India is a study in contrasts. Often described as the world’s largest democracy, Indian democracy has been strained during the last decade, including the suppression of civil liberties and political dissent, notable weakening of democratic norms, and violence against minorities. India has the fifth largest economy in the world, which has grown handsomely over the last few decades. And yet India houses the world’s largest concentration of seriously malnourished children.Footnote ¹ With more than a billion people, India’s diverse population speaks twenty-two major languages, practices most of the world’s main religions, and lives in twenty-nine different states. However, one of India’s major religious groups, the Muslims, is at present demonized by India’s Hindu nationalist rulers. And though India has elected a woman prime minister and elevated individuals belonging to two of the country’s most marginalized groups, Dalits and Adivasis, to be India’s presidents, it is also the case that women in India often bear the brunt of a patriarchal society, and members of lower castes in that country struggle for dignity and continue to face notable deprivation. With both admirable and not-so-admirable attributes coexisting side by side, India provides a complex – and giant – panorama that needs to be understood.

This book analyzes political and economic change in contemporary India. Our core focus is on India’s national politics. We discuss both politics at the apex and politics from below. A top-down perspective from the apex leads us to examine the workings of Indian democracy, as well as how public policy shapes economic growth and distribution in India. A bottom-up perspective leads us to investigate how various social groups in India have fared and reacted to macro changes; we especially focus on caste, labor, gender, and civil society activists. Beyond the national discussion, for those interested in probing India a little more deeply, we discuss India’s regional variations; and for those with an interest in India as a global player, we also discuss India’s position in the world. Though we provide an overview of these topics over time, the emphasis is contemporary. We focus primarily on post-1980 India, but even more sharply on trends after 2014 with Narendra Modi at the helm. This book then mainly provides a political-economy analysis of India under Modi.

Our Approach

India’s complexity, as well as its mix of achievements and shortcomings, attract differing interpretations. While in this volume we provide enough information to help readers form their own judgments, it may be helpful at the outset to juxtapose our perspective against other competing ones. We approach the study of India from a social democratic perspective that places high value on both democracy and equality. We also take both India’s achievements and shortcomings seriously. These standpoints put us at odds with some alternative narratives about contemporary India. For example, we disagree with the worldview of India’s current rulers that India is a Hindu state and nation. Instead, we embrace the views of India’s founders – like Gandhi and Nehru – that India must be a secular and inclusive democracy; India’s diversity is and has always been one of its fundamental strengths. More political than scholarly, such different standpoints nevertheless influence analyses of contemporary India. For those sympathetic to the official views, growing authoritarianism and persecution of Muslims in India are not matters of great concern; such trends, according to these observers, ought to be viewed instead as part and parcel of recapturing India’s greatness as a country of and for Hindus. Moreover, according to this line of thinking, what deserves scholarly attention are issues of political order and stability, sustained economic growth, and India’s rising power in the world.Footnote ² While we do not ignore such issues, our normative and analytical preferences lead us to worry greatly about achieving order at the expense of democracy, growth at the expense of inequalities, a singular identity at the expense of pluralism, and the use of nationalism as an anodyne. In fact, positing trade-offs between order and democracy, growth and equality, and national strength and pluralism, as proponents of this line of thinking do, is simply an exercise in creating false dichotomies.

We also do not embrace the despair of those who believe that “India is broken.”Footnote ³ According to this line of thinking, leader after leader in India – Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, and now Narendra Modi – have repeatedly failed Indians; these failures are clearly manifest in the fact that India today is far from a modern nation, say, something akin to a Japan or even a China. What looms large in such views are India’s numerous problems of unemployment, poverty, crowded and polluted cities, authoritarian and corrupt politicians, and empty promises packaged in glossy rhetoric. All of this is true but needs to be balanced. India’s sustained economic growth in recent decades is impressive. Poverty in India has come down. India’s democracy is flawed and increasingly illiberal but – as highlighted dramatically by the elections in 2024 – the main route to power in India is still via elections. And yes, there is plenty of corruption in India but it is not obvious that it is worse, say, than in China; the Indian state certainly works much better than many corrupt states in the developing world. A more balanced assessment also helps focus on what works and what does not work in India. We seek to provide such an analytical focus.

And finally, we share some of the concerns of our liberal colleagues, especially as they bemoan democratic backsliding in India.Footnote ⁴ Why India’s democracy is shrinking is an important theme of our study, too. Where our social democratic approach differs is in our normative and analytical emphasis on economic inequalities. We believe that sharply unequal societies are not desirable. Moderate inequalities are not only a valued end in themselves but they also help stabilize democratic politics. As will become clear in due course, we will argue that growing income inequalities are contributing to the erosion of democracy in India. These inequalities started rising sharply in India following economic liberalization during the 1990s; these trends have intensified under Modi. Many analysts of India view economic liberalization as a progressive move. Our perspective is more complex. Economic liberalization in India was not so much freeing of markets as it was an embrace of business communities by the Indian state.Footnote ⁵ This shift both enabled higher rates of growth but also growing economic inequalities. Growing concentration of wealth at the apex has further skewed power distribution in India. For now, the wealthy have thrown their support behind political leaders and parties – such as Modi and the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) – that are capable of providing pro-business policies and political stability. The Modi and the BJP, in turn, have sought to shift the focus of politics away from the yawning gap between the rich and the poor to issues of religious nationalism, say, by politicizing cleavages between Hindus and Muslims. When such tactics have not sufficed, the pro-business political leaders have just as readily embraced authoritarian politics to seek acquiescence from dissenters.

Topics Discussed

Our discussion of national politics in India embraces both a top-down and a bottom-up perspective. Looking down from the apex, we analyze both the workings of Indian democracy and the politics of growth and distribution in India. A well-established democracy in a poor, multiethnic society is one of India’s major achievements. The discussion of Indian democracy in this volume takes account of this achievement but also highlights the challenges faced by Indian rulers as they seek to promote both prosperity and inclusion. The gap between rhetorical promises and substantial outcomes in India has always been large; recent trends even cloud India’s democratic credentials as centralization of power has constrained democratic spaces and led to the violation of the human rights of minorities. Democracy in India put down roots during the heady nationalist decade of the 1950s, and took a turn toward populism and socialism during the 1960s and 1970s. Over the next three decades, say, from the early 1980s to 2014, India’s democratic leaders abandoned socialism and prioritized the promotion of economic growth. With that goal, they also forged a closer political alliance with Indian business groups. A state–business ruling alliance has been aimed at creating, first and foremost, prosperity and, if possible, a modicum of redistribution in favor of the disadvantaged.

With the decline of both anti-colonial nationalism and socialism, India’s political parties have struggled during recent decades to devise platforms that can help them win elections. They have alternatively appealed to such identities as caste and region, taken advantage of family inheritance, especially the Nehru–Gandhi family, and sought to mobilize Indians along religious lines by redefining India as a nation of Hindus. The latter trend has been ascendant in India in the most recent period, say, post-2014. Both the BJP and its leader, India’s current prime minister, Modi, epitomize this trend. For the past decade, Modi’s popularity appeared as unassailable as that of Nehru and Indira Gandhi in their respective eras. As in the past, however, the gap between popularity and good government in India has continued. As will become clear in due course, the performance of the government under Modi was, at best, mediocre. Modi additionally sought to silence political dissent via authoritarian measures, eroded institutional checks and balances on personal power, and vilified ethnic minorities in the name of creating a unified Hindu-dominated India. These political issues are discussed mainly in Chapter 1 but also in Chapters 3 and 4.

The Indian economy has grown at an impressive rate since the 1980s. Our discussion of the economy in this volume in Chapter 2 focuses both on the role of the state and on the resulting pattern of economic growth and distribution. With the decline of socialism in India, respective governments in India since the 1980s have prioritized economic growth as a policy goal. This shift has led to a decline in the role of the state and a simultaneous increase in the role of the private sector in the economy. The Indian state has also actively supported the growth of the indigenous private sector. India’s economic growth – unlike that of China, for example, that depends more on foreign investment – has thus been led mainly by Indian business and industry. This pattern of state–business collaboration has propelled India in the ranks of the world’s fastest growing economies.

As in the case of Indian democracy, the economic record of India in the post-1980 period is also far from unblemished. Economic growth in India is concentrated in services – such as software and business services – rather than in industry. Industrial and manufacturing growth in India has remained sluggish. Economic growth – again, unlike China – has thus not created many new low-end jobs in manufacturing. The state’s diminishing role has also hurt the rural sector and poor regions of India, both of whom need public investments to support growth. India’s impressive economic growth has thus not led to broadly shared gains within India. Additionally, there is some doubt that the official record of India’s economic growth during the last decade is even accurate; the growth record, say, post-2010, may have been overestimated. If so, India’s growth record, though still impressive, may be less than spectacular.

Democracy and economic growth notwithstanding, the living conditions of a substantial proportion of Indians have not improved rapidly. During the post-1980 period, poverty has declined and access to both education and health has improved. However, progress on these dimensions has been slow. Part of the reason lies in the failure of the economy to absorb India’s growing population. In addition, government policies and failures of implementation have also contributed to poor living conditions for many. Unlike other Asian countries, ownership of land in India was never successfully redistributed. Also, a commitment to socialism in the pre-1980 period did not lead to public investments in primary education or health. While taking this past into account, our discussion focuses on more recent government efforts to alleviate poverty and provide access to education and health. Large public employment programs have made a dent in poverty, as have access to subsidized food; the impact of such programs would have been greater with better implementation. Though public investment in primary education increased, this increase was less significant in the area of health. Again, the quality of public programs in these areas leaves a lot to be desired. We analyze both pockets of success and underline the areas requiring improvement.

The spread of commerce and rising political consciousness has been accompanied by a number of important changes in Indian society. We focus on several sets of interrelated changes that can be usefully thought of as politics from below. First, despite India’s economic transformation, social identity remains a key marker in both politics and society. This is evident when we examine both religion and caste. Religion in India has become more and more politicized. While the Hindu–Muslim conflict in India is hardly new, it has taken an ominous shape with the rise of Hindu nationalism. The revocation of the special status of Kashmir and the changes to India’s Citizenship Act are the most recent manifestations of divisive, anti-Muslim politics. During the elections in 2024, Modi directly raised ethnic tensions by labeling Indian Muslims as “infiltrators,” as if more than 200 million Indian Muslims were not an integral part of India.

Aside from the politicization of religion and its consequences, a second key set of societal changes in the period examined in this book have occurred in the realm of caste. Many marginalized caste groups in India have begun to question their traditionally subordinate position in society. Since the early 1990s, India has witnessed a sea change in lower-caste politics, a subject we analyze in detail in Chapter 3. Struggles for dignity have become politicized and thrown up new caste-based parties throughout India that champion the rights of lower castes. While lower-caste groups have witnessed major gains in political participation and legislative representation, a substantial section of India’s most marginalized social groups continue to lead unnecessarily precarious and deprived lives. We examine the evolution of caste relations in the contemporary period, and address why substantial political and economic incorporation of these groups remains incomplete in India.

Caste and religion have also been actively linked to each other in the electoral realm since the 1990s. The political rise of Hindu nationalism is partly a reaction to rising lower-caste political mobilization; Hindu nationalist formations such as the BJP have attempted to bypass caste divides and cut the electoral pie along religious lines instead. Indeed, the BJP, whose traditional vote base comprised of upper- and middle-caste groups, has actively attempted to expand its base to lower castes since the 1990s, with mixed success. Despite such attempts at expansion, the relationship between Hindu nationalism and lower-caste politics remains uneasy; in some cases, they have constituted two diametrically opposing logics of electoral politics. While discussing issues specific to religion and caste, we also analyze the links between the two dimensions of identity in the electoral realm.

A number of other bottom-up political changes are broadly related to the changing stratification of Indian society. We focus on these in Chapter 4. The pro-business tilt in India since the 1980s has had significant implications for outcomes related to labor, especially employment, labor policy, and labor activism. Changes in patterns of employment and labor policy, in turn, are linked to growing inequality, and we examine this connection. The role of women in Indian society has also seen changes in the period examined in this book. But this role has been characterized by paradoxes. On the one hand, some women have increasingly occupied positions of political and economic power. For example, India has had a female prime minister (Indira Gandhi), two female presidents (Pratibha Patil and the current president, Droupadi Murmu), and a host of female chief ministers at the state level. Yet, the position of women in Indian society is still highly unequal; a point that is evident in such socioeconomic outcomes as low rates of participation in the labor market, the prevalence of gender-based violence, and women’s activism aimed at ameliorating some of these ills. In many ways, gender equality remains a distant goal in India.

Additional changes evident in India in this period are related to civil society activism and social movements. India has historically been a noisy democracy where excluded groups have frequently made claims on the state outside the purview of electoral, legislative, and party politics. The nature of activism, however, has changed over time. In the early 1990s to 2000s, civil society groups and social movements have actively relied on India’s courts to influence a variety of policy dimensions. Under Modi, there have been significant curbs on civil society activism and dissent. Though the space for dissent has decreased, there have been some notable examples of politics from below in the form of protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), as well as protests against agricultural laws by farmers.

The top-down and bottom-up changes in politics, economics, and society summarized above are present more sharply in some parts of India than in others. India is a giant-sized country with enormous internal diversity, a subject that we scrutinize in Chapters 5 and 6. In order to capture some of India’s internal diversity, we first provide some systematic comparisons of India’s states in Chapter 5. And then, in Chapter 6, within this framework, we analyze comparatively – but briefly – a few of India’s major states: Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, and Gujarat. Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh are the polar opposites on the dimension of economic dynamism. Tamil Nadu is an important state in South India that helps clarify some of the political and economic trends in India that vary along the North-versus-South dimension. And Punjab is India’s breadbasket that is now in danger of falling behind due to dysfunctional politics.

Finally, we situate India in a global context. We do this by exploring India’s political and economic role beyond its borders. The decline of the Soviet Union and the rise of China have altered India’s interests, both regionally and globally. India is increasingly closer to Western powers, including the United States. India’s dynamic economy is also of interest to businessmen the world over. And yet India’s relations with its neighbors, especially Pakistan and China, remain fraught. We explore India’s changing global role in light of these important shifts in Chapter 7.

Major Themes and Arguments of the Book

While this book analyzes a range of contemporary political and economic issues in India, certain analytical themes run throughout the volume. Three of these may be underlined at the outset. Taken together, these three interrelated themes also constitute the central arguments of the book. First, India’s well-established democracy is currently under strain. There is no denying that the main route to power and legitimacy in India remains winning elections. And yet, over the last decade, the ruling strategy of the BJP under Modi has become more authoritarian. There has been a marked erosion of political rights and civil liberties under the guise of national security, notable centralization of power, widespread interference with public institutions, active use of state machinery to target political opponents, a precipitous decline in democratic norms, and unprecedented bigotry and intolerance in public discourse. How and why this has come to be will be probed throughout the volume.

To give readers an early sense of our argument on this theme, we attribute democratic decline in India both to the failures of the Congress Party and to the illiberal nature of the BJP under Modi. Toward the end of the twentieth century, the Congress spearheaded rapid economic growth and a decline of poverty in India. This favorable context provided an opportunity for the Congress to reposition itself as India’s main party, an opportunity that it squandered. The reasons included political problems, but mainly the pattern of economic growth that the Congress oversaw and that created sharp economic inequalities. As a result, the Congress lost support of the lower strata. Jobless growth created a generation of dissatisfied youth who often provided stormtroopers to a party like the BJP. Simultaneously, sections of the urban middle class grew disenchanted with Congress-led coalition governments that had been plagued by corruption scandals. And most important, growing inequalities created a powerful group of economic elites at the apex, who preferred someone like Modi – the can-do, highly pro-business leader – over the Congress Party. At the same time, Modi effectively positioned himself as an incorruptible leader, whose modest background provided a sharp contrast to the older, anglicized elite, especially the Nehru–Gandhi family, and who could meet the aspirations of the country’s young population. Modi and his associates, such as Amit Shah, in turn, are no liberals. With the support of Indian business groups, they have used state power to ruthlessly silence dissent and suppress opposition. They have also stood aside silently as the more militant members of the BJP’s extended political network have become Hindu vigilantes, targeting Indian Muslims.

A second important and interrelated theme that runs through the volume is the pro-business nature of the India’s contemporary ruling coalition. Following independence, Nehru and others committed India to a socialist path of development. While the meaning of “socialism” in India was always ambiguous, it implied a leading economic role for the state and some commitment to egalitarianism. During the 1980s, India slowly but surely moved away from this path to assigning priority to economic growth. From then on, India’s leaders have established a close alliance with Indian business groups as a means to generate rapid economic growth. The results have indeed included an acceleration of economic growth, but often at the expense of increasing inequalities. Upper- and middle-class Indians rightly take pride in India’s growing economy; in addition, sustained economic growth has raised the global stature of India. However, India’s economic inequalities have also grown along three vectors: across regions; cities versus the countryside; and along class lines. Both the poorer regions of India and the Indian countryside depend heavily on public investments. But the role of the public sector has declined following economic liberalization in India during the 1990s. Private investments have increased by contrast; they have further enriched India’s better-off regions and have often focused on urban centers. As a result, income in richer regions and in urban centers has grown faster than in poorer regions or in the countryside, thereby widening economic inequalities. Class inequalities have also grown sharply over the last few decades. These are clearly evident in the emergence of numerous billionaires in India but with only few well-paying jobs for the teeming millions.

This pattern of economic development has also posed political challenges for India’s leaders, especially what to offer India’s poor masses in exchange for their political support. Instead of the rich-versus-poor divide implicit in a commitment to socialism, the BJP under Modi has sought to mobilize electoral support along ethnic lines, sharply politicizing the division among India’s Hindu majority and Muslim minority. Modi has also cleverly juxtaposed his humble origins as a son of a tea-vendor against the privileged children of the Nehru–Gandhi dynasty. When such strategies have not sufficed to build political support, the state’s heavy hand has increasingly been used to seek acquiescence.

Democracy and growth in India have led to enormous social churning. While the political and economic elite have their own designs, citizens and social groups do not readily accept their life-chances as God-given. A third theme that permeates this volume then is how various social groups have sought to shape Indian politics. From the vantage point of our social democratic perspective, the results of bottom-up politics are both encouraging and discouraging. On the encouraging side, evidence that we review suggests that there is plenty of political activism in India, even in the most recent authoritarian phase. Mobilized middle and lower castes now participate actively in India’s democratic politics. Attempts to subdue labor continue, but the prospects that informal labor may become unionized must put fear in those at the apex. Violence against women has been met by strong protests. And, on occasion, civil society activism, such as against the proposed changes in the Citizenship Act in India in 2019, and by farmers against government legislation in 2020–2021, underline that government – even an authoritarian-leaning government – cannot readily run roughshod over a mobilized society. Over the last several decades, India’s imperfect democracy has enabled a variety of groups to organize and make demands. It is now not easy for the likes of Modi to put this genie back into the bottle.

On the discouraging side, however, the results of such activism have not always been substantial. Power structures in India are deeply entrenched; egalitarian change in India is either resisted or if it comes, it comes only imperceptibly, at a glacial pace. Traditionally India was a deeply hierarchical society. Hierarchies of caste and patriarchy are not as strong as they used to be in the past but they persist. New hierarchies of state and capital alliance now dominate the political and economic landscape; they do devise strategies to resist demands for egalitarian change. As a result, lower castes continue to live precarious lives, employment generation and quality of jobs created has been poor, women continue to deal with patriarchy and gender violence, and the scope for civil society activism has been seriously constrained by India’s current rulers.

The volume is organized around specific topics. Chapter 1 analyzes the functioning of Indian democracy, including its challenges. Economic growth and distribution are the subject of Chapter 2. In Chapters 3 and 4, the focus is on a variety of bottom-up social changes, including caste, labor, gender, and civil society. Regional diversities across India are analyzed in Chapters 5 and 6. We situate India in a global perspective in Chapter 7. We turn in the Conclusion to tie together some of the main themes of the volume, and to situate India’s democracy and economy in a comparative perspective.