Changing status of Indian democracy :

Abstract

A democracy is widely accepted to be a system that efficiently manifests public opinion of the electorate while also maintaining a checks and balance on power through free elections. However, India continues to show an increasing incidence of rent-seeking and criminal politics, even while the exercise of democracy remains intact. This paper employs North, Wallis and Weingast's conceptualisation of social organisation as access orders in a society to show that Indian democracy has a system of political representation with an inefficient system of political access. The analysis further contributes to the literature by conceptualising the means of access in societies and argues that India is a society of limited access orders. Using this framework, the paper argues that the limited access in Indian democracy occurs as a result of manipulation of the means of access by a small politico-economic elite, using a system of privileged and personal inter-elite relationships that results in a growing convergence of rent-seeking practices in Indian politics.