire repertoire of political strategies available to nonviolent struggles: public hearings, rallies, sit-ins, processions, research, media, advocacy, and lobbying state
officials. But these groups have not focused on politicizing civil society. That is why
these campaigns have never been able to attain the status of social movements, nor
perhaps are they interested in doing so. Notably, campaigns have achieved results
only when they have appealed to the Supreme Court and it has supported them. The
court mediates between civil society groups and the state.
Leaders of these efforts are normally middle-class intellectuals, many of whom
are active in the World Social Forum, have been involved in setting up NGOs, and
have access to sources of major funding. Indeed, NGOs form almost 80% of the
coalition.9 For instance, the main groups that came together in the National Alliance
for the Fundamental Right to Education were Pratham (a Mumbai-based NGO),
several voluntary groups working in Rajasthan, the Forum for Crche and Child Care
Services (SCF) UK, SCF Canada, M.V. Foundation Bodh, UNICEF, National
Foundation for India, Child Rights and You, and the National Law School University
of India.
Unlike political movements that focus on power relations, these civil society
campaigns typically do not reach the source of powerlessness and helplessness, as
evidenced by, say, skewed income patterns. Although their focus on poverty and

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Chandhoke / Democracy in India 811

exploitation has managed to highlight issues of impoverishment, ill health, and illiteracy,
none of these efforts has really addressed resource inequality. These campaigns do
not pursue the large and expansive dreams of earlier generations of social activists;
thay rework existing structures of power and forge new and equitable structures of
social relations so that citizens can participate in the political process from a plane
of equality. Eschewing grand dreams of social and political transformation, civil
society organizations concentrate instead on the necessities of everyday life.10
However, the success of these campaigns in compelling the government to enact
the right to work, to education, and to information and the visibility accorded these
initiatives by the media have wrought significant change in the way Indias residents
conceptualize civil society. Liberal democratic theorists, always suspicious of the
proclivities of the state to expand power at the expense of its citizens freedom, and
equally skeptical of the political parties abilities to represent the popular will, have
argued that citizens must exercise constant vigilance. This is the basic precondition
of a thriving democracy, because the best of democracies degenerate in the
absence of participation and accountability (Pateman, 1970). Voluntary associations
engage with one another in civil society and the public sphere to monitor and hold
the state accountable and to create a shared discourse on what a good society should
look like and how it might be achieved (Young, 1999).
In recent times, however, civil society has come to be identified almost exclusively with the NGO sector. The reasons for this development are complex and
beyond the purview of this article, but the increasing visibility of NGOs in collective
life has to do with what can be called the pluralization of the state, or the state sharing responsibility with civil society organizations in the delivery of social goods.
With the acceptance of market liberalism and globalisation, stated Indias Tenth
Five Year Plan (2002-2007),
it is expected that the State yields to the market and the civil society in many areas
where it, so far, had a direct but distortionary [sic] and inefficient presence. . . . It also
includes the role of the State as a development catalyst where, perhaps, civil society has
better institutional capacity. At the same time, with the growth of markets and the presence of an aware and sensitive civil society, many developmental functions as well as
functions that provide stability to the social order have to be progressively performed
by the market and the civil society organisations. It means extension of the market and
civil society domain at the expense of the State in some areas. (Government of India,
2003, p. 181)

The 10th plan suggests that the role of voluntary organizations, nonprofit-making
companies, corporate bodies, cooperatives, and trusts be strengthened in social
and economic development. The plan follows the logic of the Seventh Five Year
Plan (1985-1990), which had heralded a perceptible shift from government to civil
society organizations and to the market in matters of service delivery. In 2002, the

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812 American Behavioral Scientist

Planning Commission of India held that voluntary organizations play a vital role in
the shaping and implementation of public policy. Their credibility likes in the responsible and constructive role they play in society (Planning Commission, 2002, p 3).
The NGO sector expanded dramatically in the wake of these developments, particularly because the government offered large funds to organizations. A recent study by
Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), which seeks to encourage participation and
learning, calculated that the total number of nonprofit organizations in India is more
than 1.2 million and that 20 million people work for them either in a voluntary capacity or for a salary (PRIA, 2002, pp. 5, 11).
International development institutions have also promoted NGOs because they
are seen to possess certain properties: They are relatively unburdened with large
bureaucracies, they are more flexible and more receptive to innovation than are
political parties, and they are able to identify with the needs of the grass roots. Donor
agencies would rather give grants to NGOs than fund governments in the south,
which have been found wanting on many fronts, particularly that of enabling their
citizens to live in a degree of dignity.
These developments (i.e., the domination of NGOs over other organizations in
civil society) raise the question of whether nongovernmental agents can stand in
for citizens, speak for them, engage in the politics of advocacy, and often make and
unmake policy, without ever having fought an election, been authorized, or held
accountable. Nor are they likely to be held accountable, because representation to
constituencies other than their stakeholders is not their job.
The presence of numerous groups in civil society that pursue agendas independent of political parties and even of citizen groups is a welcome development because
it deepens democracy. Such groups succeed in expanding the political agenda,
which is often preempted by parties in pursuit of power and pelf. However,
democrats may well be confronted with one nagging doubt: Civil society groups
can be considered democratic inasmuch as they deepen democracy and expand
agendas, but are these groups representative of the popular will? The establishment
of procedures and agents that represent the democratic popular will is arguably the
chief reason why democracy is preferable to any other political institution. More
important, do citizens know to whom these organizations are accountable? For
much of the 20th century it has been assumed that the government is accountable
to the citizens for the policies it makes and the policies it does not make.11 Now that
governments are sharing responsibility with and delegating functions to NGOs, and
now that nongovernmental agents are standing in for citizens, who are NGOs
accountable to: their clients, the government, multilateral funding agencies, or the
northern NGOs that fund many of them? As Brown and Fox (1998) have pointed
out, the problems of accountability are particularly difficult when the actors work
across great power differences with little shared organization; when goals, values,
ideologies, and interests are diverse, ambiguous, or conflicting; and when actors
differ about who is in charge or responsible for different tasks. This can lead to

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Chandhoke / Democracy in India 813

bewilderment among citizens. In short, because many of these organizations are

beyond the reach of representation, the idea that a definable system of authority is
even notionally answerable to the democratic will has been seriously compromised.
Moreover, evidence suggests that organizations that are not internally democratic,
or are weakly so, promote conformity and are more likely to be indifferent to
notions of democratic citizenship.12 Arguably, if NGOs do not subscribe to notions
of internal democracy, they are hardly likely to be deeply committed to democracy
in civil society.
The entry of these organizations into civil society has been propelled by a significant development in democratic politics. Representative organizations may purport to represent the popular will, but they have been found to suffer from a
democratic deficit. This is the irony of contemporary democracies. Representative
organizations may not prove democratic and democratic organizations are not representative. This disjuncture is the product of a crisis of representation.

The Idea of Democracy

Democracy is among the most elusive concepts in the vocabulary of political
theory, the veritable will-o-the-wisp that defies most efforts to pin it down. A focus
on a minimalist conception of democracy, that it establishes peaceful procedures for
transfer of power from one set of elites to another, raises troubling questions: Is that
all there is to democracy? Is it enough that citizens vote for their preferred representatives once in 5 years and then withdraw from the public realm? One can argue
that substantive democracy is about equality and freedom, rights, and justice at every
site of human interaction, whether the household, the workplace, or social associations. But this claim raises another question: What is so distinctive about the field,
the activity, and the project of politics in the democratic mode?
Arguably, the rules of every activity in society are set by an activity the ancient
Greeks called political.13 Unless the political process sets appropriate rules, workplaces or the family might not have a whiff of a chance to be democratic.
Correspondingly, it is at the site of the political that particular and discrete projects
of a society are able to realize coherence. A given society consists of a number of
distinct projects, say, the household, the economy, the public sphere of civil society,
and culture. But society is not a sum of these distinct projects because the political
lends unity to projects marked by different sorts of activity. The political provides a
broad framework for these activities. Political practices unearth and hold up for
inspection rules that govern the social whole, interrogate and engage with these rules
if necessary, and move toward the forging of new rules that are just, because they are
oriented around normative values such as freedom, equality, rights, and justice.
Conversely, the process of developing rules and reworking and constituting new ones
grounded in justice, freedom, equality, and rights is what constitutes the political in

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814 American Behavioral Scientist

a democratic mode. The search for new rules that are politically feasible as well as
normative sets the frame for other activities: social, economic, cultural, and even
personal.14 The activity requires, as an essential precondition, a disposition to dialogue, a readiness to reflect on other points of view different than ones own, and a
willingness to justify opinions and viewpoints publicly.
But, rules, however normative they might be, cannot be produced once and for
all. There is, in democratic politics, no notion of an original Hobbesian social contract that binds citizens in perpetuity. The terms of the contract are constantly renegotiated, even as new insights on what it means to be a citizen in a democratic world
are developed. Enduring issues include these:
How to balance a right to private property with social well-being
How democracy should promote the rights of cultural communities to

maintain and replicate their distinct practice

What the relationship should be between the right of the individual to free-

dom and the rights of cultural communities

How the tension between the right of society to benefit from goods such as

energy and irrigation that big development projects bring in their wake and
the rights of the communities they displace should be balanced

Democratic politics is dynamic and process focused. It is not critical per se that
a democratic political community arrives at a final decision on various issues: It is
more important that participants keep a dialogue going. This is so for at least four
reasons. First, the right of citizens to participate in the making and unmaking of rules
affirms agency. Democratic politics is of value because it allows citizens to make
their own histories. People are emboldened to speak back to history. This makes for
agency. Second, political activity encourages citizens who may be otherwise far
removed from each other by the exigencies of everyday life to come together and
participate in a shared discourse on what a good society is and how it can be realized.
Democracy enables citizens to come together and thus transcend boundaries. Third,
participation establishes the political competence of ordinary men and women. This
is valuable, because it establishes that the state does not have a monopoly on defining what is democratic. The political public can do so as well, and perhaps better.
Fourth, participation demands state accountability. It is difficult to think of modern
states, possessing as they do an inexorable will to power, voluntarily submitting
report cards to their citizens, unless a strong press, public opinion, campaigns, and
social movements compel them to do so.
Democratic politics does not come easily because it makes demands on the time
and the energies of citizens and because it enjoins a willingness to dialogue with
others who may be completely opposed to ones point of view. Democracy demands
two additional prerequisites: that civil society safeguard, expand, and recreate
conditions for free participation and that the state provide an opportunity for the
production and reproduction of the space of civil society by codifying citizen rights

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Chandhoke / Democracy in India 815

to such participation. The first requirement is a necessary condition for the second,
but the reverse is also true. It is, for example, difficult to think of state accountability
without the corresponding political activity of participation. It is only when the state
considers itself accountable that the ability of civil society inhabitants to demand
democracy of the state is expanded. Without a vibrant civil society as
the space of such activity, both participation and accountability, which arguably
constitute the signposts of democracy, may remain distant dreams. And these values
constitute democracys foundation.

Democracy and Representation

A direct relationship between the citizens and the state, the way Aristotle conceived of it, for instance, may be a nonstarter for three reasons. First, most societies
are too large and too complex to allow direct participation. Second, demands, perspectives, and interests are plural as well as conflicting. Third, the specialized and
highly inscrutable nature of modern legislation and administration, which demand
expertise and deal in complex issues, proscribes direct control over policy.
Consequently, interests need to be represented by an agent who mediates between
the two basic protagonists of the democratic text, the citizen and the state. For these
reasons, the representative is the key player in democratic systems. Democracy is
presumed to exist via a triadic relationship between (a) citizens, or rather the interests citizens hold and assert in, and sometimes against, the body politic; (b) the
democratic state, the legitimacy of which institution is premised on its responsiveness to popular demands; and (c) the representative who mediates between citizens
and the state. Virtually since its earliest establishment, democracy has been seen as
synonymous with representative democracy.
Political parties have long played the central role in representative democracies.
However, by the late 1960s and the 1970s, pervasive doubts arose concerning the
capacity of political parties to represent adequately the interests of citizens. What came
to be known as the crisis of representation thesis held that political parties had
exhausted their capacity to represent the aspirations of their constituencies. They had
become hierarchical, bureaucratic, and rigid, and they tended to follow the political
logic and impulse of power seeking more, and the task of representing the needs and
interests of their constituents less. This discontent was to result in the growth of new
social movements across the world whose members had been marginalized by formal
politics.
As in the rest of the world, restlessness with the party system was starkly evident
in India at roughly the same time. This is regrettable because in the immediate aftermath of independence, faith in the political party as a vehicle of representation of
popular demands was both established and validated by the fact that the freedom
movement had been led by one such party: the Indian National Congress.

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816 American Behavioral Scientist

Yet, the man who had authored the transition of the Congress from an elite
organization to a mass party, Mahatma Gandhi, suggested on the eve of independence that the Congress should disband its political organization and serve the people.
More than conscious of the propensity of modern forms of politics to appropriate
political agendas for narrow, partisan, and power-driven ends, Gandhi tried to save
the Congress from itself. Other leaders of the Congress had another historical task
to accomplish: the transformation of a former colony into an independent, sovereign,
and proud nation-state. Those leaders took over the reins of power, and the Congress
became a party of government. For about 23 years confidence in the ability of the
party to represent the popular will remained strong. The Congress under the first
generation of its leaders, particularly Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, revealed remarkable
capacity to represent and accommodate all class, caste, and group interests within
itself. This period led Rajni Kothari to conceptualize the Indian model of democracy
as a one-party dominant system or the Congress system. For Kothari (1970), the
unique selling point of this approach lay in the fact that groups and individuals carried on the rather complex activity of negotiating and bargaining with the leadership
within the party.
In 1967, Myron Weiner suggested that the reason the party could maintain its
hegemony was that it could find a place for all. It could incorporate people who were
dedicated to social service and who were moved by an egalitarian spirit (Weiner,
1967, pp. 472-473). But the party also had a place for those people who wanted
status and power, for people who had specific grievances and demands, for people
who were looking for solidarity, and for those people who were committed to
national integration, economic development, secularism, and representative government (Weiner, 1967, pp. 472-474). In short, the Congress party represented, accommodated, and incorporated a broad spectrum of caste, religious, and regional
interests and classes for more than two decades after independence.
By the early 1970s, however, demands for a nonparty political process were
raised by the massive mobilization launched by the socialist leader J. P. Narayan
against the authoritarianism of Congress leader and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
In the space of a little more than 20 years, the same Congress that had specialized in
addressing, negotiating, and resolving demands of different groups within the framework of its own organization had become the captive of its leader. The once impressive decentralised organization of the Congress party, wrote Bardhan in 1984, has
largely disintegrated; the principle of popular representation at different organisational levels of the Party has been abandoned; [and] nominated to co-opted political
operators and gangsters control much of the political machinery (p. 79).
The dissatisfaction with political parties raised questions about how the representative was expected to discharge his or her mandate dated back to the establishment of the party system and to the classic formulations on representation by Edmund
Burke. Burke wondered whether representatives should act according to a more or
less precise mandate, as advocates, as mediators, or as proxies. Representatives have

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Chandhoke / Democracy in India 817

to perform their tasks in constituencies that offer plural and often conflicting opinions, perspectives, needs, and interests. And it is not clear whether agents should
represent all of these interests or filter the mlange and privilege some, downgrade
others, articulate some, and leave others unarticulated.
The potentially problematic character of representation becomes clear when one
reviews the scathing attacks launched upon it by feminists and spokespersons of the
less privileged groups. These critiques focus on not only the fact that the interests of
the unprivileged tend to be left out of the structures of representation and thus
excluded from both the domain of politics and that of policy making but also the fact
that representatives cannot even begin to fathom the needs and the interests of those
who are not like them. Are representatives capable of advocating the interests of that
section of the constituency to which they do not belong? Can, for example, a male
representative put forth the interests of women? Is it possible for him to understand
womens life experiences before or as he represents their needs and interests? Can
an upper class or upper caste representative do justice to the interests of the lower
classes and castes? Can someone belonging to the majority community comprehend
the needs, desires, and aspirations or indeed the oppression of ethnic minorities?
These anxiety-ridden concerns, which draw attention to background social
differences in civil society, dispute two basic suppositions of classical theories of
representation: the principle of territorial constituencies containing a plurality of
groups and the idea that representatives can represent the interests of all, including the
least advantaged. It has been alleged that representative bodies fail to mirror the plurality of a given society and fall short of representing the interests of the marginalized
sections of that society (Young, 2000, p. 133). These disputes confront the idea that the
oppressed and marginal sections of society can find voice in various forums through
accepted modes of representation. Critics offer two main alternatives: group representation and reservations for disadvantaged groups in the formal system of politics.
For instance, Anne Philips has argued that those representatives who are able to
share the social characteristics of their disadvantaged constituents are better advocates of their interests. Such agents are able to comprehend better the problems that
bedevil particular categories of society and can make present voices that otherwise
may not be heard (Philips, 1995, p. 40).
The argument that like must represent like sees group representation not as an end
in itself but as a way of bringing the perspectives and the interests of the marginalized
to the forefront of politics. Iris Young has argued that a politics that aims to do justice
through public discussion and decision making must devise a third alternative to private
interest competition and denial of difference in public discussions of the common good.
Young suggested that systems of political representation cannot make individuals
present in their individuality, but rather should represent aspects of a persons life experience, identity, beliefs or activity where she or he has affinity with others. . . . Within a
particular political context, a person may be represented in several ways within each of
these modes (Young, 2000, p. 133). Young has argued that the political representative

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818 American Behavioral Scientist

has to look after the interests that affect or that are important to the life prospects of
individuals; represent opinions or the principles, values, and priorities that bear on and
condition collective judgment about what policies should be pursued; and represent the
plural perspectives of his or her constituents so that the interests of the worse off can be
advocated in policy making.
Arguments for the politics of voice, however, pose problems for the concept of
representation. For if we pursue the logic of the argument, then, say, women who
belong to the upper class or caste cannot possibly represent the interests of the lower
class or caste woman who is triply oppressed by reasons of gender, caste, and class.
In India, the case for reserving seats for women in Parliament has floundered on the
rock of caste, with spokespeople of the lower castes asking for reservations within
reservations. The concept of representation thereby becomes an intractable problem,
because presumably hardly anyone can represent anyone else, excepting those who
are exactly like him or her, which is impossible. Group representation performs a
potentially powerful role when persons who belong to marginal sections of society
identify with the representative just because he or she is from their community.
Nonetheless, group representation suffers from the same flaws as other theories of
representation that ground their logic in territorial constituencies: that in and through
the processes of representation, the representative comes to possess considerable
autonomy and thereby power. Somewhat strangely, advocates of group representation
are acutely aware of power equations between communities but supremely insensitive
to power equations within communities. Representatives of lower caste women and
ethnic minorities can also prove susceptible to the inexorable will to power. And
this still leaves unrepresented the doubly disadvantaged within the community.
Critiques that challenge the adequacy of classical theories of representation seek to
improve on them and thereby to deepen democracy by bringing voices that might otherwise be left out in the metaphorical cold to bear upon decision-making processes.
Other discontents of representation, located firmly in the postmodern moment, dismiss
the entire idea that p can represent q as so much nonsense. Postmodernists argue that
representatives do not represent something we can call a preformed political will of
their constituents. Theorists challenge the idea that already formed and articulated interests or opinions within the constituency can be transferred from the domain of public
will formation to that of policy making, via the representative. The progression of the
sequence is not very clear. Political interests and opinions may well be constructed by
practices of representation. No pure relation of representation, suggests the archetypical postmodernist Laclau, is obtainable because it is of the essence of the process
of representation that the representative has to contribute to the identity of what is represented (Laclau, 1996, p. 87). Representatives do not, in other words, merely register
or channel the will of the people; they are also engaged in the shaping of that will. The
questions then are these: Are citizens and their interests represented at all in political
society? Or are citizen interests assembled, constituted, and given voice by practices of
representation?

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Chandhoke / Democracy in India 819

The logic of this critique dissolves structures of representation and opts for direct
democracy where everyone represents only himself or herself. This is not unknown in
the history of political ideas. Casting more than a skeptical eye on the entire notion of
representation, Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote, Casting more than a skeptical eye on the
entire notion of representation, Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote, I hold then that
Sovereignty, being nothing less than the exercise of the general will, can never be
alienated and that the Sovereign, who is no less than a collective being, cannot be
represented except by himself (Rousseau, n.d.). Benjamin Barber has suggested that
representative democracy is a poor surrogate for direct democracy. Representative
institutions are opposed to what he terms strong democracy (Barber, 1984).
Theorists of deliberative/participative democracy would rather do away with representatives and opt for smaller, face-to-face forums where citizens can enter into a
direct relationship with each other and with state officials who decide policy and
where these officials can be held effectively accountable for much the same reason.
But in large and complex societies, participation is only feasible in local spaces;
when it comes to the central state, the role of the representative becomes crucial.
Participation and representation are constitutive of each other. Without participatory
democracy, representatives have immense power to act, as they will, without let or
hindrance. Without some mechanism of representation, participatory citizenship is
of little practical import.
Concerns about representation are always focused on deepening democracy: how
best to ensure citizen participation, to ensure that representatives reflect the multiplicity of social opinion, particularly the voices of the marginalized that are articulated in
the participative sphere of democratic politics.

Transformation of the Political Context

Apart from political parties that are engaged in the politics of representation, citizens
have long engaged in direct and collective action such as strikes, petitions, protest
marches, and demonstrations. Civil society groups that claim to represent this or that
constituencyprofessional associations such as trade unions or chambers of commerce,
film clubs, reading groups, civic associations, and social movements such as the civil
liberties movement, the womens movement, the peace movement, and the environmental movement, in particularhave raised issues that are relevant to collective life.
Representation of interests does not want for agents, but normally civic and professional associations are complementary to the sphere of formal representation. Citizen
associations are often linked closely with political parties, and issues raised by these
groups have been taken up by parties and fed into relevant agendas. Conversely,
political parties facilitate the activities of civic groups, inasmuch as their demands are
brought into policy forums via party representatives. The line between formal and
informal politics is often a blurred one, but parties provide the avenues for these

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820 American Behavioral Scientist

groups to influence policy and these groups provide inputs for party agendas. Every
major Indian political party has floated its own trade union, womens associations,
student groups, professional associations, and even cultural clubs. Other groups in
civil society work outside the formal ambit of the party system and yet others enter
into loose coalitions with like-minded parties on occasion. That is, participants in
democratic discourse have found direct ways of addressing political issues outside the
space of formal representation but linked to it.
In the late 1980s, however, civil society came to be seen as an alternative to the
sphere of organized politics and formal representation. The reasons for this shift are
by now well known. In Eastern and Central Europe, people turned their back on
nonresponsive and authoritarian states that had denied them basic political and civil
rights. Citizens opted to resurrect civil society as a space in which individuals and
groups came together to reflect on issues and to plan what needed to be done.
Renouncing engagement with state power and dismissing the Leninist preoccupation
with smashing existing states, members of newly constructed civil societies opted
for another route to democracy.
Equally well known are the outcomes of mobilization in these newly invented
civil societies. When people came together and demanded their due as citizens
basic political and civil rightssome very powerful Stalinist states collapsed like
houses of cards. Civil societies had realized a political revolution. In retrospect, it is
clear that the civil society argument reenacted the bourgeois revolution, which in
France, the United States, and England had transformed monarchies into democracies and transformed subjects into citizens through the demand for civil and political
rights. The argument put an end to collective imaginaries of revolutionary transformation. The civil society argument highlighted that democracy is not realized by
changing the holders of state power; it is achieved by constant alertness and awareness in the semi-autonomous sphere of civil society. Democracy demands hard work
and sustained activism on a daily basis. The civil society argument established what
Antonio Gramsci, writing his magnum opus in Mussolinis prison, had conceptualized: States without civil societies are fragile constructs liable to be overthrown in
the face of citizen mobilization (Gramsci, 1971) It is a moot point that civil societies
have won their most momentous victories against dictatorial and undemocratic states
(Chandhoke, 2003).
In India, the relative decline of the party system was accompanied by a shift to civil
society. The deterioration of all institutions, and particularly those of representative
democracy, spurred several mass-based political movements and grass roots activism.
Scholars turned their attention toward civil society, toward a nonparty political process in civil society.15 Rajni Kothari now suggested that the real countertrends to
authoritarianism were to be found not in the party system, in the arena of electoral
politics or of state power, but in civil society. It is to be seen as a response to the
incapacity of the State to hold its various constituents in a framework of positive
action, its growing refusal (not just inability) to deliver the goods, and its increasingly

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Chandhoke / Democracy in India 821

repressive character (Kothari, 1988). By the late 1980s wrote Omvedt, the predominant feature of Indian politics had become the new social movements of women,
dalits, and low castes, peasants, farmers, and tribals, as well as ethnicity-based struggles for autonomy or independence on the periphery (Omvedt, 1993, p. xii).
The ascendance of the civil society argument and the decline of confidence in
accepted forms of representative politics in India and other parts of the world
wrought momentous consequences. Civil society came to be regarded in policy as
well as academic circles as an indispensable precondition for democracy and the best
counter to authoritarianism. In India, scholars and activists fed up with a state that
had retained only formal credentials to democracy turned to civil society.

Participation and Deepening Democracy

The paradox of contemporary democracies is constituted by the disjuncture
between democracy and representation. But that division has been propelled to
the forefront of the political agenda by the incapacity of representatives to represent
the popular will and by the concomitant degeneration of political parties. Across the
world, civil society activists have raised the rights of alternative sexualities and ethnic minorities and struggles for justice. These concerns cannot be dismissed simply
because the organizations do not focus on representing the democratic will. But
representative democracy may not be dismissed either because unless citizen aspirations are articulated through policy, policies can be imposed on citizens. Rather, the
context of representation can be strengthened so that it may be made more effective
and democratic.
Civil societies are plural. The members of this sphere speak in many tongues and
engage in all manners of projects, not all of which sit very easily with each other.
Some challenge the manner in which state power is exercised. Others seek to expand
state obligations, and yet other projects put forth alternative notions of politics. Civil
society emerges as the venue where these projects articulate or negotiate, supplement
or challenge one another to strengthen and deepen democracy. Democracy is about
recognizing the political competence of the public to set agendas and to put forth
alternative visions of what a desirable society looks like. It is about engaging with the
state, it is about the right to protest, it is about the right to participate in the political
domain, it is about the right to choose representatives, and it is about the right to
withdraw mandates from representatives, if necessary. Provisioning social goods per
se does not define democracy. Some very dictatorial regimes have managed to deliver
these goods, perhaps more efficiently than democratic regimes have. But citizens in a
democracy have a basic right to live with dignity and not to be compelled to beg for
what is rightly theirs. Democracy is more than the delivery of social goods; it is also
about these goods as the prerequisites of a good life, so that citizens freed from the
necessity of eking out a bare subsistence can participate as full members of civil

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822 American Behavioral Scientist

society. In Rawlsian terms, Though mens rational plans do have different final ends,
they nevertheless all require for their execution certain primary goods, natural and
social . . . whatever ones system of ends, primary goods are necessary means
(Rawls, 1972, p. 15). The nature of these primary goods is well known by now: work,
nutrition, health, education, shelter, self-respect, and basic rights.
But this means that civil society is the space of many different and discrete
projects, some focusing on politicizing citizens and enabling them to speak back to
history and others focusing on the provisions of social goods so that the background
conditions for such engagement with the state are met. The only way in which both
participation and representation can be strengthened is for like-minded groups to
connect in deliberative spaces in civil society, so that at some point citizens have an
opportunity to participate in these debates. It is also important that civil society
groups connect with established modes of representation. At some point, public
opinion has to feed into policy and policy has to be rendered accountable. This really
means bringing the sphere of participative and democratic politics closer to the
domain of policy making via the representative. For despite all the frailties of
political parties, these possess two advantages. First, representatives are authorized
in and through procedures of elections. Second, representatives are held accountable
to constituencies through elections. The representative still stands squarely at the
center of democracy. For this reason, the links between civil society actors and representatives need. Several suggestions follow:
Civil society groups should ensure a multiplicity of candidates and multiplicity of
political agendas because this enables the voter to choose between competing formulations. This implies that civil society group representatives who are so inclined
may transit to formal politics and constitute themselves as candidates who are
authorized by the constituency.
Other civil society groups should monitor free and fair elections.
Governments and civil society organizations should work to create and reproduce
conditions that produce an informed and a politically aware citizenry and a free
media.
Civil society organizations should ensure fair rates of electoral participation through
campaigns that focus on the need for citizens to exercise their rights to voice in
public decisions.
Citizens and NGOs should jealously safeguard civil and political rights.
Governments should institute consultative mechanisms between political parties
and civil society groups and also institute procedures of accountability to civil society groups and to citizens.

If these necessary procedures are institutionalized, a representative will find it

difficult to stray too far from his or her mandate, provided that citizens associated
with civil society groups exercise constant vigilance and provided that public opinion crystallizes around crucial issues in a sphere of participation outside that of

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Chandhoke / Democracy in India 823

formal politics. The institutionalization of formal procedures of representation, in

other words, allows for the realization of participative democracy. Indian society
must constantly fine-tune procedures so that representatives are compelled to represent the interests of their constituents and be sensitive to public opinion.

Conclusion
The establishment of representative institutions to serve as proxies for deliberative spaces in which citizens participate in the making and remaking of rules for
society constitutes the rationale for as well as the justification of modern democracy.
These institutions should seek to capture, as faithfully as possible, the intent and
nature of the popular will through a variety of means: consultation, authorization,
and accountability. That is why anxious concerns about the adequacy of representation almost always center on the fundamental question of how democracy can be
deepened. The late 1980s witnessed the emergence of civil society as a dominant
sphere of collective life that heralded an overriding preoccupation with the deepening of democracy. The irony is that these concerns might have nothing to do with
anxieties about participation and representation. I have tried to conceptualize and
negotiate the disjuncture between participation, representation, and democracy and
suggest that the division can be transformed into conjuncture. It is only then that the
conditions for building substantive democracy can be created and fostered.

Notes
1. There is a fine line of distinction between hunger and malnutrition; whereas the former can be
assuaged by the consumption of cereals, the latter requires also noncereal foods, safe drinking water, and
sanitation.
2. Dreze (2007), Hunger amidst plenty, available at http://indiatogether.or/2003.dec/pov-foodsec;
also, the collection of writings on the website of the campaign for food rights can be found at www
.rtoffoodindia.org
3. For instance, the Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti declared April 9, 2002, as a national day of action
on midday meals. This achieved some success in building public opinion on the issue and also provided
an occasion to bring together various organizations interested in the issue.
4. Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, and Gujarat have run the midday meal scheme with some efficiency. Andhra Pradesh has extended the scheme to school holidays. Whereas the scheme in Delhi and
Maharashtra is marked by poor implementation, Bihar, Assam, and Uttar Pradesh have defaulted.
5. The Congress Party came to power in 2004 on the plank of caring for ordinary human beings and
appears to be more responsive to demands for basic needs.
6. Not only do a quarter of the worlds poor live in India, but the numbers of illiterates; school dropouts; people suffering from communicable diseases; and infant, child, and maternal deaths amount to a
staggering proportion of respective worldwide totals. Fifty-eight years of electoral democracy have not
managed to substantially ameliorate the suffering of these groups. The right to information campaign is
involved with specific issues such as information on development projects, but it also seeks to enlarge the
democratic capacity of citizens to know what the government is doing with public money.

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824 American Behavioral Scientist

7. Whereas chapter III of the Indian Constitution codifies a system of civil, political, and cultural
rights, chapter IV of the Constitution, termed the Directive Principles of State Policy, deals with social and
economic rights. The rights in chapter III are justiciable, the rights in chapter IV are nonjusticiable, which
means that this section provides directions to the Government of India when it enacts social policy.
8. It is interesting to note that despite the many rights on offer, the Supreme Court has related various
articulations of rights to an expanded notion of the right to life or Article 21 of the Constitution.
9. For instance, the interdisciplinary center of which I am director at the University of Delhi, the
DCRC, has been listed in the number of organizations that have campaigned for the right to work, only
because our members have attended meetings.
10. The concept of civil society in a basic sense forms the binary opposite of revolutionary violence;
whether in its liberal or its Marxist avatar, civil society signifies a set of practices that seek to engage with
state power, enable citizens to come across in a set of shared discourses, and monitor transgressions of
power. I have written on this in my 1995 publication State and Civil Society: Explorations in Political
Theory (chap. 2).
11. On the relationship between democracy and accountability, see Dunn (2005a, 2005b).
12. See Hudock (1999) for a trenchant critique of NGOs.
13. Notably, for Aristotle, political activity is always ethical; politics is the pursuit of the good life.
14. Arguably, the codification of democratic rules as the sine qua non of a given society provides the
reason for and the justification of struggles that seek to fight domestic violence or child abuse.
15. See Sheth (1983) and Sethi (1984).

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Neera Chandhoke serves as professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Delhi, and
director of the Developing Countries Research Centre, University of Delhi. Her recent published works
include The Conceits of Civil Society (New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2003) and Mapping Histories
(edited) (New Delhi, Tulika, 2000). She is leading a research project on conflict cities that is part of the
Crisis States Programme based at the London School of Economics and Political Science and is leading
a project titled Globalization and the State in India that is examining the impact of globalization on the
capacity of the Indian state to provide basic goods and services particularly to the poorer sections of
society. The Ford Foundation is sponsoring this project.

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