South Asia as a Region: Comparative Politics and Democratisation
South Asia is a region by geography and history and not by politics. Its defining feature is asymmetry: one state accounts for most of its territory, population and economy, which …
South Asia is a region by geography and history and not by politics. Its defining feature is asymmetry: one state accounts for most of its territory, population and economy, which shapes every relationship within it.
This is chapter 54 of the PSIR Optional Notes, from the part on South Asia and the World Order in the Paper II syllabus. The complete book is a free download.
UPSC syllabus
South Asia as a region: comparative politics of South Asia; the South Asian experience of democratisation and modernisation.
In one page
- South Asia comprises the eight SAARC members. India accounts for roughly three-quarters of its area, population and economic output, which is a degree of asymmetry without parallel in any other region.
- The asymmetry produces the region’s characteristic dynamic: smaller states hedge against the centre by cultivating external powers, and India’s presence is experienced as unavoidable rather than benign.
- Shared inheritances: a colonial administrative state, partition and its consequences, composite societies with cross-border ethnic and religious populations, and land-scarce agrarian economies.
- The democratisation record is highly varied. India has been continuously democratic apart from 1975–77; Sri Lanka has held elections since 1948; Pakistan and Bangladesh have alternated between elected and military rule; Nepal moved from monarchy to federal republic; Bhutan democratised from above; the Maldives democratised in 2008.
- Recurrent obstacles: praetorianism, meaning military involvement in politics; weak institutionalisation of parties; ethnic and religious majoritarianism; personalised and dynastic leadership; and the security state’s crowding out of civil politics.
- Modernisation in the region has not followed the sequence the theory predicted: democracy preceded industrialisation and mass literacy in India, and economic growth has coexisted with authoritarian and hybrid regimes elsewhere.
- The most useful comparative frame is Ayesha Jalal‘s: the divergence between India and Pakistan is explained by the relative strength of political parties against the military-bureaucratic apparatus at independence, not by culture or religion.
The region and its asymmetry
South Asia as a political term is largely a post-1947 construct, and SAARC’s membership gives it its working definition: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
The asymmetry is the region’s organising fact. India shares a land or maritime boundary with every other member; no other member shares a boundary with more than two. India accounts for the overwhelming share of the region’s population, territory, economy and military capability. Two consequences follow.
- For the smaller states. Every domestic political question has an India dimension, which makes India a factor in their internal politics whether or not India intervenes. The standard response is hedging: cultivating China, and increasingly others, to create bargaining room. Anti-India positioning becomes an available electoral strategy, which is visible in the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka at different moments.
- For India. A dominant state cannot be a neutral one. Actions India regards as assistance, smaller neighbours may experience as intrusion, and Indian restraint may be read as neglect. This is the structural problem the Gujral Doctrine of 1996, with its principle of non-reciprocity toward smaller neighbours, was designed to address, and which the Neighbourhood First policy from 2014 restated.
Comparative politics of South Asia
Shared inheritances and divergent outcomes
Common starting conditions: a colonial state built for extraction and order rather than representation; a modernising elite educated in the coloniser’s language; partition, which built insecurity into two states’ founding; cross-border ethnic and religious populations, Bengalis, Punjabis, Tamils, Pashtuns, Nepalis, so that domestic questions become bilateral ones; and agrarian, land-scarce economies with high population density.
The outcomes diverged sharply, and explaining that divergence is what the comparative question asks.
| Country | Trajectory |
|---|---|
| India | Continuous democracy from 1950, with the Emergency of 1975–77 as the single interruption; universal suffrage from the first election; regular alternation |
| Pakistan | Alternating civilian and military rule; martial law in 1958, 1969, 1977 and 1999; elected governments have rarely completed terms; the military retains decisive influence over security and foreign policy even under civilian government |
| Bangladesh | Independence 1971; one-party rule 1975; military rule to 1990; competitive but intensely adversarial two-party politics thereafter; the caretaker-government system abolished in 2011; sustained political crisis and a change of government in 2024 |
| Sri Lanka | Universal franchise from 1931, the earliest in Asia; continuous elections since 1948; but majoritarian language and citizenship policies from 1956 contributed to a civil war lasting from 1983 to 2009; executive presidency introduced 1978; economic collapse and mass protest in 2022 |
| Nepal | Monarchy; the 1990 movement introducing constitutional monarchy; Maoist insurgency 1996–2006; monarchy abolished 2008; federal secular republic under the 2015 constitution; governmental instability persists |
| Bhutan | Democratisation from above: the monarch initiated the transition; constitution and first elections 2008; constitutional monarchy with regular alternation |
| Maldives | Authoritarian rule to 2008; multiparty elections thereafter; repeated crises including 2012 and 2018; competitive politics with strong external orientation as an electoral axis |
| Afghanistan | Republic 2004–21, sustained by external presence; Taliban resumption of power August 2021 |
Explaining the divergence
The party-military balance. Ayesha Jalal‘s comparative argument in Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia (1995) is the standard explanation and the most useful for an answer. At independence the Congress was a mass organisation with deep roots, established leadership and an ideology of civilian supremacy; the Muslim League was a thin organisation without comparable structures in the territories that became Pakistan. Pakistan inherited a disproportionate share of the colonial army and a severe security threat, which gave the military-bureaucratic apparatus primacy over an underdeveloped political class. The divergence is therefore institutional and situational, not cultural.
The security state. Where external threat is treated as existential, defence and intelligence institutions acquire budgetary and political weight that civilian institutions cannot match. Pakistan is the clearest case; Sri Lanka during the civil war is another.
Ethnic and religious majoritarianism. States that defined themselves in majority terms generated the conflicts that then consumed them: Sinhala Only in 1956 and the Tamil question; Bengali language politics in Pakistan leading to 1971; Nepal’s Madhesi question.
Institutionalisation. Where parties have organisational depth independent of leaders, alternation consolidates; where politics runs through families and personalities, alternation changes rulers without strengthening institutions. Chapter 37’s framework applies directly.
Federal accommodation. India’s linguistic reorganisation from 1956 and its asymmetric provisions, treated in Chapter 33, accommodated diversity that unitary neighbours could not. This is the single most useful lesson India’s experience offers the region.
Democratisation and modernisation
Against the modernisation sequence
Modernisation theory predicted a sequence: economic development, urbanisation, literacy, a middle class, and then democracy. South Asia contradicts it at both ends. India adopted universal adult suffrage in 1950 at very low income and literacy, and sustained democracy for seven decades without the predicted prerequisites. Pakistan experienced substantial growth under military rule in the 1960s without democratisation. Bhutan democratised because the monarch chose to, which no structural theory predicts.
What the region does support is the weaker survival version of the thesis, in Przeworski’s formulation: development may not cause democratic transitions but it makes established democracies far less likely to break down.
Common obstacles
- Praetorianism and the difficulty of subordinating the military once it has ruled.
- Weak party institutionalisation and pervasive dynasticism, in every country of the region without exception.
- Majoritarianism, where democratic form delivers majority domination rather than protection of minorities.
- Weak or captured referees: electoral commissions, courts and civil services subject to executive control, which is what makes alternation unreliable.
- External dependence, where aid, remittances and strategic rents reduce governments’ fiscal dependence on their own citizens.
- Economic fragility, most starkly in Sri Lanka’s 2022 default and in Pakistan’s recurrent balance-of-payments crises, which converts economic distress into political instability.
What has nonetheless worked
An answer that presents only failure is inaccurate. The region has held a very large number of elections; power has changed hands by vote in every country except Afghanistan; turnout is high and frequently higher among the poor; judiciaries have at moments constrained executives; and mass mobilisation has removed governments, in Nepal in 1990 and 2006, in the Maldives in 2008 and in Sri Lanka in 2022. Democratic aspiration in South Asia is not in doubt; democratic institutions are.
Where answers lose marks
- Explaining Pakistan’s trajectory by religion or culture. Jalal’s institutional explanation, the party-military balance at independence, is both better supported and more examinable.
- Treating South Asia as a functioning region. It is a region by geography and history and, by every measure of intra-regional trade and mobility, one of the least integrated in the world.
- Presenting India’s democracy as the regional norm. It is the outlier, and explaining why is the comparative question.
- Omitting asymmetry. It is the structural fact that explains hedging, anti-India electoral positioning and the difficulty of regional cooperation.
- Using modernisation theory uncritically. India falsifies the causal version; the survival version is what the evidence supports.
Asked before
- Critically examine the role of political parties in sustaining and stabilising democracies in the developing societies. (2024, Paper II, 15 marks)
- Discuss the political socialization of open and closed societies. (2025, Paper II, 10 marks)
Answer skeleton
Account for the divergent democratic trajectories of India and Pakistan since 1947. (15 marks, 250 words)
Frame. Reject cultural and religious explanations at the outset and state the institutional alternative: the balance between political parties and the military-bureaucratic apparatus at independence.
The common inheritance. The same colonial state, the same partition, comparable poverty, comparable social diversity. Whatever explains the divergence cannot be something the two shared.
Jalal’s argument. Congress was a mass organisation with deep territorial roots, established leadership and a doctrine of civilian supremacy. The Muslim League had no comparable structure in the territories that became Pakistan, so the state was built by bureaucrats and soldiers rather than by a party.
The security variable. Pakistan inherited an acute security problem and a disproportionate share of the army, which entrenched defence primacy in the budget and in decision-making.
The constitutional variable. India produced a constitution within three years and held elections in 1951–52; Pakistan took nine years and abrogated the result within two.
Federal accommodation. India’s linguistic reorganisation from 1956 converted a potential secessionist grievance into ordinary state politics; Pakistan’s refusal to accommodate Bengali contributed directly to 1971.
Conclude. The divergence is institutional and path-dependent. Once the military governs, subordinating it becomes progressively harder, which is why Pakistan’s civilian interludes have not reversed the pattern while India’s single interruption in 1975–77 was reversed by election.
Last-mile revision
- Eight SAARC members; India’s share of area, population and output; India borders every member, no other borders more than two.
- Consequences of asymmetry: hedging, anti-India electoral positioning, Gujral Doctrine 1996 non-reciprocity, Neighbourhood First from 2014.
- Trajectories: India continuous with 1975–77; Pakistan martial law 1958, 1969, 1977, 1999; Bangladesh 1971, 1975, military to 1990, caretaker abolished 2011, change of government 2024; Sri Lanka franchise 1931, Sinhala Only 1956, war 1983–2009, executive presidency 1978, collapse 2022; Nepal 1990, insurgency 1996–2006, monarchy abolished 2008, constitution 2015; Bhutan 2008; Maldives 2008; Afghanistan 2004–21.
- Jalal’s party-military balance explanation; security state; majoritarianism; institutionalisation; federal accommodation.
- Modernisation: India falsifies the causal version; Przeworski’s survival version holds.
Read the rest. This chapter is one of 58 in the complete PSIR Optional Notes, covering Paper I and Paper II in full — free to download.