Book Review: Manindra Nath Thakur and Dhananjay Rai, eds, Democracy on the Move? Reflections on Moments, Promises and Contradictions
| Date | 01 June 2015 |
| DOI | 10.1177/2321023015575240 |
| Published date | 01 June 2015 |
| Author | Harsh Sethi |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
140 Book Reviews
right. The result is a convincing argument that the act of voting is before all an end in itself, that what
drives people to the polling booth is not simply the expected outcome of the vote as a collective practice
or the pressures to assert one’s group’s identity, but the attachment to what constitutes a rare and concrete
experience of political equality, in a society marked by deeply entrenched inequalities. Another merit of
the book is to remind the reader that the success of India’s democracy lies more in the attachment that
people feel for democratic participation, than as an outcome of electoral competition and party politics.
Those who have wondered why and how the often sad spectacle of party politics in India and the murky
practices attached to it could generate such popular enthusiasm will find their answers in this book.
The approach adopted by Banerjee is not, however, without risks. Some may consider the corpus of
evidence assembled to be largely anecdotal. Quantitativists may have issues with the way the study’s
locations have been selected. There may be ground for such caveats, but the quality of the findings and
of the arguments largely outweighs these discipline-based methodological objections. The serious issue
that one can raise is that by focusing on individual voters, the study leaves aside the correlation of politi-
cal practices and the analysis of the local political, social and economic contexts. The question of how
context affects individuals’ views on the electoral process itself remains unaddressed. The annexes pro-
vide contextual information about the study’s locations, notably on the local demography and the 2009
campaign. There was an opportunity here to probe deeper into local political histories or, at least, give a
more detailed account of it.
While the book provides sound arguments on why people vote in large numbers, it does not really
account for turnout variations. As such, no matter how convincing they are, the main arguments seem
independent of temporal as well as socio-political context. Another critique is that the focus of the study
remains confined to the realm of the visible, overlooking some of the darker aspects of electoral politics:
disenfranchisement of poor urban voters and minority voters, illegal underground campaigning activities
and the serious limitations of the Election Commission’s capacity to effectively control these illegal activ-
ities. The result is a rather enchanted vision of electoral democracy—from the voter/citizen’s viewpoint—
downplaying some of the darker realities of electoral politics in India.
That being said, the book provides in its introduction and in the last two chapters insights that should
be mandatory reading for anyone interested in the fate and workings of India’s democracy or to anyone
teaching social sciences methodology seminars. It is worth noting that many single-authored books are
the product of vast collaborative efforts, but too often research assistants and other collaborators find
themselves relegated to a generic thank-you note in the acknowledgements section. In this case, the
presence of useful annexes and copious endnote references to Banerjee’s co-fieldworkers provide them
due credit, giving the reader at the same time a precise idea of everyone’s contribution.
Gilles Verniers
Assistant Professor of Political Science, Ashoka University
E-mail: gilles.verniers@ashoka.edu.in
Manindra Nath Thakur and Dhananjay Rai, eds, Democracy on the Move? Reflections on Moments, Promises
and Contradictions. Delhi: Aakar Books. 2013. 268 pages. `550.
DOI: 10.1177/2321023015575240
Few events/processes in recent Indian political history have evoked such interest and generated such
widely divergent responses as the ‘anti-corruption’/Jan Lokpal mobilization under the ‘leadership of
Anna Hazare’. It is also worth underscoring that all those ‘caught up’ in the Anna fever were inordinately
passionate about it—whether in support or against. It was almost as if the mobilization/upsurge, and
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