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Conversations on Democracy: Challenges of Consolidating Grassroots Democracy in South Asia

By Bhattarai Anil & Pratap Vijay (eds.)

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OVERVIEW

South Asia has a rich and long history of democratic traditions. This history predates modern nation-state model of democracy that was adopted here since the second half of the twentieth century. Though not without contestation, the decentralized and local institutions for the conduct and management of the social and community life evolved in South Asia some thousand years ago. These institutions have gone through ups and downs over long period of time. Some of them have eroded. Others have been transformed into newer ones. Some have even become part of history books.

There have also been new experiences of democracy (and lack of it) in the last five decades. Some countries in South Asia embarked on what many called a new era of modernization in the aftermath of the Second World War. A new state system came into being and in some countries democracy began to be understood in the new sense of politics- elections, parliament and assemblies, formation of elected governments along with new institutional structures of judiciary and an executive accountable to the elected representatives.

This book is an outcome of a two-day conference entitled "The Consolidation of Grassroot Democracy in South Asia" organized in Delhi on 19-20 March, 2001 by Henrich Boll Foundation (HBF) in association with Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) and Service Centre for Development Cooperation (KEPA). The participants came from Nepal, India, Pakistan, Germany and Finland.

They discussed the limitations of current representative form of democracy; emerging threats to democratic spaces; participatory democratic elements in our traditions; and future possibilities of solidarity actions for deepening and consolidation of democracy in the region.