India and Democracy Promotion

When the Western countries confronted backlash in their promotion of democracy, they wooed India to join them. India has shown reluctance to join them due to various factors. It starts with discussion of how it was inconceivable for India to promote democracy during the Cold War and then examine factors that made India reticent to commit itself to democracy promotion in the post-Cold War. The paper discusses the reasons as to why a nuanced shift towards supporting democracy promotion has taken place in the turn of the Century and how this shift is made with the intention of making a difference through participation rather than openly protesting and standing aloof on principle ground. The main focus of the paper is to highlight how India provides democracy assistance differently from that of the Western countries and what kind of tangible assistances India provided to those who sought. It highlights how, keeping in view the sensitivity of sovereignty among the developing countries, India uses term such as ‘democracy assistance’ or ‘democracy support’ instead of ‘democracy promotion’ and how it adopts policy of providing democracy assistance only when requested and it follows top-down approach, dealing mainly with the sovereign states and their institutions. It ends with an emphasis on the value addition of having diverse approaches to spreading democracy.