Grass Roots Politics in India: A Century of Political Evolution in Faizabad District

Description

The democratic political process began in India at the grass-roots level about a century ago. Its starting point was the Resolution on Local Self-Government initiated on May 18, 1882, by Lord Ripon. This marked the point where secret-ballot elections were first made the basis for choosing candidates for political office. Because India is a social world of continental proportions subdivided by a plethora of hereditary status groups defined by caste, religion, language, and regional culture, open politics meant ethnically structured competition for access to the spoils of public office on an increasing scale as the Freedom Movement compelled Britain to widen the domain of self-government. After Independence, the diversity of the electorate, combined with commitment to the Westminster system of government, meant that in order to win elections political parties were compelled to assemble coalitions spanning a wide range of conflicting local interests that could be accommodated only by ideological flexibility, widely dispersed patronage and restrained implementation of public policies. Faizabad District has been employed as a case study of how over a century, India, in order to accommodate (rather than, like Stalinism, try to obliterate) enormously complex cultural pluralism, evolved a modern polity with centralized institutions at the top counterbalanced by semi-autonomous political institutions at the grass-roots level.