Congress Rule in India Since 1947

This essay makes a hard case against RaGa congress. It argues that the Indian National Congress used its long hold on power in ways that leave little to be proud of. This is the case that critics make. It is stated here in full and without softening.

ii. Start with what the party did not build. The freedom struggle was won by millions of ordinary people and not by a party office. The Constitution was written by a Constituent Assembly of many voices led by B R Ambedkar and not by the Congress high command alone. The first elections were run by an independent Election Commission. The lasting parts of the republic belong to its citizens and its courts and its press. The Congress inherited them. It did not create them (Austin 1966 and Guha 2007).

iii. Now look at what the party did with that inheritance. It dismissed an elected state government in 1959. It overruled the seniority of judges in 1973 and again in 1977. It suspended liberty in 1975 and jailed its critics without trial. It bent a Supreme Court ruling to win votes in 1986. It turned a mass movement into a family court. It failed to protect Sikhs in 1984 and failed to protect the Babri Masjid in 1992.

iv. Now look at the economy. For four decades the party chained enterprise with licences and quotas. Growth stayed near three and a half percent a year while East Asia raced ahead. Credit was steered by political choice and left banks with bad loans. The party moved to open the economy only in 1991 when bankruptcy left no choice and gold had to be flown abroad (Bhagwati and Panagariya 2013 and Panagariya 2008).

v. Now look at the region. Pakistan fell under the army. China rose by closing its politics. India stayed a democracy. Critics say that this credit belongs to the voters. They say that the party tried more than once to weaken the very system that held the country together. Their ecosystem rather 'biscuit system' are unaccountable power and secrecy and the club of insiders and informal tools and the use of crisis to gain more power.

vi. Honesty requires one limit. The claim that the party did nothing good cannot be defended. The Constitution and the Green Revolution and the reforms of 1991 and the Right to Information Act all came under Congress governments. The critical argument is narrower and harder. It says that each gain was inherited or forced or soon undercut. It says that the party never built the habits of accountability that would keep those gains safe. Section XIII tests this argument against the best defence.

vii. Readers should know that this essay argues one side with force. It does not assume any secret plan. It looks for patterns that the record supports.

The Lens: Five Themes Borrowed from experiences

i. The first theme is unaccountable power. The question for India is simple. Where did Congress power meet real checks? Where did it escape them?

ii. The second theme is secrecy and the club of insiders. Indian politics had its own inner circle. It was called the high command. Decisions of great weight were often made in small rooms.

iii. The third theme is informal tools. India had its own informal tools. They included licences and quotas and the quiet use of governors and the control of the civil service and the radio.

iv. The fourth theme is the steering of credit. India did something similar when it nationalised its major banks in 1969. The state took control of where savings went. This brings the Werner thesis directly into the Indian story.

v. The fifth theme is crisis as an engine of power. Both books show how crises shift authority. After the war the BIS was almost closed. Yet it survived and grew stronger. After the Japanese crash the central bank won legal independence. In India the Emergency of 1975 shows the same pattern in a harsher form. A crisis was used to gather power. It ended in a vote that took that power away.

vi. These themes are tools and not verdicts. They help us ask where power was open to question and where it was hidden. They do not prove that any leader acted from evil intent. It looks for patterns that the record supports.

Method and Limits

i. This essay is an interpretation. It draws on standard histories and on scholarship in political science and economics. It also draws on court judgments and on public reports such as the Shah Commission.

ii. Economic figures are rounded. Sources differ on exact values. The reader should check any figure before using it in formal work. A fact check note appears before the references.

iii. The word Congress here means the party as an institution and as a culture. It does not mean each member or each leader. Many Congress leaders were honest and brave. Many opponents of the Congress were no better when they held office.

iv. The essay covers about seventy five years. It cannot cover every event. It chooses those that bear most on democracy and development and the Constitution.

v. The phrase South Asian nations is used for the neighbours of India. The request spoke of South Indian nations. The sensible reading is the nations of South Asia. That is the reading taken here.

The Founding Moment: 1947 to 1964

i. The Congress began in 1885. It grew from a body of educated Indians into a mass movement under Mahatma Gandhi. By 1947 it had branches in every province. It had a long record of protest and of sacrifice. This gave it a moral authority that no rival could match.

ii. That authority shaped the early state. The scholar Rajni Kothari described a Congress system. In this system the Congress was both the ruling party and the main arena of political debate. Rival factions fought inside it. Opposition parties stood at the edge and had little hope of power (Kothari 1970).

iii. Jawaharlal Nehru led this system as prime minister from 1947 until his death in 1964. He was a democrat by conviction. He wrote long letters to chief ministers. He sat through Parliament debates. He accepted defeat on some points. He did not turn the state into his private tool.

iv. Nehru also held the party and the government together. He was the one figure who could speak for the whole nation. This gave him vast personal power. It also made the system depend on one man. That dependence became a risk once he left.

v. The Constitution came into force on 26 January 1950. It was drafted in the Constituent Assembly over nearly three years. The drafting committee was led by B R Ambedkar. The text set up a parliamentary system and a federal structure with a strong Union. It guaranteed fundamental rights. It laid out directive principles for social and economic justice (Austin 1966).

vi. Granville Austin called the Constitution a seamless web. He meant that its parts joined political rights to social reform. The framers hoped that democracy and justice would grow together (Austin 1966).

vii. Ambedkar gave a famous warning at the close of the debates. He said that political equality would sit beside deep social and economic inequality. He feared that this contradiction could break the structure. He also warned against devotion to great leaders in politics. Such devotion could lead to dictatorship (Constituent Assembly Debates 1949).

viii. This warning proved wise. The cult of the leader and the gap between formal rights and real life would shape the next seventy years.

ix. The early years showed both strength and weakness. On the side of strength India held regular elections. It built an independent Election Commission. It kept the army under civil control. It reorganised its states on linguistic lines in 1956 after strong public pressure. This move reduced the risk of breakup (Guha 2007).

x. India also passed major reforms. It abolished the great landed estates called zamindari. It passed the Hindu Code Bills that improved the legal position of women. It set up the Planning Commission in 1950. It built dams and steel plants and research institutes.

xi. On the side of weakness there were early signs of the habits that later grew. In 1959 the Union government dismissed the elected communist government of Kerala under Article 356. The step followed unrest and the pressure of Congress leaders. Many scholars see this as the first misuse of a power meant for emergencies (Austin 1966 and Guha 2007).

xii. Article 356 allows the Union to take over a state when its government cannot work under the Constitution. The framers hoped it would be used rarely. Over the decades it was used often. A large share of these uses came under Congress governments. The Supreme Court tried to limit the power in the Bommai case of 1994 (S R Bommai v Union of India 1994).

xiii. The Nehru years also showed the habit of the club. Selection of chief ministers and of Congress presidents often followed the views of a small group. Open contests were less common than quiet bargains.

xiv. Even so the early record deserves credit for restraint and not for creation. The party tolerated a free press and an independent judiciary. It lost some state elections. It accepted the outcome. In 1962 Nehru faced harsh criticism after the war with China. He answered in Parliament. The shock of that war weakened him. He died in May 1964.

Democracy Under Congress Dominance: 1964 to 1977

i. After Nehru came Lal Bahadur Shastri. He ruled for only nineteen months. He died suddenly in January 1966 at Tashkent after a peace agreement with Pakistan.

ii. The senior Congress leaders then chose Indira Gandhi as prime minister. A group of regional bosses known as the Syndicate played a large role. They believed she would be easy to guide. They were wrong.

iii. The Congress lost ground in the 1967 elections. It won a smaller majority at the Union. It lost power in several states. The age of easy dominance was ending. A new pattern of coalition and defection began in the states.

iv. Indira Gandhi responded by building her own base. In 1969 the party split. She nationalised fourteen major banks. She appealed directly to the voters with slogans about poverty. She won a large victory in 1971. After the war that led to the birth of Bangladesh in December 1971 her prestige stood very high.

v. This was the turning point in Congress political culture. Power moved from the party to the leader. The old machinery of elected committees and state bosses gave way to appointed loyalists. Chief ministers were chosen in Delhi and removed from Delhi.

vi. Scholars have called this the personalisation of power. Atul Kohli argued that the decline of party organisation left India with a crisis of governability. Strong institutions gave way to rule by personal appeal and by short term management (Kohli 1990).

vii. This trend fits the theme of the club of insiders. The Congress had once been a broad federation of regional leaders. It became a court around one person. The high command grew in power. The party lost the habit of internal elections.

viii. A famous remark of the time by the party president D K Barooah equated the nation with the leader. The remark may be quoted loosely. Its meaning was clear. The leader was now the symbol of the state. The idea cut against the warning of Ambedkar.

ix. At the same time conflict grew between the government and the courts. The Supreme Court ruled in the Golaknath case of 1967 that Parliament could not amend fundamental rights (I C Golaknath v State of Punjab 1967). The government answered with constitutional amendments.

x. In 1973 the Court gave its answer in Kesavananda Bharati. A narrow majority of seven to six held that Parliament could amend the Constitution but could not destroy its basic structure (Kesavananda Bharati v State of Kerala 1973). This doctrine became a pillar of Indian constitutional law.

xi. The government did not accept it gracefully. In April 1973 it passed over three senior judges and named A N Ray as Chief Justice. Many saw this as a move to punish judges who had ruled against the government. The practice of picking judges by seniority was broken. A pattern of pressure on the judiciary was born (Austin 1999).

xii. Economic distress deepened. Prices rose after the oil shock of 1973. Strikes spread. A student movement in Gujarat and Bihar grew. Jayaprakash Narayan came out of retirement to lead a call for total revolution. The government faced a real challenge.

xiii. On 12 June 1975 the Allahabad High Court found Indira Gandhi guilty of electoral malpractice. The ground was a technical misuse of government staff in her campaign. The court voided her election. The same day her party lost a state election in Gujarat. The next two weeks led to the Emergency.

Democracy After the Emergency: 1977 to 1991

i. The Emergency lasted from June 1975 to March 1977. Section XII studies it as the central case. Here it is enough to say that it ended in a vote. Indira Gandhi called elections in January 1977. The Congress lost badly. She lost her own seat. The Janata Party formed a government under Morarji Desai. It was the first time the Congress had lost power at the Union.

ii. This outcome is the strongest proof of the resilience of Indian democracy. A ruler who held the press and the police and the courts under pressure still let the people vote. The people used the vote to remove her. Few states in the world have shown this result.

iii. The Janata government passed the 44th Amendment in 1978. It restored many protections that the 42nd Amendment of 1976 had weakened. It made it harder to declare an Emergency. It required that a declaration rest on armed rebellion and not on internal disturbance. It also removed the right to property from the list of fundamental rights (Austin 1999).

iv. The Shah Commission examined the abuses of the Emergency. It documented arbitrary arrests and press control and forced sterilisation and demolitions. It named officials and ministers (Shah Commission 1978).

v. The Janata coalition collapsed through its own quarrels in 1979. Indira Gandhi returned in January 1980 with a large majority. Voters had tired of unstable rule. The Congress claimed that only it could govern.

vi. In her second term Indira Gandhi was more cautious about formal dictatorship. She was still intent on control. She dismissed opposition governments in several states. She sought to build loyalty through patronage. She used the state governor as an agent of the Union.

vii. The conflict in Punjab shows the cost of this style. The Akali Dal pressed for autonomy and for justice on river waters and other issues. The Congress manoeuvred to split the Akalis. It backed a fiery preacher named Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale as a counterweight. He grew into a militant leader who took refuge in the Golden Temple at Amritsar.

viii. In June 1984 the army entered the temple complex in Operation Blue Star. Many people died. The attack wounded Sikh feeling deeply. On 31 October 1984 two Sikh bodyguards killed Indira Gandhi. Large scale violence against Sikhs followed in Delhi and other cities. Thousands died. Reports pointed to the role of local Congress leaders. Justice was slow for decades (Guha 2007).

ix. This episode links to the theme of informal tools and risky calculation. A short term political move to weaken a rival fed a deeper crisis. The costs fell on ordinary people.

x. Rajiv Gandhi became prime minister after the assassination. He led the Congress to its largest win ever in the elections of December 1984. The party won over four hundred seats. He spoke of clean government and of modern technology.

xi. He passed the 52nd Amendment in 1985. It created the defection law. The law disqualified legislators who left their party. The aim was to end the buying and selling of legislators. A side effect was stronger party control over members. It increased the power of the high command.

xii. The same period brought the Shah Bano case. In 1985 the Supreme Court held that a divorced Muslim woman could claim maintenance under the general criminal law (Mohd Ahmed Khan v Shah Bano Begum 1985). Conservative Muslim leaders protested. The government yielded. In 1986 it passed an Act that limited the right of such women to maintenance (Guha 2007).

xiii. Many critics see this as a retreat from the constitutional value of equal citizenship. It also fed a Hindu backlash. To balance matters the government allowed the opening of the locks at the disputed mosque at Ayodhya in 1986. The Congress had tried to please two groups at once. It lost trust of both.

xiv. The Bofors affair marked the end of the clean image of Rajiv Gandhi. Reports said that kickbacks had been paid in a deal to buy guns from a Swedish firm. The truth was never settled in court. The affair showed how secret defence deals could escape public view. The Congress lost the 1989 election.

xv. From 1989 India entered an age of coalitions. The Congress was no longer the natural party of government. It had to learn to share power. That lesson came slowly.

Constitutional Values: A Record of Defence and Dilution

i. The Constitution of India rests on several core values. These include liberty and equality and fraternity and secularism and federalism and the rule of law. The Congress claimed to be their guardian. The record is mixed.

ii. On the side of defence the Congress gave India a stable democratic frame. It helped write a Constitution that has lasted. It extended the vote to all adults at once. This was bolder than the path taken by many older democracies.

iii. It also advanced social reform through law. Untouchability was abolished by Article 17. Reservation of seats and jobs for Scheduled Castes and Tribes was set into the system. Later governments extended it. These measures were imperfect. They still changed the shape of power in Indian society.

iv. The Congress also kept the army out of politics. This is a point of sharp contrast with Pakistan. The early leaders made clear that soldiers were servants of civil rule. They built a system where promotion and budgets rested with civilians.

v. On the side of dilution the record shows repeated pressure on institutions. Article 356 was used again and again to remove state governments. The Sarkaria Commission on Union and State relations reviewed this pattern in the 1980s (Austin 1999).

vi. The judiciary faced pressure through appointments and transfers. The supersession of judges in 1973 and again in 1977 sent a message that independence had a price. The idea of a committed judiciary was floated in the Congress of the time. It meant judges who accepted the aims of the government.

vii. The court answered with the basic structure doctrine. It also widened its own role. In the Maneka Gandhi case of 1978 it read due process into Article 21 (Maneka Gandhi v Union of India 1978). Pratap Bhanu Mehta has argued that the Court later grew into an institution of sovereign weight and that this growth was partly a result of the weakness of other bodies (Mehta 2007).

viii. Secularism offers another test. Nehru held to a firm idea of a state that treated all faiths alike. He opposed communal politics. Later Congress governments grew less steady. The Shah Bano episode and the opening of the Ayodhya locks show a party that sought votes from both sides by turns.

ix. The destruction of the Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992 happened under a Congress government led by P V Narasimha Rao. The state failed to protect the mosque. The tragedy showed the limits of a party that had long claimed the mantle of secular guardianship. The Liberhan Commission later reviewed the event.

x. Federalism followed a similar path. The framers built a Union with strong central powers. Under Nehru a spirit of bargaining kept the balance. Under Indira Gandhi the centre grew dominant. Chief ministers became agents of the high command. The Union used governors and Article 356 and control of funds to rule the states.

xi. This weakened the very federal spirit that suited a vast and diverse nation. It also encouraged regional parties. Parties such as the DMK and the Telugu Desam arose partly as protests against Delhi. Over time they took power in many states and shifted the balance back (Corbridge and Harriss 2000).

xii. On civil liberties the record is poor in some chapters. Preventive detention laws were kept on the books. The Maintenance of Internal Security Act of 1971 was used widely in the Emergency. Later laws such as TADA in the 1980s carried similar risks. These laws gave the police wide powers with little review.

xiii. The Congress also made significant gains for rights in later years. The coalition led by the Congress from 2004 passed the Right to Information Act in 2005. This law let citizens ask for files and records of public offices. It was a strong blow against secrecy. It remains one of the most notable transparency laws in the developing world.

xiv. Other rights based laws followed. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005 gave rural households a legal claim to paid work. The Right to Education Act of 2009 made schooling a legal right for children. The National Food Security Act of 2013 gave a legal claim to subsidised grain (Dreze and Sen 2013).

xv. These show that the party could act in a way that opened the state to the citizen. They also show that its culture was not fixed. It could learn and change.

xvi. Taken together the record on constitutional values has three parts. In the founding years the commitment was real and deep. From the late 1960s to the 1980s it weakened under the pull of personal rule. From the 1990s the party had to act within coalitions and courts and a free press and a growing field of rivals. It often acted better under that pressure than it had when it was strong.

Economic Development: Planning and Control

i. The Congress began with a clear economic idea. The state should lead. Nehru believed in planned industrial growth and in self reliance. He had seen the Soviet example. He also respected democratic freedoms. His aim was a mixed economy with a strong public sector.

ii. The Second Five Year Plan of 1956 set the pattern. It was shaped by the statistician P C Mahalanobis. It stressed heavy industry and capital goods. The Industrial Policy Resolution of 1956 reserved key sectors for the state. Private firms needed licences to start or expand (Bardhan 1984).

iii. This system delivered real gains in the early years. India built steel plants and power stations and research labs. It founded the Indian Institutes of Technology. It created a base of scientific skill. It also avoided the foreign debt crises that hit many developing lands.

iv. Yet growth was slow. From 1950 to 1980 the economy grew at about three and a half percent a year. This was close to the pace of population growth plus a little. Per capita income rose slowly. The pace was nicknamed the Hindu rate of growth. Later scholars noted that the label was unfair. Even so it showed the sense of a sluggish economy (Rodrik and Subramanian 2005).

v. The reasons were several. The licence system slowed investment. It rewarded those who knew the right officials. It protected weak firms from competition. Tariffs were high. Exports were weak. Agriculture received less attention than industry (Bhagwati and Panagariya 2013).

vi. The Rudolphs described the Indian state as a demand polity. Groups pressed for subsidies and protection. A weak party system led leaders to give in. The result was a growing web of controls and subsidies that was hard to undo (Rudolph and Rudolph 1987).

vii. The licence system is the best Indian example of the informal tool theme. A licence was a gift of the state. It could be granted or withheld. It created a field for quiet lobbying and for favours. The line between policy and patronage blurred.

viii. Bank nationalisation is the closest match to the Werner thesis. In July 1969 the government took over fourteen large private banks. In 1980 it took six more. The stated aim was to direct credit to farms and small firms and poor regions. Before this the banks had lent mainly to big business houses.

ix. The results were mixed. Bank branches spread into villages. Savings rose. Farmers and small traders gained access to credit. Yet political direction of credit also led to bad loans. Banks lent to favoured borrowers. Public sector banks carried a legacy of weak assets for decades. The Werner insight applies in both directions. Steering credit can serve social goals. It can also hide waste and favouritism.

x. The state also used informal guidance in the way the Bank of Japan did. The Reserve Bank of India set credit ceilings and sectoral targets. Loans had to meet priority sector quotas. These tools were more open than window guidance in Japan. Yet they too worked through quiet instruction more than public debate.

xi. The Green Revolution marks a different kind of success. In the late 1960s India adopted high yielding wheat and rice with help from scientists and foreign aid. Output rose sharply in Punjab and Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh. India moved from fear of famine to self sufficiency in grain. Credit and subsidies and public purchase helped this shift. It remains a major achievement of the Congress years.

xii. Yet the gains were uneven. The regions that gained most were already better off. The gap between regions widened. The Congress did not carry out deep land reform in most states. Poor farmers and landless workers gained little.

xiii. The 1970s brought pain. The oil shock hit. The government became more suspicious of private business. Tax rates reached very high levels at the peak. The economy stagnated. The state grew in size without a matching rise in output.

xiv. In the 1980s there was a modest shift. Indira Gandhi and then Rajiv Gandhi eased some controls. They allowed more imports of capital goods. They loosened licensing for some firms. Growth rose to about five and a half percent a year. Economists argue over why. Many point to a change in attitude toward business more than to formal reform (Rodrik and Subramanian 2005).

xv. This growth was bought partly with borrowing. Fiscal deficits grew. External debt grew. The system was running on credit that it could not sustain. This set the stage for the crisis of 1991.

The Crisis of 1991 and the Reform Turn

i. By 1991 India faced a balance of payments emergency. The Gulf War had raised oil prices. Remittances from Indians in the Gulf fell. Political instability had scared lenders. Foreign exchange reserves sank to a level that covered only a few weeks of imports.

ii. The government of Chandra Shekhar and then that of P V Narasimha Rao had to act. India pledged gold to raise foreign currency. Roughly sixty seven tonnes were sent abroad in 1991. A part went to the Bank of England and a part to a Swiss bank. The sight of the national gold flown overseas was a shock to public pride (Panagariya 2008).

iii. This scene links the Indian story to Tower of Basel in a plain way. Gold and central banks and Swiss vaults were not just a topic for historians. They were the last line of defence of a great nation. The episode showed that a state with large political power could still lack control of its own money.

iv. Narasimha Rao named Manmohan Singh as finance minister. In July 1991 they devalued the rupee. They cut import tariffs. They ended industrial licensing for most sectors. They opened the economy to foreign investment. They reformed the stock market and the tax system (Ahluwalia 2002).

v. This was a decisive break with the Nehruvian model. It came from a Congress government. It was the party that had built the licence system that now took it apart. The party acted only when bankruptcy left no choice. That is forced repair and not leadership.

vi. It also fits the crisis theme. Reforms that had been discussed for years became possible once the crisis arrived. A narrow minority government used the moment to do what peacetime politics would not allow. The crisis opened a window.

vii. The reforms worked in part. Growth rose. From 1993 to 2003 India grew at about six percent. From 2003 to 2008 it grew above eight percent. Exports of software and services boomed. The middle class grew. Poverty fell in this period (Bhagwati and Panagariya 2013).

viii. The reforms also had limits. Labour and land laws remained rigid. Public sector banks stayed weak. The state did not invest enough in health and schooling. Dreze and Sen argued that India grew fast but left basic human development behind. Indian social indicators lagged behind those of poorer neighbours such as Bangladesh in some years (Dreze and Sen 2013).

ix. Narasimha Rao also passed the 73rd and 74th Amendments in 1992 and 1993. These gave constitutional status to village councils and city bodies. They set up regular elections and reserved seats for women. Local democracy took legal form. Practice has varied by state. The law remains a landmark.

x. The Congress lost power in 1996. It then spent eight years out of office at the Union. A coalition led by the Bharatiya Janata Party governed from 1998 to 2004. It continued the reform path. This is a key point. After 1991 the economic direction no longer divided the major parties as sharply.

xi. The Congress returned in 2004 as head of the United Progressive Alliance. Sonia Gandhi led the party and declined the post of prime minister. Manmohan Singh took it. The government combined high growth with a rights based welfare agenda. It also passed the Right to Information Act and the employment guarantee law mentioned earlier.

xii. These years brought India its best growth. They also brought a wave of scandals. Cases about the allocation of telecom spectrum and coal blocks drew public anger. Audits by the Comptroller and Auditor General put large figures on alleged losses. The numbers were disputed. The political damage was real (Kapur and Mehta and Vaishnav 2017).

xiii. The culture of the party also showed an old habit. Power was divided between the government led by Manmohan Singh and the party led by Sonia Gandhi. A National Advisory Council with party appointed members advised on policy. Critics said that this left authority without clear accountability. The prime minister held office. The party chief held influence.

xiv. In 2013 Rahul Gandhi publicly dismissed a government ordinance meant to protect convicted legislators. The step won applause for principle. It also humiliated the prime minister before the world. It showed again that in the Congress the final word often rested with the family.

xv. The party lost heavily in 2014. It won only forty four seats. In 2019 it won fifty two. In 2024 it rose to ninety nine seats. It now governs a few states and leads the opposition at the Union. Its long dominance has ended. Its future depends on its willingness to open its own internal life.

India in the Mirror: Pakistan and China and the Region

i. A fair judgement of Indian democracy and development needs comparison. India started with many of the same burdens as its neighbours. Their paths show what was possible and what was not.

ii. Begin with Pakistan. It was born in the same Partition. It had the same colonial civil service and army. Yet its political path differed sharply. Its founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah died in 1948. Its first prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan was killed in 1951. The new state lacked a leader of stature who could build party institutions (Jalal 1995).

iii. Pakistan faced a different strategic position. It felt threatened by a larger neighbour. It had an army that grew powerful as a result. It also lacked the strong party that India had in the Congress. The Muslim League did not hold the same deep roots in the territories that became Pakistan (Cohen 2004).

iv. The army took power in 1958 under Ayub Khan. It did so again in 1977 under Zia ul Haq and in 1999 under Pervez Musharraf. Military rulers have governed for a large part of the life of the country. No elected prime minister has completed a full five year term (Jaffrelot 2015).

v. The army also became an economic power. Ayesha Siddiqa described a military economy in which the armed forces own firms and land and run foundations. This is a form of the club that holds power with little outside review (Siddiqa 2007).

vi. In 1971 Pakistan split. East Pakistan became Bangladesh after a war with great cruelty. The cause lay partly in the refusal of the western elite to accept an election result in which an eastern party won a majority. This is the sharpest case of a failure of democratic culture in the region.

vii. Pakistan did show strong economic growth at times. Under Ayub Khan in the 1960s the economy grew rapidly and the period was called a decade of development. Pakistan had a higher income per head than India for much of the period until the early years of this century. Yet the growth brought inequality and bred unrest. In recent years the economy has suffered repeated balance of payments crises and has leaned on the International Monetary Fund again and again (Jalal 1990).

viii. Today the gap has turned. The International Monetary Fund estimated in October 2025 that India had an income per head of roughly twenty eight hundred dollars at market rates. Pakistan stood near seventeen hundred. On a measure that adjusts for local prices India led by a still wider margin (IMF 2025).

ix. On this comparison India has done better than Pakistan in both democracy and income. The civil control of the army is a main reason. A stable political order gave a base for policy even when policy was poor.

x. Now consider China. In 1949 the Communist Party won power. It followed a path of one party rule. China began with income per head near that of India. In the first three decades it suffered immense human cost. The Great Leap Forward of 1958 to 1962 led to a famine that killed tens of millions. Estimates vary widely. The Cultural Revolution brought further turmoil (Naughton 2007).

xi. Amartya Sen has used these facts to argue that democracy and a free press protect against famine. India has suffered no great famine since independence. The Bengal famine of 1943 took place under colonial rule. A government that must face voters and critics has strong reason to act fast (Sen 1981 and Sen 1999).

xii. China then changed course. From 1978 Deng Xiaoping opened the economy. Farm communes gave way to household farming. Special economic zones drew foreign capital. Exports grew. For four decades China grew at close to ten percent a year. This was one of the largest rises in human welfare in history (Naughton 2007).

xiii. The result is stark. In 1980 India and China had similar incomes per head. IMF figures for 2025 put China at about thirteen thousand dollars per person and India at about twenty eight hundred. China is roughly five times richer by this measure. Its poverty reduction was faster. Its roads and ports and power systems are far ahead.

xiv. So on economic development alone China beat India by a wide margin. Defenders of the Congress record offer three replies. First China started its fast growth later and with a very low base. Second India grew without suppressing political rights. Third the Chinese model rested on heavy state control and on costs that were hidden by a closed system. Critics reply that the Indian state failed to build the schools and health systems and factories that China built. They note that many democracies in East Asia such as South Korea and Taiwan grew fast. So democracy alone cannot explain Indian slowness.

xv. The best reading holds both views. India chose a harder path. It combined democracy with a vast and diverse population and weak state capacity. The gains came slower. The political costs of failure were lower. Whether the trade was worth it depends on the values of the judge. The Constitution of India gives a clear answer. It places liberty and dignity above speed.

xvi. Now turn to the smaller nations of South Asia. Bangladesh began as one of the poorest states in the world. After its birth in 1971 it suffered coups and the murder of its founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1975. Military rule ran into the early 1990s. Since then rivalry between two ruling families has marked its politics. In August 2024 a mass uprising ended the long rule of Sheikh Hasina (Riaz 2016).

xvii. Even so Bangladesh has done well on some human measures. It cut child deaths and raised school attendance for girls. It built a large garment export trade. Its income per head at market rates has at times stood close to India and at times above it. The IMF in 2025 put Bangladesh near twenty seven hundred dollars. On a measure adjusted for prices India stayed ahead (Dreze and Sen 2013 and IMF 2025).

xviii. Sri Lanka had a long record of elections after 1948. It also had a high level of literacy and health from an early date. Yet a majoritarian turn in language policy deepened ethnic division. A civil war ran from 1983 to 2009. In 2022 a debt crisis and shortage of fuel and food drove mass protests and the fall of the president. Its income per head is higher than India at about forty three hundred dollars. Its political path shows that early social gains do not protect a state from poor governance (DeVotta 2004).

xix. Nepal moved from monarchy to republic after a long conflict. It has held elections since 2008. Its governments have changed often. Its income per head is below that of India. It shows the cost of fragile institutions.

xx. Across the region the lesson is plain. India was not the best performer on every measure. It was the only large state that kept regular elections and civil control of the army through the whole period apart from one break. That record stands as its strongest claim.

xxi. The break of 1975 to 1977 must be weighed. It shows that the Indian system was not immune to the habits of the regional pattern. It also shows that the system could repair itself. This is the point that separates India from Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Propagation: How Congress Political Culture Spread

i. Propagation here means the way habits of power travel through a system. The Congress had no single office that carried its culture. Its habits spread through many channels. Some were formal and some informal. LeBor shows how the BIS spreads its influence through meetings and standards and people (LeBor 2013). The Congress did the same on a national scale.

ii. The first channel was the party network. Congress committees stood in every district. They linked villages to state capitals and state capitals to Delhi. Local leaders carried favours and complaints upward. They carried instructions downward. The party was the main carrier of patronage in the early decades (Weiner 1967).

iii. The second channel was the high command. This was the inner circle around the leader. It named chief ministers and picked candidates and settled quarrels. Because it worked behind closed doors it fits the theme of the club. Its decisions were seldom explained. Loyalty was the main test of promotion.

iv. The third channel was the civil service. India kept the steel frame of the colonial administration. Officers moved between ministries and states. The Congress built a close tie with senior officers. Some officers served with honour and independence. Others learned that loyalty brought rewards. The mutual trust of politicians and officers was a source of both stability and capture (Kapur and Mehta and Vaishnav 2017).

v. The fourth channel was the control of licences and credit. The state held the power to grant or deny permission to produce or import or expand. It also directed bank lending. This is the Indian version of window guidance. A firm that wished to grow learned to build ties with the party in power. Political funding often followed the same line. The system spread a culture of favour.

vi. The fifth channel was the media. All India Radio and then Doordarshan were state bodies. They gave the government a strong voice. During the Emergency they became tools of the ruling party. Later private channels broke this hold. Still the habit of using public media for party ends spread to other parties as they took office.

vii. The sixth channel was the law. Preventive detention and emergency powers were written into the legal system. Once in place they were open to use by any ruler. The Congress passed or kept many such laws. Later governments of all parties have used them. A tool made in one era serves the next.

viii. The seventh channel was imitation. Parties that rose against the Congress often copied its methods. Many regional parties became the property of one leader or one family. They too used the party as a personal base. They too used state power to reward friends. The Congress style of rule became the common style of Indian politics. This is perhaps its most lasting influence.

ix. The eighth channel was the dynasty. The rise of family rule inside the Congress gave a model to others. Family ties shape many parties across India. The pattern runs from village councils to state assemblies. A culture of inheritance has weakened open contest inside parties.

x. The ninth channel was the response of the voters. Indian voters have shown great skill in checking power. They removed the Congress in 1977 and 1989 and 1996 and 2014. They removed many state governments of all parties. The vote is the strongest force against the spread of unchecked power.

xi. Defenders of the Congress offer a different view of propagation. They say that the party also spread good habits. It spread the idea of a secular nation. It spread the ideal of a welfare state and of equal citizenship. It trained thousands of public leaders in the arts of compromise. These claims have force. The same channels carried both good and bad habits.

xii. The test again is accountability. A system can spread good ideas through its networks. It needs public checks to prevent the spread of bad ones.

XII. Case Study: The Emergency of 1975 to 1977

i. This case shows the themes of the essay in sharp form. It involves unaccountable power and secrecy and a small circle of advisers and the use of crisis to gather authority. It also shows the repair of the system by the voters.

ii. The background was a political storm. The government faced economic distress and mass protest. The Allahabad High Court voided the election of the prime minister on 12 June 1975 (Indira Nehru Gandhi v Raj Narain 1975). On 24 June the Supreme Court granted a conditional stay. It allowed her to remain prime minister but not to vote in Parliament.

iii. On the night of 25 June 1975 the President signed a proclamation of Emergency under Article 352. The ground cited was a threat of internal disturbance. The prime minister had advised the step. The cabinet was told the next morning. This was a decision of a very small circle. It followed the advice of the prime minister and a few trusted aides including her son Sanjay Gandhi and the Chief Minister of West Bengal Siddhartha Shankar Ray (Guha 2007).

iv. The step was legal in form. The Constitution allowed it. Yet the real cause was the personal political crisis of the leader. This is the heart of the case. A power built for the defence of the nation was used to defend a ruler against a court ruling and a protest movement.

v. The first acts were swift. Opposition leaders were arrested in the night. Many thousands were detained without trial in the weeks that followed. The count is often put at around one hundred thousand. Press censorship began at once. Power to many newspapers was cut on the first night. Editors had to submit copy for approval (Shah Commission 1978).

vi. Civil rights were suspended. The right to move court to enforce fundamental rights was set aside. In the case of ADM Jabalpur v Shivkant Shukla in 1976 the Supreme Court held by four judges to one that during the Emergency a detainee could not seek release through a writ. Justice H R Khanna gave a brave dissent. He was then passed over for the post of Chief Justice (ADM Jabalpur v Shivkant Shukla 1976).

vii. The ruling is now seen as one of the darkest in the history of the Court. It showed that a judiciary under pressure could fail. In later years the Court itself expressed regret for the ruling. The ruling also became a warning. Procedure in service of power can erase liberty.

viii. Parliament joined the effort. The 39th Amendment of 1975 placed the election of the prime minister beyond challenge in the courts. The Supreme Court struck down this part in the Raj Narain case but let her election stand on other grounds. The 42nd Amendment of 1976 changed many parts of the Constitution. It added the words socialist and secular to the Preamble. It also sought to limit judicial review and to expand the powers of the Union. Critics called it a mini constitution (Austin 1999).

ix. Parliament was also extended. The term of the Lok Sabha was stretched from five years to six. This meant that the voters would not be consulted on the normal schedule. The step struck at the root of democratic consent.

x. The Emergency also had a programme of action. A twenty point plan aimed to improve discipline and productivity. Trains ran on time. Prices cooled for a while. Some middle class citizens welcomed the order. The government claimed success in a war on poverty.

xi. A second programme brought great harm. Sanjay Gandhi led a drive for family planning. Officials were set targets. Millions of people were sterilised in 1976 and 1977. Many were poor and did not give free consent. Some were forced. Slum demolitions in Delhi displaced large numbers. These acts caused deep anger in the north of India (Shah Commission 1978).

xii. These events match the pattern LeBor found in the BIS. Power moved to a small and closed circle. Normal checks were set aside. Procedure was followed. Moral questions were left aside. A body that was meant to protect the nation became a shield for its own interests.

xiii. The Werner theme of informal tools also appears. Much of the control of the Emergency ran through telephone calls and informal instructions to officers and editors. Many of them obeyed without written orders. The pressure was often unseen. This helped hide the scale of the abuse until later inquiry.

xiv. The theme of crisis as a source of power is the clearest. The leader met a crisis with a grab for authority. She then proposed lasting change to the Constitution. Werner saw a similar pattern in Japan where a crash ended with a stronger central bank. In India the pattern broke. The voters refused to ratify it.

xv. In January 1977 she called elections. Reasons are debated. She may have believed that she would win. She may have felt pressure from abroad and from inside. She may have wished to regain democratic cover. The Congress lost in the north in a landslide. She lost her own seat of Rae Bareli. The Janata Party took power (Guha 2007).

xvi. Defenders of the decision for Emergency offer arguments. They say the country was near chaos. They say the opposition had called on the police and army to defy orders. They say the Emergency restored order and economic discipline. Few scholars accept that the threat justified the acts. The suspension of rights and mass detention exceeded any need.

xvii. In later years the Congress itself has spoken of the Emergency as a mistake. The party has at times offered regret in public. Its opponents have kept the memory alive. In 2025 the government of the day marked the fiftieth year with a day of remembrance. The point of the remembrance is itself a matter of debate. Some see honest memory. Others see political use.

xviii. The lesson is plain. Constitutional text alone does not protect liberty. The framers placed emergency powers in the Constitution. A ruler used them for personal ends. The remedy lay in the courage of a few judges and journalists and politicians. It lay above all in the votes of ordinary people.

xix. A second short case shows a milder form of the same issue. In the mid 1980s the Congress government yielded to pressure on Shah Bano. In doing so it bent a legal ruling to a group interest. It lost the confidence of both sides. The cost is still felt in the politics of faith.

The Defence Case and Why It Falls Short

i. A critical case must face its best answers. Defenders of the Congress make five main points. Each deserves a reply.

ii. The first point says that the Congress gave India democracy. This has real force for the Nehru years. Nehru kept the army under civil control and tolerated a free press and accepted electoral defeat in the states. The reply is that this was the restraint of one man and not a culture. After him personal rule took over. The party that claimed credit for democracy later suspended it.

iii. The second point says that the reforms of 1991 saved the nation. This is true. The reply is that the reforms came only after a crisis that the old policy had made. A party that builds a trap and then frees the country from it at the last hour earns relief and not pride. The later coalition of the Bharatiya Janata Party also pursued the reforms. They were not the property of one party.

iv. The third point says that the welfare laws of 2005 to 2013 made rights real. The Right to Information Act and the employment guarantee and the right to education changed lives. The reply is that civil society pressed hard for them. The campaign for information began in the villages of Rajasthan. Activists inside an advisory council drafted much of the work. The same government faced the biggest scandals in telecom and coal. The party that opened files to the citizen also fought to keep some of its own closed.

v. The fourth point says that other parties are no better. This is largely fair. Regional parties copy the family model. Communist governments used party control of daily life. The present ruling party draws sharp criticism for centralised power. The reply is that the Congress set the pattern first and held it longest. It was the model that others learned from.

vi. The fifth point says that India did better than Pakistan. This is true on income and on democracy. The reply is that Pakistan is a low bar. A fair test uses the best performers. South Korea and Taiwan grew fast and later became democracies. China cut poverty on a scale that India did not match. Even Bangladesh matched India on some health measures at far lower income. These comparisons suggest that the Indian outcome owed more to the patience of voters than to the skill of the party (Dreze and Sen 2013 and Naughton 2007).

vii. The critical case also has weak points. It cannot prove what would have happened under another party. Many Congress leaders were honest and brave. Some mistakes came from the ideas of the age and not from bad faith. The Werner idea of deliberate design does not fit India well. Fear and error and habit explain more than a plot. The comparison with China must also allow for the costs hidden by a closed political system.

viii. The honest finding is therefore sharp but bounded. The Congress deserves heavy criticism for how it used power. It does not deserve the claim that it did no good. Defenders see the founder of the republic. Critics see a party that squandered a great inheritance. Readers must weigh both and decide.

Lessons for Today

i. Lesson one is to open party life. Parties are the first school of democracy. Internal elections and open choice of candidates give real meaning to the vote. The Congress held an open contest for its presidency in 2022. This was a welcome step. It must become the norm.

ii. Lesson two is to protect institutions from the person in power. Courts and election bodies and audit offices and central banks need real independence. They also need to answer to the public through clear reports.

iii. Lesson three is to limit emergency powers. The 44th Amendment improved the law. Practice still depends on culture. Any ruler can stretch the rules. The press and the courts must stay alert.

iv. Lesson four is to prefer sunlight to secrecy. The Right to Information Act is a model. It should be defended and kept strong. A system that explains itself earns trust.

v. Lesson five is to treat credit and licences as public powers. Steering credit can serve the poor. It can also feed favouritism. Open rules and independent review reduce this risk.

vi. Lesson six is to learn from neighbours. Pakistan shows the cost of a state where the army stands above the elected. China shows what a focused state can build and what it can hide. Bangladesh shows gains in human welfare from low cost methods. Sri Lanka shows how early gains can be lost to division and debt.

vii. Lesson seven is to invest in people. Health and schooling are the base of both democracy and growth. Dreze and Sen argued that India has long underfunded these areas. The gap remains wide (Dreze and Sen 2013).

viii. Lesson eight is humility. No party owns the nation. The voters of India have shown that they will remove those who forget this.

Conclusion

i. The Congress shaped independent India more than any other body. That is exactly why its record weighs so heavily. A party with such power and such moral credit owed the nation the highest standard. It often fell short of it.

ii. The core theme of this essay is unaccountable power. It appears in the high command and in the licence system and in the control of credit and in the Emergency. It also appears in the habit of secrecy and of the small circle. LeBor shows how a protected club can escape scrutiny. Werner shows how informal tools of finance can shape a whole economy. Both help name what went wrong.

iii. The key insights are these. Democracy needs strong parties and not strong leaders. Constitutional text means little without a culture that respects it. Informal tools of control breed hidden error. Crisis tempts rulers to gather power. India showed that voters can say no.

iv. On development the record is poor against the best performers. The party built a base and then held back growth with controls for four decades. It reformed only when bankruptcy forced it. It trails China by a wide margin. It stands above Pakistan and Nepal and close to Bangladesh and below Sri Lanka on income per head.

v. On democracy the record is dark in key chapters. The army never took power. Elections stayed free enough to remove rulers. Yet the Emergency and the long use of Article 356 and the pressure on judges show a party that bent the system when it felt threatened.

vi. On constitutional values the record is that of a trustee who stretched the trust. The party wrote and defended parts of the text. It also gave in to short term gain on secularism and on equal citizenship and on federal balance.

vii. The propagation of Congress habits across the party system is its worst legacy. Personal rule and family succession and the favour economy spread to many parties. The free vote and the open protest also spread. They belong to the people and not to the party.

viii. The Constitution offers the best guide. It places the citizen at the centre. It holds that power must answer to law. Seventy five years on the question remains. Who watches the rulers? In India the answer has been the people. The Congress did not build that answer. It tried too often to avoid it. The final word on its record is that it had much to be proud of and spent too much of it.

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