Boston: In an apparent dig at China, Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Sunday warned against the impulse to become an autocratic society for attaining faster growth and said development through democracy is more stable.
"Development through democracy is the biggest challenge today because in the heat of the moment people call for becoming some kind of an autocratic society," Prasad said during a panel discussion on India at the prestigious Harvard University.
Referring to China's fast growth rate during the past decades, he said in a democracy development may be slower but it is stable.
People in India, he said, wants the government to deliver with good governance and transparency. China, which is ruled by the Communist Party since 1949, witnessed close to double-digit growth for over three decades.
However, growth has fallen steadily over the past five years and China clocked 6.9 per cent GDP growth in 2015, its weakest performance in a quarter century, with analysts warning of a hard landing for the world's second largest economy.
Responding to a question, Prasad opposed the idea of disbanding the Indian civil services, which he argued brings in continuity and stability.
At the same time, he felt the need of creating opportunities for bringing fresh minds to governance. Speaking on the phenomena of regional parties in Indian politics, senior member of parliament Jay Panda said that it would be foolish to write off regional parties, which have been there for the past few decades.
"They may have in some sense reached the peak of their popularity, but they are not going away any time soon," he said, adding there is a gradual evolution of two coalition system rather than two parties in Indian polity.
Panda also referred to the massive use of social media in recent elections in India.
Gradually, large rallies are paving the way for more volunteers and staffers to do door-to-door campaigning. "Despite this increase in engagement, Indian politics is still insular. It is not a level playing field," Panda said referring to the dynasty politics in the country. "For an outsider to enter the politics is not easy," Panda said.
However, he acknowledged that the number of dynastic members in the Parliament have started to come down. "Unless we have systematic changes, campaign finance reform, the Indian democracy will remain insular," Panda said.
Jayprakash Narayan, founder of Lok Satta Party, said more than Indians, the rest of the world wants India to succeed. This is mainly because of the aggressive behaviour of China, and India is seen as a balancing and stable power.
However, for him, India has become an unwieldy republic. "There is increasing gap between aspiration, policy and outcome," he said, adding that India is among the worst in the world in terms of healthcare outcome and expenditure.
Narayan alleged that there is too much centralisation of power in India. "In the past 20 years, we have seen creeping centralisation by consent," he said.
