How Exceptional Is India's Democracy? Path Dependence, Political Capital, and Context in South Asia

India in 1947 faced the challenge of transforming a poor, socially and spatially fragmented country with low literacy and violent memories of Partition to a democratic state and a cohesive nation. Though the country sorely lacked the "pre-conditions of democracy," it still made a successful transition to electoral democracy, and went on to consolidate it. Compared to other South Asian nations, India's democracy appears even more puzzling-common origin from British colonial rule has led to dissimilar outcomes among India's neighbors. I argue in this article that India's democracy is neither a sham nor idiosyncratic. India's transition to democracy is the outcome of general variables such as path dependency, adroit institutional arrangements, strategic policy reform, and political capital. India's democracy conflates Western liberal democratic forms and non-Western cultures, leading to enfranchisement, entitlement and empowerment of the citizens, and the creation of a sense of efficacy, social justice, legitimacy and trust among them. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.