Diaspora, Development, and Democracy by Kapur Devesh;

Author:Kapur, Devesh;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press

CHAPTER 6

International Migration and the Paradox of India’s Democracy

By almost any theory, India in 1947 appeared to be among the least likely country to sustain democratic institutions.

—Myron Weiner1

INTRODUCTION

While the previous chapters examined migration’s economic and cognitive impact on India, this chapter examines its effects on India’s democracy. As the preceding observation by the late Myron Weiner suggests, the endurance of India’s democracy has been an exception to Western theories of democratic government. More than sixty years after independence, India continues to remain a vigorous democracy, despite the predictions of many scholars. In this chapter, I argue that emigration from India has had a significant impact in sustaining India’s democratic tradition. In a country of limited resources, emigration has allowed social groups constituting the “old” political elite to diversify their economic portfolio by moving abroad without sacrificing economic privileges. This has created space for the mobility of “new” political elites drawn from numerically larger but historically marginalized communities, without provoking the sorts of intense intraelite conflict that have led to the breakdown of democracies.

In this chapter, I argue that any understanding of the domestic impact of international capital mobility needs to move beyond the current narrow conceptualization in its financial sense to include human capital as well. Through empirical evidence and historical analysis, I demonstrate the impact of international migration on India’s national politics in general and democracy in particular: elite “exit,” fueled by the endowments of Indian elites in mobile human capital (rather than immobile land assets), has played an important role in ensuring India’s democratic stability.

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