Indian democracy represents a triumph of empowerment over leadership, writes Graham Usher in Delhi On 16 April Indians go to the polls in the first phase of the world's largest exercise in democracy. The logistics are staggering: a potential electorate of 714 million will require four million election officials and nearly 829,000 polling centres to cast their ballots. Of the franchise, 400 million may vote, "making this the greatest exercise of democratic will and anywhere and at any time in human history," says Indian historian Ramachandra Guha. If past elections are a guide, the suffrage will be peaceful, with most accepting the result when the count is finally made on 16 May. That -- together with an average turnout of between 60-70 per cent -- is testimony to how deep democracy has become rooted in India, particularly when compared to neighbours like Pakistan and Bangladesh. But the challenges facing the world's largest democracy are huge and the prospect that any government can meet them bleak. Indian elections are notoriously hard to call. Only one thing can be predicted with any accuracy, says Guha: "The government that comes to power in the summer of 2009 will be a coalition, and weak." There are three possible government coalitions: the outgoing United Progressive Alliance (UPA), headed by the Congress Party, once India's natural party of government due to its vanguard role in the Independence struggle; the opposition National Democratic Front (NDF), led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP); and the so-called Third Front, an alliance of Communist, caste and regional parties whose diverse aims are overcome by the desire to see India a more federal, decentralised polity. On paper, Congress and the UPA seem favourites. For four of the last five years they have presided over record levels of economic growth, making India's the second fastest expanding world economy. Delhi has also emerged as a major regional and global power, with United States special envoy Richard Holbrooke cooing on 8 April that America "cannot settle Afghanistan and many other world problems without India's full involvement." But in a land where 80 per cent of the 1.1 billion people live on less than two dollars a day, "talk about growth doesn't mean very much," says social researcher Sanjay Kumar. On the contrary, it has only served to highlight the obscene disparities between India's wealthy elite and the impoverished many. Congress is thus not parading growth and regional power as electoral assets. It is reinventing itself as the party of the "common man", pledging job programmes, food subsidies, education incentives and agricultural loans to woo those masses for which "India shining" has so far meant one long dark night. The BJP is peddling the same economic populism. Its other main slogan is India's parlous internal security, made acute in the aftermath of last year's attacks in Mumbai where 170 were killed and the city held hostage for nearly three days by a dozen gunmen. The BJP accused the UPA government of being "soft" on India's 160 million Muslims and even softer towards Pakistan, both of whom were blamed for the Mumbai carnage. Congress accuses the BJP of communalism and warmongering. But, away from the vitriol, there is little difference between India's two main national parties. Both are committed to a neo-liberal economic agenda, both are pro-US in foreign policy and both are in decline as political powers. The Congress has slumped to a bit player in several of India's largest states and the BJP has barely any presence at all in much of eastern and southern India, where its gruff nationalism plays badly in states replete with minorities. Their champion is the Third Front. This alliance is best defined by being neither Congress nor the BJP. But its potential is epitomised by Mayawati, Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, a "state" as large as Brazil. Should the UPA and NDF be unable to form coalitions, Mayawati could end up India's next prime minister. This would be remarkable. Not only is Mayawayi a woman; she is a dalit, once known as the "untouchables" or Hinduism's lowest caste. Both are excluded groups in Indian politics. Mayawati is also extravagantly rich, and has used her wealth to purchase support from upper caste Hindus and Muslims. The Third Front -- like the UPA and NDF -- is also not immune to fractiousness. Adept at building alliances with regional and caste parties, India's Communist parties are being challenged in their heartlands, like West Bengal, where leftist coalitions have ruled for 30 years. A campaign to draw large-scale industrial investments to create jobs has alienated Bengal's peasantry, opposed to factories taking over their croplands. Once a pillar of Communist rule, the peasants are now voting for their own parties. And the Communists may see their seats slashed by half in West Bengal. "If you threaten to take back lands given to the rural poor, for whatever reason, they are never going to take kindly to it," says Sabyasachi Basu Roy Choudhry, a political analyst. It sums up the Indian paradox. The deepening of democracy has enabled regional and other smaller parties to not only share power with historical leviathans like Congress and the BJP but also challenge them. Yet such coalitions can only hold via compromises based on a politics of the lowest common denominator. And such politics is too weak an animal to tackle such scourges as separatist insurgencies in states like Kashmir, sectarian violence against Christian and Muslim minorities, and an economic "success" that has seen 200,000 small farmers commit suicide in the last 12 years.
