The Indian Exception

Ninepins is the word that comes to mind when one sees political instability in India's neighbourhood. Between 2022 and 2025, three governments in three countries—Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal—have been toppled by agitations. What is remarkable is the manner in which these agitations, largely in the capital cities, managed to dislodge the elected government within days of protests. All it took was two days of agitation for Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli to quit. In the case of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who quit on August 5, 2024, it was three days of protests that made short work of her prime ministership. Earlier, in July 2022, the period to oust Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was five days. He left his country for exile but returned 52 days later to Colombo. His political exile, however, is permanent. The arc of political and economic errors was, of course, much wider in all cases. 

What stands in contrast to these once solid polities is India, a country of bewildering diversity where agitations, insurgencies and separatism are common but where political stability is rock solid. What makes India exceptional even as its neighbours wilt under instability? 

The period from December 15, 2019 to November 21, 2021 (23 months in all) was particularly volatile from a political perspective. Between those dates, India witnessed two largescale agitations and one serious riot. All these events converged on the national capital, convulsing it for months. Strategies that ranged from violence to choking New Delhi economically were put into action by the agitators. But that is where the similarity between the regime-changing events in India's neighbourhood and what was seen domestically end. Unlike Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, India managed to ward off challenges to lawfully established authority. 

The first attempt at injecting political turmoil during that period began within days of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) being cleared by Parliament on December 11, 2019. It was clear, even before the Bill had been passed, that the radicalised section of the Muslim community would not sit quietly and a 'street veto' of sorts would be enforced to roll back the law. That did not take time. From December 15, protesters blocked a key arterial road that connected the Shaheen Bagh area with Noida, a satellite town adjoining the national capital in Uttar Pradesh (UP). That some thought had gone into the protest was evident two months later, on February 22, 2020, when a similar sit-in blockade was attempted at the Jaffrabad locality of North-East Delhi. A day later that event led to a riot in the area. It is instructive to note that the moving forces alleged to have planned and fomented the riots have not been released from detention even after five years in custody. The gravity of the charges can be gauged from the fact that appeals for bail, from lower courts all the way to the Supreme Court, have gone nowhere.

Eleven months after the Shaheen Bagh protest began, farmers from Punjab besieged the national capital, effectively blocking road transport links between Delhi and the northern parts of India. The protests had begun two months earlier, in September 2020, soon after Parliament passed three agriculture reform laws. This 'protest' lasted one year and two months. The agitation came to halt when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that a Bill would be introduced in Parliament and the three reform laws would be repealed.

The proximate reason why these agitations did not acquire threatening overtones, let alone overwhelm a lawfully elected government, was simple: the government's tact and patience in handling the protesters. This was not a strategy of letting agitators do what they pleased. For example, when the protest against the CAA turned violent in UP on December 20, 2019, the state government restored order within two days. To prevent the recurrence of violent events, a UP government panel assessed damage to public property and the means to recover damages from agitators who had indulged in violence. A month later, on January 17, 2020, 500 women protesters tried to encamp and launch a sit-in protest in Lucknow. They were removed from the site the next day.

In contrast, when the agitating farmers broke barricades, entered New Delhi and tried to occupy the Red Fort, no action was taken. This was a grave provocation and 'farmers' assaulted Delhi Police personnel at the site, a sufficient ground for a tougher response. But the Centre and its law enforcement agencies understood that the provocation was designed to elicit a violent response from the government in a bid to escalate the reach and extent of the agitation. That strategy did not work.

At times, governments lose nerve and resort to repression to check agitations that seem to be getting out of hand. That strategy is fraught with risk, unless the consequences of coercion and repression are calculated properly. Even at the best of times, those calculations can go awry. Sometimes, agitators, by design, try to trap governments into a violent response. The Modi government understood the pitfalls of such a strategy. Instead, it allowed these agitations to run out of steam.

There are, however, deeper contrasts that mark out India from its neighbours beyond the political ineptness that comes to mind when looking at the political situation in South Asia. Three features differentiate India's politics from that of its neighbours, ones that allow it to withstand political shocks to a far greater degree.

For one, India has a multi-layered governance structure where political authority is dispersed among different governments and institutions. Some analysts chose to describe this as federalism. But that is a mischaracterisation: in India, federalism is essentially an ideology that seeks to weaken executive authority and its adherents believe that democracy in India can only survive if political power is dispersed. This has its own problems.

This dispersal allows protests and agitations to be localised instead of spiralling out of control. A majority of the agitations get dissipated at the level of states where a mix of compromises and cajoling ensure that matters do not get out of hand.

Then there is the presence of institutions like the Supreme Court that dampen these agitations. In the Shaheen Bagh case, for example, the court dispatched 'interlocutors' to talk with the people at the sit-in site. In theory, the court had no business to take that step as it was a matter for political authorities to resolve. Similarly, in the case of the farmers' agitation, the suspension of the reform laws was an unprecedented step as usually the judiciary only overrules laws passed by Parliament on grounds of constitutional transgression. But here, the executive demurred and the suspension took the sting out of the agitation. In both cases, the judiciary came to the political aid of the Centre.

Another deeper factor that distinguishes India from its neighbours is that its political system is not brittle. In democratic South Asia, politics has ceased to be responsive and has ossified either into dynastic rule (Sri Lanka) or long periods of single-party rule (Bangladesh)—and the extent of corruption eats away at the vitals of government and mars the chances of the countries in question (all, but especially Nepal). Pakistan is not included in this list as it is in an advanced stage of political decay, barely held together by its armed forces.

India is different. Even long stints of rule by a single party (BJP) or a coalition (UPA I and II) ensure a modicum of representation for different parties in different states. That ensures that political disaffection does not get out of hand. In a situation where political parties vie for office, even if only for spoils, competition at different levels imparts stability to the system. This feature is wholly absent among India's neighbours.

Finally, India's distinctive feature is its much higher state capacity. It is inconceivable that a violent uprising or a mass agitation can dislodge the government at the Centre in India. This is not just about the far more extensive coercive powers in the hands of the Indian government; it is the mix of legal, repressive and democratic features that gives the Indian system far greater malleability to deal with emergent situations.

These features have proved their worth in the face of a wide spectrum of threats and situations that India has successfully confronted in the past one decade. At one extreme are major internal security threats—secessionism in different provinces and a Maoist insurgency—and at the other extreme are agitations and 'movements'. All have been settled properly.

There are, however, costs associated with the Indian system, ones that cannot be reduced, let alone eliminated, in a meaningful way.

The same feature that keeps agitations trapped at the level of states also helps generate them in the first place. The concomitant feature of India's bewildering diversity is the prevalence of regional and even sub-regional political parties. In the unfolding of this democratic drama, many parties playing with politics to generate permanent electoral bases leads to identity politics that often breeds separatism.

The farmers' agitation from Punjab is an example. What began as a misinformed agitation against agricultural reform mutated into an identity politics issue, turning into a 'Sikhs vs Centre' matter. This was in no small measure due to Punjab's politics where local economic and institutional failures are transformed into religious and political issues directed at the Centre. At the moment, Punjab finds itself trapped in such an outlook, nearly four years after the farmers' agitation ended. There are other states' where similar processes are at work, continuously. Almost all the states where such politics plays out are located on India's geographical periphery.

There is, ultimately, no comparison between the degree of stability in India's political system and the turbulence in its neighbouring countries. There, the slightest economic shock produces strong tremors. Until very recently, it was fashionable among leftist academics to say that "India should learn from its neighbours"; that "India should be humble" while making comparisons with its neighbours. In retrospect, the truth was always that India had much to offer in terms of learning how to manage a diverse country. India spends a large fraction of its economic output in ensuring political and social stability. Those are significant costs. Its political and constitutional design, too, exacts a large cost. It is a high-maintenance democracy but one that is ultimately incomparably more stable than its neighbours.