Democracy and poverty have been inextricably linked in India ever since her birth. The political independence of our country had been achieved through the mass participation of the rural poor in the national movement. However, and unfortunately, since then this rural poor mass of the Indian population has seen its influence shrink in national politics.

A decade by decade, India has cultivated its resources and added to its national financial wealth, the rich have grown richer, and the poor have grown abysmally poorer. We have the distinction of being the largest democracy in the world, but we are also one of the world’s poorest countries, with gaping economic cleavages within our society.

The inequality of income is a concern that gets reflected directly in the operation of the democratic process of our republic. Research has firmly established the fact that though the majority of Indian voters come from the rural Indian hinterland, their influence on their elected representatives and on the whole, on the process of national policymaking is shrinking with each passing year. On the other hand, the richer sections of our society, though they do not necessarily vote or have any discernible concern for their civic responsibilities, exercise leverage on the policymaking in this country grossly disproportionate to their actual size in the population.

Moreover, the culture of corporate funding of political parties has fast spawned its offspring in the realms of the government establishment. It has made political parties and their leaders less dependent on their actual electorate and has allowed them to ignore the real concerns of the public like agrarian reforms, fine-tuning of the Public Distribution System, agricultural subsidies, and educational reforms.

To encapsulate, as we take pride in us being the largest democracy in the world, it is also necessary to recognise and act on the fact that the phenomenon of gross economic inequalities is putting a major limitation on its workability.