Mahathir is wrong: we need a better democracy, not less of it

Nobody knows better than us Indians that our democracy – or what passes for it – is deeply flawed. We confront its imperfections everyday - and agonise over it, when our elected governments conduct themselves in undemocratic fashion, and when our opposition parties refuse to take any responsibility for their partisan actions. We are deeply frustrated when electoral politics, intended to make governance representative of people’s wishes, descends to the lowest common denominator of pandering. And when civil society representatives and NGOs exercise their democratic rights and create hurdles to development without offering any constructive ideas, we fret about it.

Given the gridlock we see in politics and governance today, there are sections of society within India who occasionally yearn for a form of benevolent dictatorship that will “get the job done” (whatever that means), even if it means compromising our democratic rights. They have a longing for models of authoritarian capitalism that deliver top-speed growth while simultaneously suspending civil liberties.

Yet, when Malaysia’s former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, now on a visit to India, reasons that “less democracy” is better for India , we can only suggest, respectfully, that he is horribly wrong.

Addressing the HT Leadership Summit on Friday, Mahathir said that India “could be China in terms of development” if it was “less democratic”. Pointing to the “limitations of democracy”, he argued that India could do with a stronger central government and weaker state governments.

For the moment, let’s ignore the point about India becoming a China. For one thing, India cannot ‘become a China’ : for another, I’m not even sure that is an ‘aspiration’ worthy of nourishing. China may have many things to love from an Indian perspective, as I noted here , but its model of authoritarian capitalism, which has delivered heady growth for three decades, isn’t exactly a winner, and the jury is still out on how the China model will pan out . In fact, the very people who have benefited from China’s economic boom are now voting with their feet and want to leave China - in the absence of property rights (which is one pillar of a democratic society).

Where Mahathir perhaps goes wrong is in mixing up ‘democracy’ with ‘politics’. Of course, we could do with a lot less partisan politics, but any erosion of democratic rights in the name of development is a slippery slope to more extreme forms of misgovernance. The current churn in Malaysian civil society over a proposal by the government to ban street protests is indicative of the perils of the Mahathir Doctrine.

Mahathir may be credited with having overseen the modernisation of Malaysia, but what he did to Malaysian civil society in the name of progress isn’t exactly worthy of emulation. One of Mahathir’s enduring and troublesome legacies is the racialisation of society. And to this day, Malaysia, although a vibrant democracy, has the distinction of being one of the few countries in the world to still have a “racialist Constitution”, a form of modern-day apartheid, where Malay Muslims (Bumiputeras) are privileged on the basis of race.

Mahathir’s point on the need for weaker state governments is also wide off the mark. That is perhaps born of Mahathir’s fascination with the perceived efficiency of China’s central planning model. But the reality in India is vastly different. As Firstpost has argued , in India, the central government is, if anything, a drag on states, and there is in fact a case for devolving more power to the states.

What we really want is not less democracy, but a little less politics in our democracy. Our democracy isn’t perfect – far from it – but it can always be perfected. Mahathir’s well-meaning but ill-advised wish for ‘less democracy’ in India is best left unrealised.