[Working Paper] Populism in Contemporary Indian Politics
2019-07-30
Knowledge-Net for a Better World
July 2019
Populism in Contemporary Indian Politics
Working Paper Series (Populism in Asia)
Kaustuv Chakrabarti, Senior Program Officer at Participatory Research in Asia Kaustuv Kanti Bandyopadhyay Director of Participatory Research in Asia
"Fiscal Irresponsibility in the Face of Redistributive Populism"
With an increase in dissatisfaction of liberal democratic systems around the world, populism has taken the center stage in all facets of life, especially in the discourse of politics and governance. In order to address this global issue, the Asia Democracy Research Network (ADRN) has been conducting research on populism based on country cases since 2017. ADRN was established by the East Asia Institute (EAI) in 2013 with funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to strengthen civil society in Asia and promote democratic norms and values.
As part of ADRN research project, EAI has planned a special working papers series. This series is composed of six working papers, and the publication schedules is as follows:
1) South Korea’s Tamed Populism: Popular Protests From Below and Populist Politics from the Top (Issue on 2nd July 2019)
2) Populism in Taiwan: a Bottom-up Model (Issue on 9th July 2019)
3) Contemporary Populism and Democratic Challenges in the Philippines (Issue on 16th July 2019)
4) The Changing Nature of Populism in Malaysia (Issue on 23rd July 2019) 5) Populism in Contemporary Indian Politics (Issue on 30th July 2019)
6) Populism in Thailand (Issue on 6th August 2019)
For the fifth publication of the ADRN special working paper series, Dr. Kaustuv Kanti Bandyopadhyay and Mr. Kaustuv Chakrabarti of the Participatory Research in Asia study the populist phenomenon in India and its impact on Indian politics. They note that this movement, contrary to other cases of populism around the world, refers to "virtually any policy that is redistributive in nature... particularly when a policy is announced before impending elections." With this condition, Dr. Bandyopadhyay and Mr. Chakrabarti argue that populist decisions "can become more responsible and at the same time more irresponsible." The authors conclude that in order to bring an end to irresponsible and fiscally concerning decisions, civil society needs to "engage with the citizens" to "counter majoritarian populism."
