India: Today’s Politics and Beyond

Surface storms that shake up Indian politics, such as the one that uprooted Morarji Desai’s government last year in mid-July or the more recent one over the year-end elections, are the only events in India’s politics that catch the world’s attention. Yet, far more important events that take place deep down, at the rural base of Indian economics and politics, receive little notice—events signifying that democracy in India is alive, and accomplishing a few things no other democracy has yet accomplished. And these events bear out that our storms indeed are merely Indian democracy’s turbulent way of breaking new ground, of bringing new areas and classes into the political process.

The most important thing hap...