How does Indian democracy compare to the American model?
In some ways India is a mirror image of America. In America the middle class vote and the poor don’t. In India the poor vote and the middle class have a much lower average turnout. That makes India’s electoral outcomes more volatile. Incumbency in America is deeply entrenched. We are about to have mid-term elections in November. There are 435 seats in the House of Representatives. The most that will change hands is 25; it’s less than 10 per cent. In India, about 70 per cent of the Lok Sabha seats change hands in each election. It’s immensely volatile. Measuring Indian opinion is very hard in comparison to the U.S. Here the minimum sample for a national opinion poll is 40,000. And, still you get it wrong because it is so diverse and so hard to measure. In America, you interview 2,000 people per poll and the survey is usually right. To me, that’s one of the best ways of measuring just how much more diverse and less easily predictable India is. They are very different kinds of democracies
