The politics of Viksit Bharat

The politics of democracy is evolving at a lightning pace as the times and social spaces change constantly.

- BADRI NARAYAN

The politics of democracy is evolving at a lightning pace as the times and social spaces change constantly. The ongoing process of development also plays an important role in changing the nature of democratic politics. A few decades ago, mobilization politics was largely dominated by issues related with bijli (electricity), paani (water), and sadak (roads). Along with caste and religion, issues of the lack of basic infrastructural amenities were being raised and used by political forces as instruments for mobilizing the populace. In the past decade or so, especially after 2014, the rapid expansion of roadways in urban and rural India and the availability of water and electricity even in remote regions made these issues almost irrelevant and thus redundant for mobilizing public dissatisfaction to serve political causes in electoral and democratic politics. So, the politics around developmental dissatisfactions is witnessing a shift towards potential new issues.

In the process, such political forces are seeking issues related to human development such as education, health, climate change, and environment. Such issues are emerging as potential political issues because after getting basic infrastructure, the aspiration of a good quality of life is growing among the people. This can be actualized with the conceptualization and implementation of policies aimed at providing quality education and healthcare as well as utilizing holistic sustainable developmental measures. That is why political forces, especially those from the opposition, are trying to drag these human developmental issues to politics. They want to cultivate these issues for electoral politics in the long run.