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by Pratap Bhanu Mehta (Author)
After nearly seven decades of its existence, there is a pervasive feeling that India's democracy is in crisis. But what is the nature of this threat? In this essay, republished now with a new foreword from the author, Pratap Bhanu Mehtareminds us what a bold experiment bringing democracy to a largely illiterate and unpropertied India was. He argues that the sphere of politics has truly created opportunities for people to participate in society. Looking at various facts, he also finds that persistent social inequality on the one hand and a mistaken view of the state's proper function and organization on the other have modified and hindered the workings of democracy and its effects in innumerable ways. Posting the quest for self-respect as democracy's deepest aspiration, this essay explores how inequality and the crisis of accountability have together impeded collective action to achieve such an end. To recover this sense of moral well-being and responsibility, Mehta suggests, is the core of the democratic challenge before us.
Optimistic, lively and closely argued, The Burden of Democracy offers a new ideological imagination that throws light on our discontents. By returning to the basics of democracy it serves to illuminate our predicament, even while perceiving the broad contours for change.
Author Biography
Pratap Bhanu Mehta is an Indian academic. He has been the president of the Centre for Policy Research and has taught at NYU, Harvard and JNU. Since July 2017, he is the vice-chancellor of Ashoka University. His areas of research include political theory, constitutional law, society and politics in India, governance and political economy, and international affairs. Dr Mehta has served on many central government committees, including India's National Security Advisory Board, the Prime Minister of India's National Knowledge Commission, and a Supreme Court-appointed committee on elections in Indian universities. He received the 2010 Malcom S. Adishehshiah Award and the 2011 Infosys Prize for Social Sciences.
