A cargo cult democracy

India needs to think about how First World democracies deliver the things their constitutions promise. Simply copy-pasting the forms isn't enough

One of the sideshows of World War II was the development of cargo cults on Pacific islands. As the Japanese fought the Americans, both sides set up bases and employed locals. Understandably, the locals, many of whom were just one step away from the Stone Age, thought these strangers with their incredible equipment and strange powers, were Gods.

The interactions abruptly exposed locals to two millennia worth of technological advance. The locals received manna in the form of clothing, medicine, canned food, tents, weapons, and so on. When the war ended, so did the freebies.

The cargo cults then started. The idea was to imitate the activities of the "Gods", who had delivered these things, in the hopes this would miraculously result in a resumption of supplies. The islanders piled up empty cans, put on discarded uniforms and held ceremonial marches. They sat in derelict control towers and muttered prayers into broken radios. They signalled to the empty skies and seas with tattered flags. They built airplanes out of wood and worshipped those.

India was a far more sophisticated culture, of course, when regular interactions with Westerners started. But in many ways India is also a cargo cult. We imitate the outward forms of democracy and governance in the hopes that this will miraculously catapult the nation to First World status.

India has the world's longest constitution, guaranteeing various basic rights like religious freedom, equality under the law, etc. It has a formal legal system to safeguard those rights. It has universal franchise. It has a multitude of political parties and regular elections by secret ballot.

Yet, in 65 years, desi democracy has been incapable of delivering the basics of law and order and social equity, let alone widespread access to roti, kapda, makaan, bijli, sadak, paani. A quarter of the population is illiterate; a third lives on less than Rs 32 day. Infant mortality is horrifying, gender ratios are appalling.

There are a multitude of insurgences across the Northeast, in Kashmir, and in left-wing-extremism affected states. Torture, encounter killings, and disappearances into mass graves are standard ways for the state machinery to combat those insurgencies. Honour killings, dowry deaths, rapes, and intra-caste/inter-religious violence are so common that such incidents are often not considered newsworthy. Freedom of speech is routinely curtailed and privacy as routinely violated.

No political party has a consistent governance record. None articulates coherent policy, let alone attempts to implement it. Every party shelters criminals and most have leaders with outstanding criminal cases. Almost every successful politician does his or her best to ensure dynastic succession.

Should India have adopted a different system? That doesn't follow. Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and the Myanmarese have suffered even more trauma and have even less right to redressal. Indonesia slaughtered half a million in anti-Communist purges. Malaysia favours its majority.

But consider China - the poster-boy for non-democratic governance. China has 4x India's GDP and much better quality of life indicators. However, tens of millions, maybe up to a 100 million, starved to death in the famine of 1958-1962. There was the Cultural Revolution and of course, there was Tiananmen. If India had similarly eliminated the bottom two deciles of its population in the 1960s, the residue might, by now, have had matching per-capita indicators.

Even cargo cult democracy might trump alternative formats, if history is any indicator. But it's time to understand that democracy is not about concepts written on paper; it is about delivering tangible governance to certain standards and that requires understanding how democracies actually work.

The cargo cults only saw the outward manifestations of technology; they had no clue about the enormous effort that goes to create a technologically advanced society. By analogy. India needs to think about how First World democracies actually deliver the things that their constitutions promise. Simply copy-pasting the forms will never be enough.